LEADING OFF

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Rose torches tough Augusta for 65 and 4-shot Masters lead

In his latest novel, &ldquo;The Paraclete,&rdquo; Wilkes-Barre native Dr. Bernard Leo Remakus introduces readers to Father Paul Thielemans, a traveling theologian &mdash; and fan of Belgian beer &mdash; whom detectives eventually want to question.
				What draws their attention, in part, is the way he&rsquo;s been giving away samples of his favorite Belgian beverage, St. Bavo Witbier &mdash; not to be confused with Barq&rsquo;s Root Beer.
				As Father Thielemans travels the country to promote his ideas for revitalizing the Catholic church, he&rsquo;s been handing out six packs to various priests, along with an explanation of how much better the beer will taste when they stir up the sediment at the bottom of the commemorative glasses he also gives out.
				Presumably, they all stir up the sediment. And some of them die within days.
				Could it be poison? Could it be murder? Is Father Thielemans singlehandedly killing off certain priests who have been suspected of pedophilia?
				Remakus calls his novel a psychological thriller, but it&rsquo;s more than that. It&rsquo;s also a vehicle for the author to share ideas about building up the church.
				As the first chapter draws to a close, protagonist Father Thielemans and an elderly housekeeper who calls herself &ldquo;Mother&rdquo; Murray enjoy watching the vintage Bing Crosby movies &ldquo;Going My Way&rdquo; and &ldquo;Bells of St. Mary&rsquo;s,&rdquo; in which the late singer portrayed a priest.
				&ldquo;The nostalgia is extraordinary,&rdquo; Remakus said, noting he has enjoyed those films as well. &ldquo;Those movies were watched by people of all denominations. They were believable. They told a story. And to me, that&rsquo;s the Catholic church Paul Thielemans is trying to bring back. Paul Thielemans is trying to bring back good, old-time religion.&rdquo;
				But Father Thielemans&rsquo; ideas &mdash; for Catholics to return to Latin Masses, maybe one weekend out of the month, and to more frequently abstain from meat, the way they did before Vatican II &mdash; fall flat when he has a candid discussion with other priests on a cruise ship bound for Hawaii.
				One new friend tells him the issues that might attract people to or alienate them from the Catholic church aren&rsquo;t &ldquo;no-meat-on-Friday type things.&rdquo;
				&rdquo;We&rsquo;re talking about divorced Catholics, married clergy, contraception,&rdquo; he says.
				Father Thielemans, the character, sees his new friend&rsquo;s point, and as the story progresses, comes to agree. Remakus, the author, already does.
				&ldquo;People who are divorced are now treated as second class citizens, but 50 percent of marriages end in divorce,&rdquo; Remakus said in a telephone interview, explaining he believes the church should take a more liberal attitude toward divorce and remarriage. &ldquo;Nobody said it should be this way, but it&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s been happening. We&rsquo;ve achieved a societal norm.&rdquo;
				As for contraception, Remakus thinks some forms of birth control should be approved &mdash; if they prevent conception from taking place as opposed to ending a pregnancy that has already begun.
				And as for clergy, Remakus believes their lives would be happier and healthier &mdash; and there would be a larger pool of interested candidates &mdash; if they were allowed to marry rather than required to be celibate. He&rsquo;s felt that way since he was an altar boy at what is now Our Lady of Hope parish in Wilkes-Barre.
				&ldquo;I would incense the whole crowd and hand the bishop things,&rdquo; he said, remembering special occasions when he served at the altar. He also recalls how elderly, visiting priests sometimes attended services in their wheelchairs, and he remembers feeling bad for them, even as a young altar boy, because they didn&rsquo;t have children.
				&ldquo;I came from a loving family and thought, that&rsquo;s what you&rsquo;d be giving up. These men could have had grandchildren.&rdquo;
				Remakus, who practices internal medicine in Susquehanna County, noted with a chuckle that he wrote the ending of his self-published book before he wrote &ldquo;the 467 pages in front of it.&rdquo;
				He also created characters whose lives interconnect, from a nun who falls in love with Father Thielemans to an FBI investigator whose husband was sexually abused as a youth and whose father was ordained as an Episcopal priest before becoming a Catholic priest.
				He hopes people enjoy reading this latest story, which is available through amazon.com, as much as he enjoyed writing it.
				&ldquo;I am passionate about writing,&rdquo; he said.
				In addition to &ldquo;The Paraclete&rdquo; &mdash; the title refers to an advocate or helper &mdash; Remakus has published the novels &ldquo;Keystone,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Lame Duck,&rdquo; &ldquo;Mia&rdquo; and &ldquo;Cassidy&rsquo;s Solution&rdquo; as well as three works of non-fiction, &ldquo;The Malpractice Epidemic,&rdquo; &ldquo;Medicine from the Heart&rdquo; and &ldquo;Medicine between the Lines&rdquo; and one screenplay, &ldquo;Mia.&rdquo;
				He has also published more than 200 articles in the medical literature. and from 1991 to 2002, he was the featured columnist and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Internal Medicine World Report.
				The author and his wife, Charlotte, have been married for 46 years. Their three children, Chris, Ali, and Matt, are all physicians. Their son-in-law, Mark, is also a physician, and their daughter-in-law, Sanda, is a Ph.D. in medical microbiology. Their grandchildren are Jake, Betsy, Anabelle, and Charlie.

Doctor/writer’s publishes ‘The Paraclete’