Page 337 "My God, I thought, this man's blood was so toxic from medicine, how could he hope to live from the cure?"

From page 337 of the book:   Amid the disarray of glasses were drug vials, some empty, some still with pills in them. I read the labels and afterward identified them with Dr. Fanon's help. There were little bottles of demerol, to squelch his pain; diethylstilbestrol, an estrogen agent, to combat the production of testosterone; fluorouracil, an antimetabolite that directly fought the cancer; as well as vincristine, a mitotic inhibitor, which blocked the DNA assemblage within the cancerous cells. My God, I thought, this man's blood was so toxic from medicine, how could he hope to live from the cure? Another cytotoxic drug huddled in the background: medroxyprogesterone acetate. It was to act as an assassin of the cancer. A large bottle of vitamin C stood next to the vincristine.

The antimetabolite Flucytosine was originally developed in the 1950's as a potential antineoplastic agent. Although ineffective against tumors it was later found to have antifungal activity. This small molecule is transported into susceptible fungal cells by a specific enzyme cytosine permease and converted in the cytoplasm by cytosine deaminase to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)- a pyrimidine anti-metabolite used as chemotherapy for many types of colorectal cancer.

An antimetabolite drip (chemotherapy)

A dividing cancer cell

A comparison of cell division

Page 335 "Both have been cited in the Bank of Credit & Commerce International scandal."

From page 335 of the book: "Your francs were transferred from Luxembourg to two banks in Hong Kong. One is a local branch of a New York City bank, the other is British. Both have been cited in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International scandal."

"You, Monsieur Shanzenbach, and many others have lost great sums of money.  But everyone knew the risks.  There was no babies here, Monsieur Vann.  Everyone knew what kind of people those bankers were; everyone knew about the CIA deposits and about Abu Nidal.  C'est la même chose.  It's all the same to us.  They have the same faces, you know.  They have the same capacity to kill and be killed."

Abu Nidal

[Abu Nidal (1937-2002) was the founder of Fatah–The Revolutionary Council, a militant Palestinian group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization. At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, Abu Nidal, or "father of the struggle," was widely regarded as the most ruthless of the Palestinian political leaders. He told Der Spiegel in a rare interview in 1985: "I am the evil spirit which moves around only at night causing ... nightmares."] (Text courtesy of Wikipedia.)

Page 329 "...the white rafters above the Stations of the Cross."

From page 329 of the book:  Revenant cocked his head to one side, facing a stained-glass window and, raising his chin, looked to the white rafters above the Stations of the Cross.

Here's a little reminiscence of my friends Joe Savino and Joe Centrone from the early 1960s:  They were in St. Sebastian's Church, in Woodside, Queens, and they're about seven or eight years old, give or take a year.  They come to Station #10, and the caption beneath the bas relief of Jesus having his clothes removed said: "Stripped of his clothes like a rose."  And Joe Savino explained that "We just thought it was hilariously funny.  We're kids, what do we know?  It was like watching Beavis and Butthead doing the stations of the cross.  We were so solemn, in the solemnity of the Church, and then all of a sudden, we're laughing hysterically.  There was something about the rhyme of 'stripped of his clothes like a rose' that cracked us up."

Page 328 "If they only knew what Mary had to put up with..."

Feast of the Assumption procession in Marseille, France

El Greco's "The Assumption of the Virgin" 1577

From page 328 of the book:  "Don't let that bother you, Father.  You're doing this for yourself anyway."
He halted and shot me a perturbed look.
"You told me so yourself."
"Perhaps I did," he said.  "Perhaps I did.  Feast of the Assumption.  If they only knew what Mary had to put up with, they would've nailed Him to the cross a whole lot sooner, I'll tell you that."

Page 327 "Revenant, sitting beneath their portraits, sullen, crabby, posed a bizarre contrast to their dialectical history."

From page 327 of the book:  Revenant, sitting beneath their portraits, sullen, crabby, posed a bizarre contrast to their dialectical history. A "How To" book on binoculars lay open in front of him on his desk. Piled next to the book on binoculars was a copy of Diseases of Canaries by Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. Beneath that was Mervin Roberts' All About Breeding Canaries. I refixed my attention onto the priest.

Above & below left: Robert Stroud, the Bird Man of Alcatraz

           

Page 330 "Father Revenant, do you realize what you're saying?"

