THE HOMECOMING of Jean Télémond, SJ, was a drab little affair that belied the warmth of his superior’s welcome.
The headquarters of the Society, at No 5 Borgo Santo Spirito, was a large grey building, bleak as a barracks, that nestled under the shadow of St Peter’s Dome. Its furnishings were sparse, functional, and without discernible beauty. The only man to greet him was the brother porter, a grey and crusty veteran who had seen so many members come and go that one more made no matter.
The whole aspect of the place was cheerless and temporary, a shelter for men whose training was to divest themselves of comfort and human attachment and make themselves soldiers of Christ. Even the religious emblems were ugly and mass-produced, reminders only of the interior life which no symbol could properly convey.
After they had prayed together, the Father General led him to his room, a small, whitewashed box, furnished with a bed, a priedieu, a crucifix, a desk, and a set of bookshelves. Its dusty windows looked out on a courtyard, chill and deserted even under the summer sun. Jean Télémond had lived more harshly than most and in less friendly places, but this first look at the Mother House plunged him into a deep depression of spirit. He felt solitary and naked and strangely afraid. The Father General gave him the timetable of the House, promised to introduce him to his colleagues at supper-time, and then left him to his own devices.
It took him only a few moments to unpack his meagre personal belongings, and then he set about the task of laying out the mass of notes, manuscripts, and bulky folders which represented his lifework. Now, when the time had come to make the tally of it and present it to the world, it seemed small and insignificant.
For twenty years he had worked as a palaeontologist, in China, in Africa, in America, and the Far Indies, plotting the geography of change, the history of life recorded in the crust of the earth. The best scientific minds had been his colleagues and co-workers. He had survived war and revolution and disease and loneliness. He had endured the perilous dichotomy between his function as a scientist and his life as a religious priest. To what end?
For years the conviction had been growing in him that the only intelligible purpose of so much effort and sacrifice was to display the vast concordance of creation, the ultimate convergence of the spiritual and physical which would mark the eternal completion of an eternal creative Impulse. Many times he had pondered the significance of the old proverb, ‘God writes straight with crooked lines’, and he was convinced to the marrow of his bone that the final vector of all the diverse forces of creation was an arrow pointing straight to a personal divinity.
Many another before him had attempted this justification of God to men. Their achievements and their failures were the milestones of human thought – Plato, Saint Augustine, Albertus Magnus, Thomas of Aquin…Each had used the knowledge of his own time to build a theology or a philosophy or a cosmology…Each had added another stage to the journey of unaided reason; each had elevated man thus much above the jungle that spawned him.
For Télémond the project presented itself in another form; to trace, from the text of the living earth, the journey from unlife to life, from life to consciousness, from consciousness to the final unity of Creation with its Creator.
The study of the past, he believed, was the key to the pattern of the future. The justification of the past and of the present lay in the tomorrow that would thrust out of them. He could not believe in a wasteful Creator or in a diffuse, accidental, purposeless Creation. At the root of all his thought and, he believed, at the root of every human aspiration was an instinctive desire for a unity and a harmony in the cosmos. Once men abandoned their hope for it, they condemned themselves to suicide or madness.
That the harmony did exist, he was convinced beyond doubt. That it could be demonstrated he believed also – though in another mode of credence. The pattern was laid but it was not yet complete. He believed he had grasped the main lines of it; but his problem was to explain them in terms intelligible and acceptable. So vast an exposure needed new words, new levels of thought, new analogies and a new boldness in speculation.
For too long Western thought had been disinclined towards a unified knowledge of the world. Even in the Church the spiral thinking of the Eastern fathers, the traditional Christian gnosis, had been overshadowed by the nominalist and rationalist tradition of Western theologians. Now, if ever, the hope of the world’s survival seemed to rest on a leap out of mere logic into a recognition of new and bolder modes of communication.
Yet the terror of this first moment in Rome was that under the first impact of this noisy, brawling city, where past and present rubbed elbows with each other at every step, his conviction seemed to be weakening. Rome was so sure of itself, so sophisticated, so sceptical, so certain that everything that had happened or could happen had been weighed and judged beyond dispute – that his own voice must sound small and meaningless.
A long time ago, from a hut on the fringe of the Gobi desert, he had written, ‘I understand now how little mere travel gives to a man. Unless the spirit expands with the explosion of space about him, then he returns the same man as he went out.’ Here in the Mother House of the Society, where all the rooms looked the same, where everyone was dressed in the same black cassock and attended the same exercises of devotion, and ate at the same table, he wondered whether in truth he had changed at all, and whether the enlargement which he thought to have attained was not a bitter illusion.
With a gesture of impatience, he stacked the last manuscripts on the desk, closed the door on them, and walked out to view the city which threatened him so vividly.
A few moments’ walking brought him out on to the broad reach of the Street of Conciliation and in full view of the Piazza of St Peter’s. The slim finger of the obelisk pointed to the sky, and on either hand Bernini’s colonnades swept backward to the sunlit dome of the Basilica. The sudden majesty of it all – the towering cupola, the gigantic figures of windy stone, the rearing masses of columns and pilasters – oppressed him and he felt drunk with the suddenness of sun and space.
