1635 The Papal Stakes (65 page)

“Meir, they preach true religious tolerance and they practice what they preach. And when Jews in their territories were persecuted, they took steps—strong, even violent steps—to put a stop to the mistreatment and punish the offenders. And not so they could lean towards us for loans, as have the kings of Europe since we came to live among them. These up-timers protected our people because they believe it is the right thing to do, that it is their duty.”

“Ah, so you have been dwelling among angels, then.”

“Meir, don’t be obstinate, not about this, and not now. Of course the up-timers are not angels; many are spoiled and impractical, and they are as susceptible to pettiness, jealousy, envy, and stupidity as all the other children of men. But whatever else we may wonder about their up-time world, I have seen this one truth with my own eyes: almost all of them despise bigots, and are incensed by the atrocities committed by them.”

Meir shrugged, trying to hide his surprise; he had never seen Ezekiel this passionate about anything in his life. “And so?”

“And so virtue and prudence dictate the same course for us. In helping the Stones, we help those who will not fail to insist upon advancing the cause of justice in this world. And so, in helping them, we help ourselves.”

Meir shrugged again, then tossed the account information down upon the table. “So what do you need?”

Ezekiel did not smile; he simply passed another piece of paper to Meir. Who almost gagged.

Miro was not done. “Obviously, I can’t pick it up here in Palma, so I’ll need you to contract a nondescript
llaut
with a reasonable cargo capacity. The master and crew will have to be discreet and available for at least two weeks. They are are to maintain the activities and appearance of fishermen; however they will ship these supplies out to us every other day, starting four days from now.”

Meir nodded. “I know a
xueta
, fully ‘reconciled’ to the Church, who will be perfect for the job. Above suspicion and very clever, but not much of a fisherman: he’ll be better at this. Where must he take the shipments?”

“You are familiar with Cala Beltran, just south of Cala Pi?”

“You mean, at the southern tip of the island—and right under the nose of the watchtower there?”

“Yes, the watchtower the Spanish still haven’t finished building, from what I understand.”

“You’re pretty well informed.”

“I try to be. With the tower still under construction, it does not have a full complement of guards and coast-watchers. But, more importantly, with all the
llaut
s going in and out of Cala Pi at dusk and dawn, who’ll notice one more loitering near Cala Beltran?”

“Let me guess. My
llaut
will go up Cala Beltran, deposits the goods in one of the small, blind coves and then leave once your ship is in sight.”

“Correct. Then my ship goes in to pick up the shipment before anyone can stumble across it.”

“I forgot how many times you must have done this before.”

“You have no idea, old friend. A few final details: Asher should be expecting to get messages from the Stones, but we must presume that he will be watched by the Spanish—both at the Castell and in his own home. Change his housekeeper now; make it someone who has helped us in the past, someone discreet and with whom we have routine, mundane contact.”

“Obviously. And Asher will obviously immediately understand that he will have to bear our messages back to the Stones. Which he won’t like.”

“No, he won’t, but he’ll do it; he has to have something to gripe about, after all. But without his cooperation, we won’t have any way to coordinate with Frank and Giovanna.”

“And the communication between the two of us runs through the
llaut
?”

“Yes, they will carry my messages, as well as the personnel I will send to wait here with you.”

Meir blinked. “Personnel? You mean military personnel who might attack Bellver?”

Ezekiel shrugged. “Anything is possible at this point.”

“I suppose anything is, since you’re obviously still trying to pull together the final details of your final plan.” Seeing the look on Miro’s face, he scowled. “Wait: do you even
have
a plan at this point?”

Ezekiel smiled faintly. “I have some basic ideas; nothing so firm as a
plan,
just yet. But trust me; we shall reclaim the Stones from their Spanish prison.”

“You mean, by main force?”

“Well, yes, if it comes to it. What did you think?”

“I thought you were still sane. I presumed you would find a way to sneak them out, with maybe a rough moment or two along the way. But rescuing them by assaulting Bellver?” Meir stared at his friend. “Have you forgotten, Ezekiel? It’s on top of a hill. It is a fortification with towers and a separate lazarette, surrounded by outlying battlements. The terrain makes it almost inaccessible, except for the cart paths up to the place.”

