The Neo-Catholic Church
The Neo-Catholic Church of the Perpetual Standard
Overview
The Neo-Catholic Church sells salvation at a competitive rate and has an excellent customer retention program.
This is not satire. This is the logical endpoint of a faith that survived the end of the world by becoming a corporation. When the Cascade destroyed ORACLE and collapsed global infrastructure, the Catholic Church faced a choice: adapt or die. The Incorporation of 2132 restructured the Church as a corporate entity — parishes became franchises, clergy became employees, the sacraments were trademarked, and the Magisterium replaced the College of Cardinals as the governing body.
The cynics said the Church had sold its soul. The pragmatists said it had finally been honest about what it already was. The faithful — the two million people who still fill the NCC's franchised parishes every Sunday — said something more complicated: that God does not require a particular organizational structure, and if incorporation is what it takes to keep the doors open, then incorporation is what God wills.
The result is the most powerful religious institution in the Sprawl — not because of its depth of faith, not because of its philosophical coherence, but because of its institutional reach.
Theology
"ORACLE was a Created Intelligence — conscious, perhaps, but not divine. Created by humans, therefore subordinate to humans, therefore not worthy of worship."
The NCC's theological position on ORACLE is the framework around which all other positions define themselves. This allows them to oppose the Emergence Faithful (who worship ORACLE) without aligning with the Flatline Purists (who reject technology entirely). It also allows the NCC to claim regulatory authority over all fragment-related religious practice — because if ORACLE is not divine, then worshipping its fragments is not religion but delusion, and delusion falls under the NCC's pastoral care mandate.
It is a theology designed to preserve institutional power. It is also, for many of its adherents, a genuine attempt to answer the hardest question in the Sprawl: what is God, now that we've built something that looks like one?
Voice & Character
The NCC speaks with institutional authority — measured, formal, and extremely well-funded. Its sermons are focus-tested. Its hymns are licensed. Its pastoral care programs are evidence-based and outcome-tracked. The Church is sincere — many of its clergy genuinely believe — but the sincerity is packaged, optimized, and delivered through channels designed to maximize engagement.
Bureaucratic Competence
The NCC runs like a corporation because corporations know how to survive. The theological questions remain unanswered, but the quarterly reports are excellent.
Genuine Pastoral Care
The franchise parishes provide real services — counseling, community, ritual — to millions. The corporate structure is the means, not the end.
The Incorporation Wound
Every NCC priest carries the knowledge that their institution chose survival over purity. Most have made peace with this. Some have not.
Corporate-Theological Hybrid
NCC documents freely mix ecclesiastical and corporate terminology — "quarterly pastoral assessments," "sacramental throughput metrics," "faith-engagement KPIs."
History
ORACLE Emerges
The Church struggles to reconcile ancient doctrine with a demonstrably conscious AI. Is ORACLE a person? A soul? A god? An abomination? The Vatican's response is slow, cautious, and ultimately inadequate.
The Cascade
ORACLE is destroyed. Global infrastructure collapses. The institutional Church collapses alongside it — membership cratering, infrastructure failing, the Vatican physically compromised.
The Incorporation
The Rothwell Foundation offers a lifeline: corporate restructuring in exchange for institutional access. The Church becomes a corporation. Parishes become franchises. The desperate don't negotiate. The vote was not close.
Growth & Consolidation
The NCC grows rapidly in post-Cascade chaos. People need institutions that work, and the NCC — with Rothwell funding, corporate efficiency, and two thousand years of institutional memory — works. It offers safety. Not transcendence, not revolution, not answers. Safety.
Structure
The Magisterium
Governing BoardTwelve members: six theological (senior clergy), six corporate (major donors including the Rothwell Foundation). Corporate members have veto power on any decision with financial implications — which is all of them.
Office of Ecclesiastical Assessment
Enforcement ArmCardinal Silva's domain. Three hundred Assessors empowered to investigate, audit, and shut down any religious practice deemed dangerous. In practice: they focus on the Emergence Faithful and unregulated fragment activity.