Instinctively he lowered his eyes to the human aspect: the straggle of afternoon tourists, the coachmen gossiping at their horses’ heads, the pedlars with their little boxes of rosaries, the buses and cars, and the slim jets of the fountains. Once again the cogs of memory slipped into gear and he remembered what he had written after his first look at the Grand Canyon of the Colorado…‘I am either unmoved or tremendously troubled by the sight of natural grandeur, or even by a spectacular artifact deserted by its makers. As soon as man appears I am comforted again because man is the only significant between the physical order and the spiritual one. Without man the universe is a howling wasteland contemplated by an unseen Deity.…’ If man deserted even this ageless splendour of St Peter’s, it would decay and rot into a goat-cropping, where tree roots grew out of the stones and animals drank from the muddy basins of the fountains.
Encouraged, he strolled across the Piazza towards the entrance of the Basilica, pausing to look up at the papal apartments and ask himself what manner of man now dwelt in them. Soon they would meet face to face, and Jean Télémond would have to justify his own life’s work to a man charged to perpetuate the life of the whole Church. Already rumours were rife about the new Pontiff and his challenge to the reactionaries and the extreme traditionalists in the Vatican. There were those who saw him as the prime mover of a second Renaissance within the Church, a new and unexpected link between the logical West and the illuminated East.
If the rumours were true then there was hope that Jean Télémond might be freed at last from his exile. If not…
On the opposite side of the Piazza lay the Palace of the Holy Office, where the Hounds of God kept watch over the Deposit of Faith. To them Jean Télémond was known already. Once a priest came under their scrutiny he was never forgotten, and everything he wrote must pass through their hands before it could be printed. Cardinal Leone was still there, too, he of the white mane and the cold eye and the uncertain temper. It was an open secret that Leone had small liking for the Father General of the Jesuits and that he favoured more the opinions and the manners of the older orders in the Church. Télémond wondered what had prompted Semmering to risk the displeasure of the old lion by bringing back to Rome a man of suspect opinions.
There were politics inside the Church as well as out of it. There were questing minds and reluctant ones. There were blind traditionalists and too eager innovators. There were men who sacrificed order to growth, and others who reached so boldly for change that they held it back for centuries. There were rank pietists and fierce ascetics. There were administrators and apostles – and God help any luckless fellow who was caught between the millstones.
There was only one refuge; one committal which he had made a long time ago. A man could walk only the path he saw at his own feet or that which was pointed out to him by a lawful superior. After that he was in the hands of God…And their compass was more generous, their hold more reassuring, than the hands of any man.
In spite of the warmth, he shivered and quickened his steps towards the interior of the Basilica. Looking neither to right nor left, he walked down the echoing nave towards the sanctuary, and then knelt for a long time praying at the tomb of Peter.
In the small cold hours between midnight and dawn, George Faber lay wakeful and grappled with his new situation. Beside him Chiara lay sleeping like a child, satiated and tranquil. Never in the months of their loving had he experienced a passion so tumultuous, a mating so abandoned, as on this night. Every sense had quickened, every emotion had surged up and spent itself in a climax of union so intense that death itself had seemed only a whisper away. Never had he felt so much a man. Never had Chiara shown herself so generously a woman. Never had speech been stifled so swiftly by the outpourings of tenderness and the transports of desire…Never in all his life had he been so suddenly overwhelmed by the sadness of the afterward.
When their loving was done Chiara had given a small contented sigh, buried her face in the pillow and lapsed immediately into sleep. It was as if she had left him without warning and without farewell to embark on a private journey – as if having touched the limit of love he were left solitary to face the darkness and the terrors of an endless night.
The terrors were more real than they had ever been before. For so rich a pleasuring, some time, somehow, a price must be paid. And he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would be the one to pay it. What he had felt this night was a springtime flowering which might never repeat itself, because for him it was late summer, late harvest, with the tax man waiting at the gate to claim his due.
For Chiara life was still her debtor. Payment had been deferred too long and her body was greedy for the tribute. For himself, a man on the wrong side of forty, the case was far other. He knew where the price tags were hidden. He knew the needs that followed the brisk satisfaction of the act of union: the need of continuity, the need of children to be born of the seed so richly spent in lust or love, the need of quiet harbour and a morning sunlight after the storms of the night.
Even as he thought about it, Chiara stirred and turned towards him for warmth. It was a gesture made in a dream but it was more eloquent than words. Until her marriage to Calitri she had been protected at every step – by rich and doting parents, by cosseting nuns, by the traditions of her class. When her marriage had failed she had found another refuge, and now she had come to rest in his arms to forgetfulness in his practised embrace. So long as he held her strongly and securely she would stay. But the moment his grip slackened or his courage faltered, she would slip away.
The strange thing was that she saw nothing one-sided in the bargain. She had given him her body, she had given him her reputation; what else was there to demand? Had he told her, she would never have understood. Married and the mother of children she would grow in the end to maturity, but in this halfway state she would always be the girl-woman, half delighted by the adventure, half afraid of its consequences, but never wholly understanding that the debt of love was not all paid in the coin-age of the flesh.
