Anthony Drunner's Questionnaire

I live outside of Bonner's Ferry, Idaho. It's a quiet downgrade in size from CDA - where I used to pursue the Work - but it's a pleasant one: the water is beautiful, and its position so close to our sister states and to Canada means I get the opportunity to meet all manner of interesting people when I feel a fancy for socialization. We have wildlife reserves and national forests nearby, and it's a favorite thing of mine to venture into the world and simply bask in the joy of the Lord's creation; there is a truth in old forests, in lakes unlike anything you can find in the city. My house itself is "modest", as my social group describes it - two stories with a daylight basement and dock, waterfront property, 3000 square feet and fiber cable making sure I have high speed internet despite how remote the place is. Anything but modest, I would say, but the house suits my purposes, with ample space to support my studies and my meetings.

I am a religious scholar. Not an officially recognized one, of course - the Vatican's cut all ties with me, and I've no love lost for that crowd of covetous hypocrites - but "official recognition" means nothing in the pursuit of truth. All great thinkers have faced opposition in their fields, because all great thinkers have challenged the accepted status quo in the pursuit of Truth. I collect texts from all followers of the Lord, who made covenant with Abraham, and I study them to find the truth in their pages. My studies into even the least known sects of the Faith has, thankfully, earned me a number of sponsors around the world; they will occasionally appear at my door and ask me to lead a seminar on some particular topic for a group they've brought, or will send me a text or tablet to decipher and connect to other significant texts, and in exchange for my entertaining their interests, they keep me well supplied with regular - and very handsome - stipends. I spend what I need in pursuit of my studies, the maintenance of my home, and the enrichment of my body, mind, and spirit, and I dedicate the rest to charitable pursuits. 

I also purchase weapons. The warrior of the Lord is still a warrior, after all.

There is a great and terrible conspiracy that has ruined the world. For hundreds - thousands - of years, figures who walk in the shadow of the Lord and wear lies as their vestment have maintained the pursuit of a blasphemous agenda that they have swaddled in the cloth of false faith. They have poisoned the minds of the Lord's flock with false fears and honeyed hate, and they have done this all swearing that they do it in the name of the Lord.

The lie is the Bible, and the liar is the Church.

Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, Mormonism, and all the others are not exempt - there is no true faith to be found in organized religion, only the callous twist of the Lord's word to the benefit of mortal men. Good priests are weeded from the flock by layers of corruption and perversity, and cardinals twist the Lord's word to bend their innocent followers to their whims. The world is wrapped in lies upon lies, and all serve the sole purpose to deny the common man the true Glory of the Lord's Creation and keep it for the hegemons alone. The heretics must be purged and light cast upon their deceits - the True Scripture must be found, and in its finding His Light shall burn away the veil which has clouded the eyes of the Earth since Man first put his own words to page.

I am my Lord's servant - I know I am unlikely to succeed in this pursuit. I know that my chances of being the man who finds the True Scripture are small, because my enemies are many, their resources great, and their qualms insignificant. I know I will be a martyr as many martyrs before, but I know too that the Lord loves His creation and loves His people, and that my sacrifice - my library - will see another rise to the call when I am gone. I can only pray that in the time I am allotted, I carry the faith well, live true to the heart of its teachings, and open the way if even only a crack for those who will follow.

Lives are not, in my experienced, defined by singular, specific events, but by patterns over time. We are not the cleverest creatures, always; we are imperfect, and in many ways our imperfection is what makes us beautiful, but it is also what makes us slow to realize what we already know. I used to be a priest - not a particularly remarkable one, and not significantly different from any other American catholic. I always thought that the Mormons were a bit odd, but the Lord teaches us not to judge others but to allow Him to render judgement at the gates of His kingdom, and so I never spent much of my thoughts on them.

And then, I started to watch the news.

It's interesting, to see how people who say they're a part of the same thing as you behave. The church's stance on abortion, gay marriage, gender transitions - they'd always bothered me, though I could never quite put a finger on why. It was only as Obama's terms came to an end that I started to understand why. It's terrifying to watch your community become strange and alien to you - I had always preached tolerance and forgiveness, but there was a horrible fire that swept my country and my Church alike in those days. Something uneasy and horrible was beating below the surface of the world; my parishioners would come to church, listen to my sermons with a smile, then go home and hang a confederate flag in the windows, or stalk a gay couple home, or insist that their Islamic neighbors were terrorists. It made me wonder: was this a change, or a revelation? Had they always been like this? And it struck me when I was listening to Pope Francis speak about my gay neighbors, my transgender neighbors, the members of my community who for years had come to me seeking guidance and approval and to be told that God loves them and who, to my shame, I could offer no better advice than that God loves all His children, regardless of their flaws. The Pope was saying that it is not for us to judge the sins of others, and it made me realize that Pope Francis was the first Pope I'd ever heard of who said anything like that at all. It got me thinking about my neighbors, my community, my parishioners, and I realized that everything the Pope was saying was built on lies.