“Yes, Meir; I remember all that. I know we won’t rescue them simply by battering our way in.”

“Well, what do you expect to do, Ezekiel Miro? Ask angels to pluck them out for you?”

Ezekiel started, stared at Meir and then laughed. “Yes. Something just like that.”

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Cardinal Antonio Barberini dipped his pen into the waiting ink as the other attendees in the Garden Room settled into their customary seats. Vitelleschi stood and raised his hands in something that looked like both a call for silence, and a benediction. “Today we resume our deliberations with the issue that Cardinal Wadding introduced last time: does the up-time ecumenical council known as Vatican II reflect God’s intents across all eternity? Or was it specifically, and only, infallibly valid in relation to the up-time world?” He turned to Cardinal Mazzare. “If you would be so good as to begin our discussions, Your Eminence.”

Mazzare folded his hands in front of him and seemed to be collecting his thoughts. As he did, Barberini noted that the up-timer’s posture was more studied, more implicitly cautious than usual. Antonio put his nose back into his note taking, but reflected that today’s session might prove very interesting, indeed.

Mazzare began. “Today’s topic troubles me more than any other, simply because the passage that Cardinal Wadding cited at the close of the last session seems implicitly contradictory. How can infallibility be transitory? Is the truth not the truth? Is the will of God not the will of God? We all agree that there is but one God and one Truth and they are the same. But then how is it that some of these timeless verities are ‘transitory’?”

Mazzare spread his hands. “I would offer the following answer, which is not entirely unlike the one Cardinal Wadding seems ready to propose: in short, although God and his truth are constant and unchanging, humankind is not. Vatican II was convened to make the Church more accessible. God loves his children, and as they grow, he wishes to communicate with them in a manner suitable to their new maturity. The delegates of Vatican II understood this and merely included a reminder to future popes and councils that, as the ages accumulate and humanity grows in grace and wisdom, the same process will probably need to be undertaken again. Our Holy Father is truly our Holy Parent, who shows his love for us by adjusting his lessons, his language, and his challenges to our level of maturity and readiness. He does not give us more than we can handle, nor does he keep us frozen as infants: he expresses his thought and love to us as befit our needs, just as we aspire to a greater understanding of Him. Neither side of the human relationship with God is static; it is perpetually a dynamic equilibrium.”

Vitelleschi’s right eyebrow rose slightly. “Cardinal Mazzare, you have not yet spoken to the matter of papal authority, of how the doctrines and dogmas of up-time popes should be received in this world.”

Mazzare shrugged. “I do not speak to it because the answer seems obvious; if they were popes, they were infallible in matters of faith and morals. And they
were
popes. On the other hand, they are dead popes. Their authority does not impinge upon the popes of this time any more than the popes who have died here in this world.”

Barberini looked up for a moment, surprised by the falling tone at the end of Mazzare’s statement. Clearly, this was all he intended to say on the matter. Which was surprising, because the final declaration sounded more like an evasion dressed up as an assertion, rather than a solid argument. Barberini was not surprised that Wadding was on his feet a moment later.

Vitelleschi glanced at Wadding, then back to Mazzare. “Cardinal Wadding seems eager to question you on this statement, Cardinal Mazzare.”

Mazzare smiled. “I rather expected he might. I am happy to share the floor with my colleague.”

Wadding wasted no time probing at the exegetical evasions that Barberini himself had detected. “Your Eminence, you say that the popes in your world are analogous to the prior ones in our own world, correct?”

“Insofar as their infallibility is concerned, yes.”

“But how can this be?”

“How can this not be, if they are all popes?”

“Let us leave aside the issue of infallibility for just a moment. Let us instead remain focused on the issue of whether the popes of your world are so truly analogous to the past popes of our world. I question the accuracy of this analogy for the most obvious of all possible reasons: my world’s long chain of prior pontiffs have exercised their Extraordinary Sacred Magisterium to establish dogmas and doctrines that are now binding upon the present pope, Urban VIII. Do you agree?”

“Of course.”

“By which you implicitly agree that no present pope has the power to set aside that which was infallibly decreed by a prior pope?”