For her even tonight’s encounter, rich, ruinous and wonderful, was a kind of flight – and he was too old, too wise, or too calculating to make it with her. Instinctively he turned, threw his arms about her and drew her to him, wondering even as he did so why the miraculous oneness of the flesh should last so short a time, and why in the end two lovers must lie so often and so long like islands in a dark sea. Her slack hand lay across his body, her hair brushed his lips, her perfume surrounded him. But sleep would not come, and he rehearsed over and over again their dinner-table talk, when he had told her of Campeggio’s advice, and where it might lead the pair of them…
She had listened attentively, chin cupped in her hands, her dark eyes bright with eagerness, intrigued by the prospect of a plot.
‘Of course, darling! It’s so simple. Why didn’t we think of it before? There must be twenty people in Rome who’d be happy to give evidence against Corrado. All we’ve got to do is find them.’
‘Do you know any of them, Chiara?’
‘Not really. Corrado was always fairly discreet with me. Still, I’m sure if we talked around we’d get a whole list of names.’
‘The one thing we mustn’t do,’ he told her firmly, ‘is talk around. If word gets out about what we’re doing, we’re finished. Don’t you understand? This is a conspiracy.’
‘George, darling, don’t be so melodramatic. All we’re trying to do is get justice for me. You couldn’t call that conspiracy, surely.’
‘It wears the colour of it. And in the eyes of the Church, and civil law, it comes to the same thing. There are only two things we can do – employ a professional investigator or I’ll have to do the investigation myself. If we use an investigator it will cost me more money than I can afford, and in the end he could sell me out to your husband. If I do the job myself…I’m immediately embroiled up to the neck.’
She stared at him, wide-eyed and innocent. ‘Are you afraid, George?’
‘Of my husband?’
‘Of his influence, yes.’
‘Don’t you want to marry me, darling?’
‘You know I do. But once we’re married we have to live. If I lose my reputation in Rome I can’t work here any longer. We’d have to go back to America.’
‘I wouldn’t mind that…Besides, what about my reputation? I didn’t throw that in your face, did I?’
‘Please, Chiara! Please try to understand this isn’t a matter of morals, it’s a matter of authority, professional status…the credit I live by. If I’m held up as a common blackmailer…where do I start again? This is the double standard, sweetheart. You can sleep around as much as you like. You can make a million by exploiting the poor. But if you pass a bad cheque for ten dollars or breach the code of professional ethics, you’re dead and buried and there’s no coming back. That’s the way the world is, rough as guts. Do what you want. Take what you want. But if you trip – God help you! That’s what we have to fate – together.’
‘If I’m not afraid, George, why should you be?’
‘I’ve got to be sure that you know what’s involved.’
‘I wonder if you really know what’s involved for me. A woman needs to be married, George. She needs to have a home and children, and a man who belongs to her. What we have is wonderful, but it isn’t enough. If you won’t fight for it, George, what can I do?’
…And there it was, the challenge that had taken him at one stride to her arms – a challenge to his virility, a challenge to the one folly he had never indulged – to count the world well lost for love. But George Faber was a man of his own world. He knew himself too well to believe that he could live without it. He had made the gesture, to be sure. He had flung his cap at the whirling windmills, but when the time came to assault them with sword and lance, how would he be then? A knight in shining armour with his lady’s favour on his helm…? Or an ageing Quixote on a spavined nag, an object of laughter for men and angels?
Valerio Cardinal Rinaldi sat on the terrace of his villa and watched the day decline towards the sea. The folds of the land were full of purple shadows, the hills were touched with gold and bronze, and the rooftops of village and farmhouse shone russet in the glow. A small breeze stirred across the land, carrying the scent of lilac and roses, and mown grass. The sound of childish laughter rose from the garden below, where his niece’s daughter played among the Orphic marbles.
This was the good time – the hour between day and dusk, when the eye was rested from the harshness of the sun and the spirit was not yet touched by the melancholy of twilight. The cicadas were still, and the crickets had not begun their mournful chirping. He picked up the book that lay on his lap and began to read the crabbed Greek characters which hid the magical words of Euripides:
And O for that quiet garden by the Western sea
Where the daughters of Evening sing
Under the golden apple-tree;
Where the bold sailor wandering
Finds the Ocean-god has barred
His Westward path over the purple waste!
Where huge Atlas lives to guard
The solemn frontiers of the sky!
Where in Zeus’ palace fountains of ambrosial wine
Flow by the festal couch divine,
While holy Earth heaps high
Her fruits of rarest taste
To bless the immortal feast with bountiful supply!
He was a lucky man and he knew it. It was given to few to arrive at eminence and then survive it with a strong heart and a good digestion to enjoy the quiet garden where the daughters of Evening sang. It was given to few in his profession to hear the voices of children in his own orchard close, to have them cluster about his knee for a story, to give them a kiss and an old priest’s blessing at bedtime.
