Visitation

First-novelist Cushman uses the forum of fiction for an involving, though occasionally far-fetched and not very convincing, attack on the Catholic Church. His protagonist is young priest Gabriel D'Amato, more scholar than cleric, who is just beginning to understand his place in the Church when he embarks on a mission for the Vatican. His task: to investigate and discredit three modern miracles. The first, a weeping statue of the Virgin in the hills near Rome, he dismisses easily, though not before beginning a friendship with Father Dominic Poncarelli, a robust outsider who flaunts Church authority. The second miracle concerns mysterious crop circles in the English countryside, believed by some to be evidence of extraterrestrials; Gabriel's discussions there with weary priest Brian Dunstan lead him to begin to question his service to the Church. By the time Gabriel looks into the third miracle, a series of visions in California, the traditional bonds of priesthood have begun to fall away. The disillusioned cleric defies the Vatican, causing him to flee for his life. As a narrator, Father Gabriel is hyper-intellectualized, and Cushman asks the reader to overlook several plot conveniences for the purpose of making his point: that the Church is an antiquated, inflexible bureaucracy that needs to embrace its more radical members. But it will take a more fully realized character than Father Gabriel, and a more plausible story than his, to persuade yet-unconvinced readers of that. (Feb.)