The hatred I saw in my people didn't take root in 2016; it wasn't put there by Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell or any other politician. It had been put there long before that, and I had been one of the people to put it there. It unraveled everything, and suddenly everything made sense - the question of how the Lord, who I know loves all His children for the world he has given us, could teach us to condemn His children for their acts of love and acts of self was, in a moment, answered when I checked the front page of my bible and found the name of the printing house which had published it. 

Hatred has never been a teaching of the Lord - not now, and not ever. The texts were written by human hands, and had been corrupted by human ambition and human prejudice.

I left my church and never looked back.

Brayden Steusse: Brayden is my postman. He comes out my way once every week to deliver my regular mail, and occasionally on a day between his usual visits to deliver a special package from one of my sponsors. For the past few years, he's made sure that my house is at the end of his route because I always invite him in for coffee and he's gotten tired of turning me down. Brayden confides in me - I may not be a priest anymore, but there's something about taking confessions that makes me feel good inside. It's nice to feel that I'm doing a service to someone who does so much for me. Brayden is a friend, but he's also an anchor to remind me that reminds me of why my mission is important.

Sister Edith: Edith is my last real connection to the organized faith. She is a nun who lives and works not far outside Couer d'Alene. Back in the day, we served as each others confessors after a sort - we shared the same unease with what we understood of the Lord and how our faith was not always aligned with the doctrine. She didn't leave when I did - for the past eight years, we've exchanged letters. She always tries to get me to return, and I always try to get her to leave. I don't think either of us will ever succeed, but I am always grateful for the dialogue.

Carmen Drunner: Carmen is my younger sister. She became estranged from our family about the same time as I did when I left the church; she was always a strong willed kid, and when the country started showing its true face... Carmen was one of my inspirations to cut ties with my church. We don't get many opportunities to meet face to face - usually only once a month - but we call often to talk about the world, our family, our experiences. She keeps asking me when I'm going to get a partner now that the oath of priestly celibacy no longer applies, which I always deflect asking how things are going with her girlfriend of 7 years and whether or not she's decided to stop living in sin and get married already. I don't know what I'd do without her.

My childhood was, in all manners, completely ordinary. I come from a moderately well to do family - we've always been an important part of our local church, and it has been tradition for the eldest in any branch of the family to train to join the clergy. My aunt growing up was a nun, and from a very young age, I knew it would be expected of me to be a priest. I attended private school - Saint Valentine's, to be precise - where I had an aunt, a cousin, and a great uncle as tutors. I never experienced much friction with my peers, and was perhaps too excellent in my studies: I learned not to point out quite so many self contradictions in the scripture after one caning too many, by my reckoning. My father is the owner of Drunner Produce and Poultry - the family business and a quite successful agricultural firm - while my mother is a prominent socialite who did the world circuit to encourage missionaries and remind them of the importance of their work as well as the importance of generous donations to the church. I was a happy boy, and I used my upstanding reputation with the family and the community to shield my sister, who was always an unhappy girl.

I always knew I was slated for the priesthood and that romance was not a part of a priest's life. Knowing this, I never really allowed myself much in the way of pursuing it. I had the urges, of course - I was a normal teenage boy - but prayer and reminding myself of the lecture Aunt Christine would give me if she ever found out I was indulging in those thoughts helped to keep them well enough at bay. The only love I ever allowed myself was fraternal - like with Simon. He was a year above me in class, and while I excelled in the classroom he was unsurpassed on the track and field course. He favored the javelin - I used to watch him practice while I studied my verses. I remember finding the subtle arc of muscle and sinew in his body when he threw helped me to appreciate the sublime; the Lord is present in all His children, but watching Simon made it abundantly clear how Man was made in God's image. After school, we would often go to the Dairy Queen together to study, or go to catch a movie at the local theater, or take a walk around the local orchards to discuss our classes. We fell out of touch around the same time I left the priesthood; he'd become an unhappy man in an unhappy marriage with unhappy children, obsessed with his bigotry and in proving his masculinity at every opportunity. It's a bit sad, but by the time we parted ways, I didn't even miss him.