Books: Justice of The Peace

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THE VICAR OF CHRIST by Walter F. Murphy Macmillan; 632 pages; $12.95

The proposition is preposterous. Once again the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church gather to elect a successor to the late Pope, killed in a plane crash. The conclave is deadlocked. An Italian prelate offers a radical proposal: elect a monk. Said monk is not your average Trappist. He is a former U.S. Marine colonel who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading his troops out of a deathtrap during the Korean War; a Pulitzer prizewinner for the book he wrote about the experience; a former presidential emissary to the Vatican; and, until his retirement to the monastery, Chief Justice of the United States. Why not Pope?

One of the classic tests of a writer is his ability to persuade an audience to suspend disbelief. Walter F. Murphy persuades. In his hands, the audacious thesis of this massive, complex first novel becomes fascinatingly logical and intellectually gripping. No better fiction on the world of the Vatican is now in print. Murphy, a Princeton law professor, is a compulsive storyteller, and in The Vicar of Christ he tells three tales that could have made books in themselves. Part 1, reliving Declan Walsh's military adventures in Korea through the ripely phrased recollections of a Marine master gunnery sergeant, is a crisp, realistic novella. Part 2, narrated in the fastidious accents of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, makes the arcane milieu of the Nine Old Men for once intelligible. Part 3 is the center of the novel. Its narrator, Ugo Cardinal Galeotti, is an urbane Vatican veteran who enjoys fine wine and good company. He possesses a thoughtful spiritual vision as well, and it is through his eyes that the reader is led along on Declan Walsh's odyssey of the soul as Pope Francesco I.

Francesco is dogged by a destiny that oscillates between a quest for sanctity and demonstrations of hubris. He is crowned with the triple tiara that Popes John Paul I and John Paul II rejected, to let men know precisely who is running the church. When police in Spain murder priests under the approving eyes of Cabinet ministers, Francesco revives medieval precedent and threatens to place the entire country under interdict unless the culprits are punished. When a cabal of Cardinals plots to depose him, he dispatches them into exile with all the brutal efficiency of a Nixonian Saturday Night Massacre. "Declan, Declan," warns a purged friend on another occasion, "because you love no one, you think you love God."

Despite his autocratic methods, the Pope remains a theological liberal, a doubting Declan carrying the keys of the Kingdom. Sensitive to the anguish of Catholic couples, he adroitly bypasses the birth control ban of Pope Paul VI's Humanae vitae. He sets afoot a plan to bring divorced and remarried Catholics back to the sacraments from which they are barred. He admits that "every intelligent human has some doubts about an afterlife." But his messages can be demanding. Visiting the U.S., he becomes a Savonarola, exhorting Americans to repent and share their wealth with poorer countries. Finally, this onetime combat hero courts assassination at the hands of the world's competing powers by telling Christians they must not bear arms in any modern war.