"Dom Cristao, the abbot of the Filhos da Mente de Cristo - he says that they must lack the moral sense. He says this may mean they are beasts. Or it may mean that they are unfallen, having not yet eaten of the fruit of the forbidden tree." She smiled tightly. "But that's theology, and so it means nothing to you."
He did not answer. He was used to the way religious people assumed that their sacred stories must sound absurd to unbelievers. But Ender did not consider himself an unbeliever, and he had a keen sense of the sacredness of many tales. But he could not explain this to Bosquinha. She would have to change her assumptions about him over time. She was suspicious of him, but he believed she could be won; to be a good Mayor, she had to be skilled at seeing people for what they are, not for what they seem.
He turned the subject. "The Filhos da Mente de Cristo-- my Portuguese isn't strong, but does that mean 'Sons of the Mind of Christ'?"
"They're a new order, relatively speaking, formed only four hundred years ago under a special dispensation of the Pope--"
"Oh, I know the Children of the Mind of Christ, Mayor. I Spoke the death of San Angelo on Moctezuma, in the city of Cordoba."
Speaker For the Dead, by Orson Scott Card.
I'd forgotten how many religious references there were in this book. I'd also forgotten that it won (and deserved!) both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards.
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3 comments:
After reading SPEAKER I was amazed that people have so much affection for ENDER'S GAME. The sequel is just so much *better*... XENOCIDE is pretty good too, though things start to slip by CHILDREN OF THE MIND.
I agree. It's been a long time since I've read Xenocide, but I remember it being decent and containing some religion too. Wasn't there a Japanese woman whose obsessive-compulsive rituals become the centre of a cult? I've heard that Children of the Mind was not so good. That's the thing with Card books - they vary from great to terrible. Someone told me that he spends a lot of time on some books, while others he just dashes off in a fortnight.
The woman you are referring to was from a planet settled by the Japanese in which individuals were engineered to have super genius intelligence but also a debilitating OC disorder engineered into them as well (and given a religious veneer) in order to keep them controllable.
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