Side Chapels And Poul Anderson

I mentioned here and here that, when I meditate in a side chapel (in fact the Parr Chapel) of Kendal Parish Church, I sit beside the tomb (see image) of the grandfather of the sixth wife of Henry VIII. She was Catherine Parr. In Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time, time travelers fly above England during the Queenship of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn.

When I meditate in a side chapel of the Jesuit Catholic Church of St Wilfrid in Preston, I sit before a statue of St Francis Xavier, "the Apostle to the East," who converted many Indians and Japanese and died before he would have entered China. Poul Anderson's extra-terrestrial character Axor has converted to Jerusalem Catholicism, has been ordained in the (fictional and ironic) Galilean Order, has taken the name "Francis Xavier" and travels through the known galaxy not in order to convert other aliens directly but in order to find evidence for a non-human Incarnation in the belief that this would vindicate Christianity. Historical Jesuits and fictional Galileans include scientists. (There is a Jesuit biologist in James Blish's A Case Of Conscience.)

In the Hindu Temple in Preston, I sit beneath images of gods including Krishna who is revered by Athelstane King in SM Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers. I also respect the Krishna of the Bhagavad Gita as the teacher of karma yoga, the way of non-attached action. Thus, even day trips to Kendal or Preston generate subject matter for blogging.

Confession

Operation Luna.

Ginny's brother is put through a "'...psychoscopy...,'" (26, p. 239) which must be the goetic equivalent of a hypnoprobe or a kyradex. (Scroll down.)

Steve tells his brother-in-law that the government investigators:

"'...keep confessions under seal same as priests or doctors.'" (29, p. 259)

Once when I sat to meditate in St. Wilfrid's Church, Preston (see image), a man approached and asked if I knew whether anyone was hearing confessions. I had to say no. I was there to practice a different religion. (The public are invited to enter to pray or mediate.) A woman came in and practiced yet another, walking around kissing the statues of saints. Sometimes, if you sit or kneel in a church, someone watches you, then follows you out and asks you for money.

Ian Hislop said on TV that journalists tried to pay his vicar to learn whether he had said anything interesting in confession! Agatha Christie's Poirot cannot receive absolution from a priest because the priest would insist on Poirot first confessing murder to the police and Poirot, for his own purposes, needs to disguise the murder as suicide so he directly asks God to forgive him.

Of Poul Anderson's Technic History characters:

Nicholas van Rijn and Admiral Cajal are Catholics;
I deduce that Eric Wace is also Catholic (see here);
Philippe Rochefort and Francis Xavier Axor are Jerusalem Catholics;
Dominic Flandry's fiancee, Kossara Vymezal, is an Orthochristian, later canonized.

These six characters would confess sins to a priest.

We also see Catholicism and several other religions survive into SM Stirling's Emberverse.