Idea: In Absentia Deus

There is some sort of concrete proof that God exists. Or, rather, that He did exist. It appears that He's quite gone now but this isn't common knowledge. No, this is knowledge known only by the Church, and this is at a time when there is no need to say anything but "the Church" if you want others to understand of whom you speak.

Perhaps this might work best during the days of Luther and after, when the Church is beginning to splinter. Not only do they have to struggle with the knowledge that the Lord has left this world but also with the fact that the organization of His appointed shepherds is threatening to crumble and collapse like a badly-built cathedral. There is nothing to suggest that the Devil and his ilk have been done away with, either, so the Holy Father and the rest who know are trying to prepare for the possibility of a redoubled initiative from Hell without really knowing, for sure, how to do so. Oh yes, they can double and triple their efforts to keep the Church strong and the people in faith and purity, but they don't know if entirely new tactics are going to be called for in order to combat entirely entirely new tactics from Below, deployed in consideration of the fact that there is no longer risk of interference from God.

I'd like for the Church to be presented as, if not the Good Guys, then at least possessing a significant and respectable number of Good Guys. Not everyone was corrupt. Not everyone was selfish or power-hungry, and if they and their less scrupulous colleagues agree that the secret of the Lord's Absence must remain a secret then they may still have different reasons for coming to the same conclusion. This is no time, no time at all, for the chaos in the ranks that would accompany such a revelation to the world. Even in a world of secret-keeping there's no reason for the Church to be built upon a foundation of villainy.

• Are there still angels? What of the Saved, who were in Heaven? Without directions from the Godhead is there now some disunity in the hosts of Heaven?
• Perhaps some of those who suffer near-death experiences are coming back with reports of a city with streets paved with gold but without a single sign of habitation. If there are still angels, then where are they? And how is the Church dealing with these reports that are threatening to blow the secret wide open? 
• The Morningstar is making preparations. Some of those that have returned from death's door were not bound for Heaven, and they have come back with new lives- sometimes new faces and identities to accompany this second chance at life- and peculiar laundry lists of what seem to be the most pointless tasks imaginable.