Others he knew had died before their time. Others again survived painfully, with blear eyes or palsied limbs or slow cankers, on the charity of the Church. Some lapsed into senility or a poverty of possession and spirit. But he sat here in the splendour of a fading day – prosperous, independent, the last of the princely Cardinals of the Church. He had few regrets, because regret had always seemed a vanity and alien to his nature. He was ready for retirement – prepared for it, too, by a curious and scholarly mind and a diversity of friendships and interests. He did not fear death because in the normal course it was still a long way off, and he had lived an orderly life, investing his talents as best he knew for the service of the Church.
Yet sometimes – in the twilight hour, in the wakeful nights of an old man, or when he watched the peasants bending over the tillage of his estate – the poignant question presented itself: why have I so much? Why am I endowed so richly and others in so niggardly a fashion? Or is this all a divine irony whose point will be revealed only in eternity?
Old Euripides had raised the same question and yet answered it no better:
They wander over the waves, visit strange cities,
Seeking a world of wealth,
All alike sure of achievement; yet
One man’s aim misses the lucky moment,
Another finds fortune in his lap.
And there was another question still. What did one do with all this fruitage of life? Toss it away, like little Brother Francis, and walk the world singing the praise of Lady Poverty? It was too late in the day for that. The grace of abandonment had passed him by – if, indeed, it had ever been offered. For better or for worse he was saddled with the career he had built.
He was neither gluttonous nor spendthrift. He was educating his sister’s children, and a pair of needy students for the priesthood. When he died half his wealth would go to his family, the other half to the Church. The Pontiff himself had approved the disposition. For what then should be reproach himself? For nothing, it seemed, except, perhaps, a certain mediocrity of spirit, a need of his nature to have the best of both worlds. And yet God Almighty had made them both, the seen and the unseen, for man’s habitation and benefit. He had made man too, and it was the nature of His mercy to exact no more than a just return on the talent He had given to each one.
Valerio Rinaldi was wise enough not to rejoice too freely in his good fortune. Yet he could not weep because there was nothing to weep for. So he sighed a little as the shadows drew closer over the land and went on reading the story of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus:
To go into the dark! Now let me die, and pass
To the world under the earth, into the joyless dark!
Since you, dearer than all, are at my side no longer,
And the death you have dealt is more than the death
that has swallowed you.
When twilight came at last, he closed his book and went in to say evening prayers with his household, and then prepare himself for dinner with Cardinal Leone.
The white-haired inquisitor was growling and crusty as ever, but he softened instantly at the entry of the children. When they bobbed before him, three dark-haired little maids, to receive his blessing, his eyes clouded and his hands trembled as he laid them on their foreheads. When the children backed away respectfully, he drew them to him and talked gravely as any grandfather about their lessons and their dolls and the momentous event of a day at the zoo. Rinaldi smiled secretly to see the old lion tamed so swiftly. He was even more surprised when the man who was the guardian of so many mysteries fumbled his way through a jigsaw puzzle and begged for time for the children to finish it with him.
When at last the children were dismissed and dinner was announced, Leone was strangely subdued. He said soberly, ‘You’re a lucky man, Rinaldi. For this you should be grateful to God all the days of your life.’
‘I am grateful,’ said Rinaldi. ‘It troubles me that I have done so little to deserve my happiness.’
‘Enjoy it, my friend. It’s the purest one you will ever know.’ Then he added the poignant afterthought, ‘When I was in the seminary one of my old masters said that every priest should be given a child to rear for five years. I didn’t understand what he meant then. I do now.’
‘Do you have any relatives?’ asked Rinaldi.
‘None. I used to think that, as priests, we didn’t need them. That’s an illusion, of course…One gets lonely in the cloth as well as out of it.’ He grunted and gave a wintry smile. ‘Eh! We all get sentimental when we’re old.’
They dined alone as befitted a pair of princes, men who were charged with the weightiest secrets of the Church. An elderly manservant waited on them and withdrew after each course was served, so that they might talk freely. Leone seemed oddly moved by his meeting with the children, and as he picked absently at his fish he reverted once more to the problems of a celibate life.
‘…Every year, as you know, we get a small crop of cases at the Holy Office: priests who get into trouble with women, unsavoury affairs between teachers and pupils, and allegations of soliciting by priests in the confessional. It’s inevitable, of course. There are bad apples in every barrel, but the older I get, the less sure I am of how to deal with them.’
Rinaldi nodded agreement. He himself had served as a commissioner of the Holy Office and was privy to its most diverse deliberations.
Leone went on: ‘We have a very bad case in front of us now, affecting a Roman priest and a young woman of his congregation. The evidence is pretty conclusive. The girl has fallen pregnant, and there is possibility of open scandal. I felt bound to bring the affair to the personal notice of the Holy Father.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘More calmly than I expected. The priest in question has, of course, been suspended from his duties, but His Holiness ordered that he be required to submit to a medical and psychiatric examination before the case is finally decided …It’s an unusual step.’
‘Do you disagree with it?’ asked Rinaldi quizzically.