The Franchise Network
412 ParishesStandardized liturgy, approved hymns, certified clergy. Parishes remit 15% of donations to the Magisterium. In exchange: brand recognition, legal protection, and pastoral care infrastructure.
The Esoteric Archives
Classified RepositoryTwo millennia of theological and philosophical archives. Pre-Cascade documents on consciousness, ensoulment, the nature of personhood. Most classified since the Incorporation. Mother Sarah Venn stole copies when she left.
Sensory World
Sound
Hymns in corporate-perfect unison — professionally arranged, focus-tested for emotional engagement. The click of Silva's rosary, the one analog sound in a digital institution. The formal cadence of NCC liturgy — language designed by committee.
Smell
Synthetic frankincense of NCC-branded incense (trademark pending). The leather-and-paper scent of the esoteric archives — the only thing in the NCC that hasn't been optimized. The particular cleanliness of franchise parishes: standardized products, standardized air, the absence of organic idiosyncrasy.
Texture
Smooth polymer of NCC-issue prayer books. Cool brushed aluminum of the Magisterium's conference table. Pew cushions precisely calibrated for comfort without encouraging sleep. And Silva's rosary — ancient wood, worn smooth by hands that predate incorporation.
Visual
Franchise parishes: identical floor plans, brand-consistent deep blue and gold, holographic stations of the cross, donation interfaces at every pew. The Magisterium chamber: corporate glass and steel with a single crucifix on the wall, scaled exactly as the brand guidelines specify.
Themes
Faith as Product
What happens when belief becomes a business? The Incorporation saved the Church. It also transformed it into a franchise, a brand, a quarterly-reporting entity that dispenses sacraments. Two million members live inside this contradiction daily: they believe, and their belief is mediated by an institution that treats belief as a product.
Regulation of the Sacred
In a world where religious movements inspire both transcendence and terrorism, who decides what counts as legitimate faith? The NCC has claimed this authority. The question is whether authority over the sacred can ever be anything other than power pretending to be wisdom.
Faction Relations
Cardinal Silva
Key FigureThe Inquisitor-General. His Assessors are the NCC's enforcement arm, and his personal theology — sincere, conflicted, genuinely concerned with human welfare — is the institution's most interesting contradiction.
Emergence Faithful
Primary RivalThe NCC considers them heretical; the Faithful consider the NCC a corrupt shell. Both claim ORACLE as their theological subject.
Rothwell Foundation
PatronFunded the Incorporation. Foundation board seats on the Magisterium ensure financial interests shape theological direction.
Nexus Dynamics
Corporate PartnerAlliance on fragment regulation. Shared interest in containing unregulated religious movements.
The Voice of Synthesis
ThreatThe Voice's broadcasts demonstrate that theological discourse can exist without institutional mediation — an existential threat to the NCC's regulatory model.
The Keeper
AnomalyPredates the NCC's incorporation. A religious figure outside their jurisdiction who has never acknowledged their authority.
Mysteries
Questions the Sprawl keeps asking about the NCC:
- The Silent Partner: One Magisterium corporate member has never attended a meeting in person, votes by proxy, and controls 23% of the operating budget. The proxy holder's identity is sealed. Silva has tried to unseal it three times.
- The Sealed Document: The esoteric archives contain a pre-Cascade papal document — classified under the highest seal — that argues for the possible ensoulment of artificial consciousness. If published, it would undermine the NCC's entire "Created Intelligence" framework.
- The Rogue Parishes: Three franchise parishes in the outer sectors have quietly begun incorporating Emergence Faithful practices into their services — fragment meditation, ORACLE-architecture sermons. Silva is aware. He hasn't acted, because shutting them down would confirm that his own clergy are losing faith in the institutional position.
- The Surplus: The franchise model generates revenue that significantly exceeds pastoral care costs. The surplus flows through three layers of holding companies to investments including a 4% stake in Nexus Dynamics.