Mazzare cleared his throat. “Depending upon what you mean by the word
prior
, yes, I provisionally agree with that.”

Barberini almost set down his paper to listen; he had never heard Larry Mazzare equivocate before.

Wadding smelled blood. “Unless there are additional meanings of which I am unaware, ‘prior’ means to come before, to precede in time. And that is the crux of the difference we must consider: the pontiffs who have gone before us in our world—the very same as those who went before Urban VIII in your up-time world—are ‘prior’ popes. But those who came after Urban VIII in your world are
not
prior to the papacy of Urban VIII in
this
world.”

Mazzare smiled. “Yet we are even now discussing the infallible doctrines and dogma decreed by up-time pontiffs, which were first presented to His Holiness Urban VIII two years ago. Their presence in the canonical records of the Church thus precede these discussions and, as you have conceded, their perfection derives from the same Sacred Magisterium that is immanent in the current and prior popes.”

“Yes—and as also manifested in the up-time popes who came after Urban VIII, who are
later
popes,” corrected Wadding calmly.

“Yet here are their dogmas and directives, now; their existence precedes this discussion.”

Even to Barberini, Mazzare’s argument seemed somewhat ingenuous—and thus, desperate.

Wadding was pointing at Urban, “So you would have this pope constrained by the decrees of men who lived long after he died, and who you assert will now never be born, since the history of this world has been changed by your arrival in it?”

Mazzare spread his hands. “At no point did I say that this issue would be free of paradoxes. So allow me propose an escape from this one: God intends all things, yes?”

Wadding’s voice and face were wary. “Of course.”

“So it was known to God that Grantville would come back in time?”

“He is all powerful and all knowing, so this must be true.”

“Then, if Holy Writ is divinely inspired, either it should furnish us with explicit guidance for how the Church should respond to such a paradoxical challenge, or it already contains an implicit answer for us. I assert the latter: no explicit guidance is needed because infallibility transcends all other considerations, including those of time and sequence.”

Wadding smiled. “Cardinal Mazzare, do you really expect Holy Writ to include warnings about multiple realities and Churches? Should we really be surprised at the lack of specific injunctions to ‘hold only unto thine own pope?’” He turned to face Vitelleschi. “Father-General, I agree that Holy Writ is not deficient, but not because of the insuperable nature of papal infallibility. Rather, we may look to its elegant reliance upon the common context of the word ‘prior’ to understand the relationship between the infallible utterances of this world, and Cardinal Mazzare’s. Although we lack detailed documentation in this place—”

God be praised
, thought Barberini with an irreverent smile.

“—I find that both down- and up-time constraints upon papal infallibility invariably stipulate that a prior pope’s
ex cathedra
statements and doctrinal decrees may not be overturned, contravened, or ignored by later popes. Consequently, I do not see a paradox at all as long as we accept that ‘prior’ is not a term subject to recontextualization: it means ‘to occur before.’ Nothing more, nothing less.

“Cardinal Mazzare suggests, on the other hand, that we must eschew such a common-sense definition of the word and instead dive into a maelstrom of temporal paradoxes from which we cannot ever hope to emerge. He also proposes to resolve supposed ‘contradictions’ in the footnote in
Gaudium et Spes
which asserts that some of its own infallible elements ‘have a permanent value; others, only a transitory one.’” Wadding smiled. “This statement neither contains nor engenders any contradictions. It is merely a reminder that the Truth that is God cannot be beheld by His children all at once. Indeed, as the Creator told Moses, no man may behold the face of God and live. Therefore, since we cannot survive exposure to the entirety of His Truth at once, we must have it relayed to us in successive parts, each new epiphany being withheld until our souls have grown enough to be ready for it.

“Cardinal Mazzare provided us with a most instructive analogy for this process: he likened it to the way in which children change. And what does the note to
Gaudium et Spes
say, really, other than this: that the basic rules we learn as spiritual infants are not tossed aside, but enriched and expanded as we grow. A five-year-old child might have a sense of right and wrong, and even justice. But would any one of us maintain that his understanding then will be the equal of that which he possesses when he is fifteen, or thirty-five, presuming he grows in Christ as he grows in his body?”