‘The way it was put to me,’ said Leone thoughtfully, ‘I was in no position to disagree. His Holiness pointed out that no matter what a priest does, he is still an erring soul in need of help; that punishment was not enough; that we had to help the man to mend his error and his life. He went on to say that modern research had shown that many sexual aberrations had their roots in a real sickness of the mind, and that the celibate life raised special problems for those of a psychotic disposition…The ruling of the canons is guarded on this point, but not, of course, prohibitive. A priest may seek or be given psychiatric treatment only in grave cases and with the permission of the bishop. The authority of the Holy Father is supreme in the matter.’
‘You still haven’t said whether you agreed with his decision,’ said Rinaldi in his mild, ironic fashion.
Leone chuckled. ‘I know, I know. I have a bad reputation. To the Church at large I am still the Grand Inquisitor ready to purge out error by rack and fire…But it isn’t true. I am always in dilemma in these matters. I have to be so careful of discipline. I am torn always between compassion and my duty to enforce the law…I’ve met this man. He’s a sad, troubled creature. We can break him with a word, and set him with the same word in the way of damnation. On the other hand, what about the woman, and the child which is to be born?’
‘What did His Holiness have to say about that?’
‘He wants the child made a ward of the Church. He wants the girl provided with employment and a dowry. Once again, you see, there is a question of precedent. But I admire his attitude even though I am not sure I can agree with all of it. He has a soft heart…The danger is that it may be too soft for the good of the Church.’
‘He has suffered more than we. Perhaps he has more right to trust his heart than we have.’
‘I know that. I could wish he trusted me a little more.’
‘I know he trusts you.’ Rinaldi made the point firmly. ‘I know he has a great respect for you. Has he moved against you in any way?’
‘Not yet. I think the real test is still to come.’
‘What do you mean?’
Leone cocked a shrewd eye at his host. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard. The Father General of the Jesuits has brought this Télémond fellow back to Rome. He’s arranged for him to speak in the presence of the Pope on the feast of Saint Ignatius Loyola.’
‘I heard about it. I’m invited to be present. I don’t think it means too much. Télémond is a distinguished scholar. I think it’s only natural that Semmering should want to reinstate him and give him a wider field of action in the Church.’
‘I think it’s a calculated step,’ said Leone bluntly. ‘Semmering and I rub each other the wrong way. He knows that Télémond’s opinions are still suspect.’
‘Come, come, old friend! He’s had twenty years to revise them, and you certainly can’t call him a rebellious spirit. He submitted, didn’t he, when silence was imposed on him? Even the Holy Office can’t refuse the opportunity to restate his position.’
‘The occasion is too public. Too symbolic, if you want. I think Semmering has committed an indiscretion.’
‘What are you really afraid of, my friend? A victory for the Jesuits?’
Leone growled and tossed his white mane. ‘You know that isn’t true. They do God’s work, as we try to do it, in our own fashion.’
‘What then?’
‘Have you met this Jean Télémond?’
‘No.’
‘I have. He’s a man of great charm and, I think, of singular spirituality. I think he may make a very favourable impression on the Holy Father. I believe that’s what Semmering’s expecting, too.’
‘Is that a bad thing?’
‘It could be. If he has the patronage of the Pontiff, then he is much freer to promulgate his opinions.’
‘But the Holy Office is still there to monitor them.’
‘It would be much more difficult to move against a man under papal patronage.’
‘I think you’re making two unfounded assumptions – that he will get papal patronage, and that you will have to move against him.’
‘We have to be ready for anything that happens.’
‘Isn’t there a simpler way? Why not raise the matter with the Holy Father now?’
‘And what do I tell him? That I mistrust his discretion, or that he doesn’t trust me enough?’
‘I can see that might be difficult.’ Rinaldi laughed and rang the bell for the next course. ‘I’ll give you my advice. Relax. Enjoy your dinner, and let the affair take its own way. Even the Holy Office can’t do as well for the Church as the Holy Ghost…’
Leone smiled grimly and addressed himself to the roast. ‘I’m getting old, my friend – old and stubborn. I can’t get used to the idea that a youngster of fifty is wearing the Triple Crown.’
Rinaldi shrugged like a true Roman. ‘I think the tiara fits him very well. And there is nothing in the faith which prescribes that the Church must be a gerontocracy – a government of old men. I have time to think now, and I am sure age doesn’t always make us wiser.’
‘Don’t mistake me. I see the good that this man brings to us. He goes out like a true shepherd among the flock. He visits the hospitals and the prisons. Last Sunday, believe it or not, he sat through three sermons, in three different Roman churches…just to hear what kind of preaching we had in our pulpits.’
‘I hope he was impressed.’
‘He was not,’ said Leone with tart humour. ‘He made no secret of it. He talked of “turgid rhetoric” and “vague devotion”…I think we may hear something of this in the encyclical which he is preparing now.’
‘Is it ready yet?’
