Overview
The Jade Chalice, in fiction, lifts a veil obscuring historic reasons why the Roman Catholic Church must today pay the price of worldwide clergy scandals. The fictional characters endure a Church, in 1938, that refuses to look into itself regardless of finding, even then, shocking revelations of homosexuality, pedophilia, adultery, and fornication. The Jade Chalice underscores the vulnerability of clergy and religious training. It describes a system built on absolute authority over its faithful and its aversion to reform. It questions a widening disparity of Faith with Protestants, Asians, Arabs and Jews over doctrine and avenues for salvation. The newly installed Pope Francis I is gearing up his church to respond to these scandals and ills that plague the Roman Catholic Church today. But these problems are deep-seated in the 2000 year history and administration of the Church. The resolution of these problems may take the convocation of a new Vatican Council and cannot be resolved by clergymen alone. The Jade Chalice is a classic novel delving also into Chinese history and culture. The Jade Chalice portrays a story of Catholicism’s mystery, beauty, power and weaknesses, concluding that no one is immune to personal human passions, especially those men and women who claim to hold in their hands the only hope for spiritual and eternal reward.