[...that man was surrounded by a fearful void, he did not know how to justify, to account for, to affirm himself; he suffered from the problem of his meanings. He also suffered otherwise, he was in the main a sickly animal: but his problem was not suffering itself, but that there was no answer to the crying question, "Why do I suffer?"]    -Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals

Friedich Nietzsche

 

From page 330 of the book:  You may ask, "Father Revenant, do you realize what you're saying?" ...Suffering is, my friends. I've been suffering most of my adult life. Up here," he pointed to his temple. He faced our half of the nave. "So I know what I'm talking about. Friedrich Nietzsche said that the crying question with us all is, 'why do I suffer?' Well, Friedrich, you suffer because you know the possibility of joy without Christ, of salvation without Christ. It's an option if we could only be better than what we have been. I'm a priest and I'm telling you it's possible."

Revenant continued, "look at Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  Look at Crime & Punishment.  Why suffer?  Why suffer?!  Because suffering is the only cause of consciousness, my friends.  And as the Russian said, when we are going 'through the terrible furnace of doubt,'" and he looked directly, gothically at Owen, "'we are capable of anything.'  I think that’s pretty good.

Heroes of mine: Fyodor Dostoyesky & Marcel Proust

[An additional comment from Proust, if you don't mind--
"...brief though our life may be, it is only while we are suffering that we see certain things which at other times are hidden from us; we are, as it were, posted at a window, badly placed but looking out over an expanse of sea; and only during a storm, when our thoughts are agitated by perpetually changing movements, do they elevate to a level at which we can see if the whole law-governed immensity which normally--when the calm weather of happiness leaves it smooth--lies beneath our line of vision..."]

Page 327 "...brought to mind Andy's telling me about Kingsley versus Newman."

Charles Kingsley

Cardinal John Newman

From page 327 of the book:  They brought to mind Andy McLean's telling me once about Kingsley versus Newman; Andy, even while intoxicated and deep inside the west Village, still couldn't get away from being Irish and being Catholic; even while drunk. The interesting facet to Andy's report was that he had taken the Anglican Kingsley's side against the Cardinal. He said he'd been doing that all his life, unable to leave his faith behind him and move onto better things. He would invariably, without fail, take sides against his faith while refusing to give it up.



The following is excerpted from Controversies: High Level Catholic
Apologetics by Karl Keating. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001:

"The January 1864 issue of Macmillan's Magazine included a review of the 7th and 8th volume of J.A. Froude's History of England. The review was signed only with the initials "C.K."  The identity of the reviewer might have remained unknown to the general public if the writer had not included two sentences that were to ensure his lasting fame.  Were it not for 30 words, Charles Kingsley, professor of history at Cambridge, popular novelist, and anti-Catholic, would be known today only by specialists in Victorian studies.  He had the personal misfortune of penning a charge that was to induce the greatest work of its kind since Augustine's Confessions.  He imprudently wrote: 'Truth, for its own sake, had never been a virtue with the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it
need not, and on the whole ought not to be.'
 
"Kingsley's review in Macmillan's Magazine precipitated a lengthy correspondence: Newman writing first to the publisher; Kingsley answering and identifying himself as the reviewer; Newman telling Kingsley that he was amazed that a man of his reputation should make such a charge against the Catholic clergy; Kingsley replying that he appreciated the tone of Newman's letter, which
'makes me feel to my very deep pleasure that my opinion of the meaning of your words was a mistaken one,' and back-handedly apologizing in a proposed letter to the editor in which he expressed his 'hearty pleasure at finding Newman on the side of Truth, in this, or any other, matter.' So it continued, with Kingsley conspicuously failing to substantiate his charge."

Both men published pamphlets outlining what their
arguments were.  Kingsley wrapped up his pamphlet by
stating:

"I am henceforth in doubt and fear, as much as an honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write.  Yes, I am afraid that I must say it once more--Truth is not honoured among these men [Catholic priests] for its own sake."

Newman put forth: "A man may be annoyed that he cannot work out a mathematical problem,
of which the answer is or is not given to him, without doubting that it admits of an answer, or that a particular answer is the true one."

(That is, Catholics need not abandon their faith on realizing they cannot explain all of it to their opponents' or their own satisfaction.)