‘Not yet. I hear he is still working on the first Russian version…We may be in for some surprises…’ He laughed ruefully. ‘I’ve already had a few myself. His Holiness disapproves of the tone of certain Holy Office proclamations. He feels they are too stringent, too harsh. He wants us to refrain from outright condemnation, especially of persons, and to adopt a tone rather of admonition and warning.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘He put it very clearly. He said we must leave room to move for men of good will, even when they are in error. We must point out the error, but we must not do injustice to the intentions of those who commit it.’
Rinaldi permitted himself a thin smile. ‘I begin to see why you are worried about Jean Télémond.’
Leone ignored the joke and growled, ‘I’m inclined to agree with Benedetti. This man is a reformer. He wants to sweep all the rooms at once. He is talking, I believe, of a reform of the Rota, of changes in seminary training, and even of separate commissions to represent the various national Churches in Rome.’
‘That could be a good move,’ said Rinaldi thoughtfully. ‘I think that everyone but us Romans agrees that we have centralized too much. We live in troubled times, and if there is another war, then the churches of the world will be much more isolated than they have ever been. The sooner they can develop a vigorous local life the better for the faith.’
‘If there is another war, my friend…it may well be the end of the world.’
‘Thank God things seem to be a little calmer at present.’
Leone shook his head. ‘The calm is deceptive, I think. The pressure is building up, and before another year is out I think we may see a renewal of crisis. Goldoni was talking to me about it only yesterday. He is making a special report to the Pontiff.’
‘I wonder,’ asked Rinaldi softly, ‘I wonder how the crisis looks to a man who has sat for seventeen years in the shadow of death?’
To Kiril the Pontiff the crisis presented itself in a variety of aspects.
He saw it first in microcosm, on the battleground of his own soul. At the lowest level – the level at which he had lived in the prison bunker – there was the simple impulse to survival: the desperate effort to cling to that single spark of life which, once extinguished, could never be lit again. There was only one infusion of life into the frail vessel of the body. Once the vessel was broken it would never be put together again until the day of the last restoration. So, with the infusion of life was infused also the instinct to preserve it at all costs against whatever threatened, or seemed to threaten it, from within or without.
Every animal contained within himself a mechanism of survival. Only man, the last and noblest of the animal kingdom, understood, however dimly, that the mechanism must run down and that sooner or later he must make a conscious act of abandonment of the gift into the hand of the Creator, who had first given it. This was the act for which all his living was a preparation; to refuse it was to commit the final rebellion from which there was no recanting.
Yet every day of every man’s life was a series of small rebellions against the fear of death or of sporadic victories for hope in the unseen. Even for Kiril, the Vicar of God on earth, there was no retreat from the daily war. The impulse to survival took many forms; the delight in power which gave a man the illusion of immortality; the fear of opposition which might limit the illusion; the desire for friendship to buttress the weak body and faltering spirit; the urge to action which affirmed a man’s potency against threatening circumstance; the desire to possess what must in the end be forgone; the cowardice which thrust him into isolation as if he could close every crack against the ultimate invasion of death. Even for a Pontiff, who stood by presumption nearest to God, there was no guarantee of victory over himself. Each day brought its own tally of defeats which must be repented and purged in the penitential tribunal.
But what of other men, so much less enlightened, so much more vulnerable, so much more oppressed by the terror of bodily extinction? On them the pressures of existence built up to breaking point every day. For them he must find in himself a strength to lend, and a charity to spend, lest they collapse utterly under the burden, or turn and rend each other in a feral war, which would blot them out quicker than the merciful death from which they fled.
This was the other aspect of the crisis which he read in every report which was laid on his desk, in every newspaper and bulletin which came under his notice.
When a man in a capsule was shot into a new dimension of space and time, the world exulted as if he came back with a promise of eternity in his pocket.
When a new programme of armament was announced, it seemed that those who promoted it wrote with the one hand a new profit into the stock market while with the other they inscribed their own epitaph.
Each economic treaty brought advantage to those who signed it, and a degree of injustice to those whom it excluded.
The populations of the East and the Africas were exploding into a new magnitude, and yet men put their trust in islands of colour or race, as though they were endowed with a divine right of election to an earthly paradise.
Every new victory over disease made a corresponding drain on the diminishing resources of the planet. Every advance in science was another patch on the shabby cloak which man wrapped about himself against the cold wind of dissolution.
And yet…and yet this was the nature of man. This was the historic method of his progress – a tightrope walk towards a destiny dimly perceived, but profoundly felt. The Church was in the world, though not of it – and it was her function to hold up the truth like a lamp to light the further shore of man’s ultimate arrival.
So Kiril the Pontiff, caught like all his fellows in the human dilemma, sat at his desk and traced in the formal words of his Secretary of State the shadows of the gathering storm.
‘The pivot of the present situation is China. The most reliable reports indicate that the agricultural programme has again broken down and that there will be a very light harvest this summer. This will mean, almost inevitably, a military push towards the rice-bowl areas of South-east Asia immediately after the next monsoons. Military training is already being stepped up, and there are reports reaching us every day of repressive measures against disaffected elements. Our own people are being subjected to new campaigns of surveillance and open persecution.
‘In America the economic recession has eased, but this is largely due to an increase in the programme of military armament. Our sources in the United States inform us that any new Chinese expansion towards Burma or Indo-China or Siam would create an immediate danger of war…
‘In Bonn and Paris there is new talk of France and Germany participating in a joint programme for the development of atomic weapons. This is a logical outcome of their status as senior partners in the European bloc, but it is clear that it must present itself as an open threat to East Germany and Moscow
‘It has been our hope for some time that Russia’s fear of the Chinese might bring about a betterment of her relations with the West, but this situation introduces a dangerous and contrary element.
‘It would seem timely for Your Holiness to make some clear and public comment on the dangers of this new armament race, which is being justified as a strengthening of the Western alliance against communism.
‘It is difficult to see how it could be done, but if it were possible for us to make any contact with the Praesidium in the Kremlin and to introduce ourselves as a mediating element in East-West relations, there would be no time better than the present. Unfortunately our opposition to the doctrines of communism is all too easily interpreted as a political alliance with the West. We have instructed our legates and nuncios everywhere to emphasize, both in public and in their conversations with political personalities, the dangers of the present situation.
‘As Your Holiness knows, we are now maintaining friendly relations with representatives of the Orthodox Church, and with senior members of other Christian bodies. We may look with confidence to their co-operation in this matter. However, the creation of a moral climate always lags far behind the creation of a political one, and we do have to face the fact that the next six or twelve months may well bring the world to the threshold of another war…
‘In Africa…’
Kiril the Pontiff put down the typescript and covered his tired eyes with the palms of his hands. Here again in macrocosm was the struggle for human survival. The Chinese wanted a bowl of rice. The Russian wanted to hold the civilized comfort which had just become familiar to him. A hundred and eighty million Americans had to be kept working, lest the precarious consumer economy should collapse. France and Germany, stripped of their colonies, had to maintain their bargaining power in the European community of nations.
‘What we have we hold, because it is ours, because we have earned it. All that increases us is a good. All that diminishes us is a threat…Jungle law…Survival of the fittest…There are no morals in politics…’
Yet, boil it down, survival even for the individual was never a simple equation. The definition of rights and duties had occupied theologians and legalists for two thousand years of the Christian dispensation, and for thousands of years before that. It was one thing to state the law, but to apply it, to bring all the diverse millions of mankind to see it with the same eye, to recognize it as a divine decree…This was, on the face of it, a rank impossibility. Yet there was the promise. ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all things to myself.’ And without the promise there was no foothold of reason left in the universe. If one did not believe that the spinning orb of the earth was held safe by the continuance of a creative act, then one might well despair and wish it dissolved in fire, to make place for a better one.
Once again memory struck off at a tangent, to a conversation he had had with Kamenev nearly ten years before:
‘The difference between you and me, Kiril, is that I am dedicated to the possible while you are dedicated to a nonsense…“God wishes that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of truth.”…That’s what you preach, isn’t it? Yet you know it’s folly. A sublime folly, I agree. But still – a folly…It doesn’t happen. It won’t happen. It can’t happen. What is your heaven but a carrot to make the donkey trot? What is your hell but a rubbish heap for all your failures – God’s failures, my friend ! And you say He’s omnipotent. Where do you go from here? Do you come with me to achieve the small possible or go chasing after the great impossible?…I know what you want to say: God makes all possible. Don’t you see? I am God to you at this moment because you can’t even move from that chair until I give the order…Here! God gives you a little gift. A cigarette…’
He had taken the cigarette, he remembered, and smoked it gratefully while his tired mind grappled with the paradox which Kamenev had presented to him.…The little gain or the great loss? Which? The limited wisdom or the monstrous folly? He had chosen the folly, and been consigned again to stripes and starvation and solitude to purge it out of him.
And now the paradox had reversed itself. Kamenev was faced with a situation impossible to resolve, while Kiril, the abject prisoner, stood in the shoes of God to whom all things were possible.
For a long time he sat pondering the gigantic humour of the situation. Then he lifted the receiver and called Goldoni in the Secretariat of State.
‘I’m reading your report. I’m impressed. I’m grateful. I’m also very worried. Now tell me something…If I wanted to get a message to the Premier of Russia – a private message – how would I do it?’
…It is well that I have kept a sense of humour; otherwise I should be harassed to madness by the consequences of my most trivial actions. When a man in my position asks a simple question the whole Vatican begins to flutter like a nest of birds. If I make the smallest motion it is as if I were trying to shake the foundations of the world. I can only do what I believe to be right but there are always twenty people with as many reasons why I should not move at all…And I am a fool if I do not at least listen to their opinions.
When I proposed to Goldoni that I should make a pastoral visitation of the whole of Italy, and see on the spot the problems of my local clergy, he was aghast. Such a thing had not been done for centuries. It would create problems with the Italian government. It would raise God knows what questions of protocol and logistics and local ceremony. He pointed out that I was a prince and that the paying of princely honours would impose hardship on poor and depressed areas. I had to be very firm with him on this point and tell him that I am first and foremost a pastor, successor to a fisherman who was executed like a common criminal in the City of the Emperors. Even so we have not yet agreed how and when I shall make this journey; but I am determined to do it before very long.
I want to make other journeys too. I want to cross the frontiers of Europe and the oceans of the world, to see my people – where and how they live, and the burdens they carry on their journey to eternity…This, I know, is a project not easily accomplished. It will involve opposition from governments, a risk to myself and to the administration of the Holy See…But it would, I believe, restate as nothing else could the Apostolic mission of the Pontiff…For the present, however, I have a more pressing concern: to establish and maintain a personal contact with Kamenev.
Immediately after my telephone call, Goldoni came rushing across from the Secretariat of State to talk with me. He is a shrewd man, much practised in diplomacy, and I have great respect for his opinion. His first counsel was a negative one. He could see no possible ground of communication with those who preach an atheistic heresy and who are engaged in an active persecution of the faithful…He made the point, too, that all those who are members of the Communist Party are automatically excommunicated from the Church. I could not help remarking that in the twentieth century excommunication was a blunt weapon and very possibly an outmoded one…He offered then the very valid caution that even a private dialogue with the Kremlin might constitute a diplomatic affront to Western governments.
I could not disagree with him, but I am obsessed by the belief that the prime mission of the Church is a pastoral and not a diplomatic one. I showed Goldoni the letter which Kamenev had written to me, and he understood my anxiety to begin some kind of conversation. Goldoni gave me, however, another warning: any step that I take may be misinterpreted as a sign of weakness and may be used as a propaganda weapon by the Communists…
Goldoni is right, of course, but I do not believe he is wholly right. The truth has a virtue of its own; the good act has a virtue of its own, and we must never discuss the fructifying power of the Almighty…
I have never believed that everyone who comes to Rome must come there by way of Canossa. This, I think, has been one of our historic errors. The good shepherd seeks out the lost sheep and carries them home on his shoulder. He does not demand that they come crawling back, draggle-tailed and remorseful, with a penance cord around their necks…It was St Augustine who said, ‘It takes a big mind to make a heresy.’ And there are noble minds and noble spirits from whom the gift of faith is withheld and for whom salvation comes by way of the uncovenanted mercy of God. With all such we must deal in patience, tolerance and brotherly charity, humbled always by the gratuitous mercy of God in our own regard. For them we must exercise in a special fashion the ministerium of the faith and not insist too harshly upon its magistracy.
So, finally, Goldoni and I agreed on a compromise. We would try to get a message to Kamenev to tell him that I have received his letter and that I have nothing but the most friendly disposition towards him and towards my own people. The problem was, of course, how to deliver the message, but Goldoni in his subtle fashion proposed an amusing solution. A South American diplomat who has social contacts in the Kremlin will seek an opportunity to speak with the Premier at a cocktail party and tell him that a friend of his would like to talk more about the growing of sunflowers…In this way neither one of us will be compromised and the next effective move will be for Kamenev to make. God knows where the move may point, but I must pray and rest in hope…
It is curious but I am more deeply perturbed by the case which Leone has transmitted to me from the Holy Office: a priest accused of soliciting in the confessional, who is now in danger of being cited in a civil paternity suit…This sort of scandal is, of course, sporadic in the Church, but I am troubled by the spectacle of a soul in a mortal sickness.
There are men who should never be priests at all. The system of seminary training is designed to filter out unsuitable candidates, but there are always the odd ones that slip through the net. There are those whose sole hope of a normal and fruitful life is in the married state; yet the discipline of the Western Church imposes on all priests a perpetual celibacy.
It is within my power as the Pontiff to dispense this unfortunate man from his vows and permit him to marry. My heart urges me to do it, and yet I dare not. To do so would be to create a precedent which might do irreparable damage to clerical discipline and to a tradition which has its roots in Christ’s teaching on the state of dedicated virginity.
I have the power, yes, but I must use it to build and not to demolish what has been given into my keeping. I am aware that I may be increasing the danger of damnation of this unhappy soul. I want to deal with him as mercifully as I can, but I dare not, for one soul, put ten thousand others in jeopardy…
The Keys of the Kingdom are given into my hands; but I do not hold them absolutely. They are mine in trust under law…There are times – and this is one of them – when I wish I could take upon myself the sins of all the world and offer my life in expiation for them. I know, however, that I am only a man, and that the expiation was made once for all on Calvary. Through the Church I administer the fruits of redemption. I cannot change the covenant of God with man which governs their distribution…
It is late and my letter to the Church is still unfinished. Tonight I am working on the text, ‘A chosen generation, a kingly priesthood’. A priest is only a man, and we have only a few short years to train him for the burden of kingship…To those who stumble under its weight, we must extend the maternal love of the Church. For them we must invoke the patronage of the Virgin Mother of all men…
It is warm tonight. Summer is coming in, but there are those who walk in a lifetime winter, lost and alone. Let me not fail them who have felt the winter in my own bones, who have cried at night for love in a loveless prison…