IN HIS bachelor apartment on Parioli, Corrado Calitri, Minister of the Republic, was conferring with his lawyers. The senior advocate, Perosi, was a tall, spare man with a dry, academic manner. His junior had a round dumpling face and a deprecating smile. In the far corner of the room, the Princess Maria-Rina sat withdrawn and wary, watching them with hooded, predatory eyes.
Perosi laid the tips of his fingers together, like a bishop about to intone a psalm, and summed up the situation:
‘…As I understand it, you have been troubled in conscience for some time. You have taken counsel with a confessor, and he has advised you that it is your duty to change your testimony with respect to your marriage.’
Calitri’s pale face was blank, his voice devoid of expression. ‘That’s the position, yes.’
‘Let us be very clear, then, where we stand. Your wife’s petition for a decree of nullity is made under the terms of Canon 1086, which states two things : first, the internal consent of the mind is always presumed to be in agreement with the words or signs which are used in the celebration of the marriage; second, if either party or both parties, by a positive act of the will, exclude marriage itself, or all right to the conjugal act or any essential property of the marriage, the marriage contract is invalid.’ He rustled his papers and went on in his professional fashion. ‘The first part of the canon does not really concern us. It simply expresses a presumption of the law, which may be overcome by contrary proof. Your wife’s plea leans on the second part. She claims that you deliberately excluded from your consent her right to the conjugal act, and that you did not accept the contract as unbreakable, but as a form of therapy to be laid aside if the therapy failed. If her plea could be sustained, the marriage would, of course, be declared invalid. You understand that?’
‘I’ve always understood it.’
‘But you denied in a written and sworn statement that your intention was defective.’
‘I did.’
‘Now, however, you are prepared to admit that the statement was false and that, in fact, you perjured yourself.’
‘Yes. I understand that I have done a grave injustice, and I want to repair it. I want Chiara to be free.’
‘You are prepared to make another sworn statement, admitting the perjury and the defective intention?’
‘I am.’
‘So far so good. This will give us a ground to reopen the case with the Rota.’ Perosi pursed his pale lips and frowned. ‘Unfortunately it will not be sufficient for a decree of nullity.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s a question of procedure covered by Canon 1971, and by commentaries on the code dated March 1929, July 1933, and July 1942. A party to a marriage who is the guilty cause of the nullity is deprived of the right to impugn the contract. He has no standing in court.’
‘Where does that leave us?’
‘We need one or more witnesses to testify that you expressed to them, clearly and explicitly, your defective intentions before the marriage took place.’
The brisk old voice of the princess intruded itself into the conversation. ‘I think you can take it for granted that such testimony would be available.’
‘In that case,’ said Advocate Perosi, ‘I think we have a sound case, and we may look with some confidence to a favourable outcome.’
He sat back in his chair and began rearranging his papers. As if on a prearranged signal, the dumpling man added a footnote to the discussion:
‘With respect to my senior colleague, I should like to make two suggestions. It would be an advantage if we had a letter from your confessor indicating that you are acting under his advice in trying to repair the injustice done. It might help, too, if you wrote a friendly letter to your wife, admitting your fault and asking her to forgive you…Neither of these two documents would have any value in evidence, but they might, shall we say, help the atmosphere.’
‘I’ll do as you suggest,’ said Calitri in the same colourless fashion. ‘Now I’d like to ask a couple of questions. I admit default, I admit perjury. On the other hand I do have a public position and a reputation to protect.’
‘All the deliberations of the Rota, and all the depositions made before it, are protected by rigid secrecy. You need have no fear on that score.’
‘Good. How long do you think the business will take?’
Perosi considered the question a moment. ‘Not too long. Nothing can be done, of course, during the holiday period, but if all the depositions were in our hands by the end of August, we could have the translation done in two weeks. Then, in view of your position and the long suspension of the case, I think we would get a speedy hearing…I should say two months at the outside. It might even be sooner.’
‘I am grateful,’ said Corrado Calitri. ‘I’ll have the papers ready by the end of August.’
Perosi and his colleague bowed themselves out. ‘We are always at the disposal of the Minister.’
‘Good day, gentlemen, and thank you.’
When the door closed behind them, the princess threw, back her bird’s head and laughed. ‘There now. I told you, didn’t I? It’s as simple as shelling peas. Of course we have to find you a confessor. There’s a nice understanding Monsignore who attends me from Florence. Yes, I think he’d be the one. He’s intelligent, cultivated, and quite zealous in his own way. I’ll have a talk with him and arrange an appointment…Come on now, smile. In two months you’ll be free. In a year you’ll be leading the country.’
‘I know, Aunt, I know.’
‘Oh, there’s one more thing. Your letter to Chiara. There’s no need to be too humble about it. Dignity, restraint, a desire to make amends, yes. But nothing compromising. I don’t trust that girl. I never have.’
Calitri shrugged indifferently. ‘She’s a child, Aunt. There’s no malice in her.’
‘Children grow up – and there’s malice in every woman when she can’t get what she wants.’
‘From what I hear, she’s getting it.’
‘With the dean of the foreign press. What’s his name?’
‘George Faber. He represents one of the New York dailies.’
‘The biggest one,’ said the old princess firmly. ‘And you can’t shrug him off like a cold in the head. You’re too vulnerable now, my boy. You have the Osservatore against you, and Chiara in bed with the American press. You can’t afford a situation like that.’
‘I can’t change it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Campeggio’s son works for me. He likes me and dislikes his father. Chiara will probably marry this Faber as soon as she gets the decree of nullity. There’s nothing I can do about either situation.’
‘I think there is.’ She fixed him with a shrewd and rheumy eye. ‘Take young Campeggio first. You know what I should do?’
‘I’d like to hear it.’
‘Promote him. Push him forward as fast as you can. Promise him something even bigger after the election. Bind him to you with trust and friendship. His father will hate you, but the boy will love you, and I don’t think Campeggio will fight his own son…As for Chiara and her American boy friend, leave them to me.’
‘What do you propose to do?’
The old princess gave her high birdlike chuckle and shook her head. ‘You have no talent with women, Corrado. Just sit quietly and leave Chiara to me.’
Calitri spread his eloquent hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘Just as you say, Aunt. I’ll leave her to you.’
‘I’ll take your advice, Aunt.’
‘I know you will. Give me a kiss now, and cheer up. You’ll have dinner with me tomorrow night. There are some people from the Vatican I want you to meet. Now that you’re back in the bosom of the Church, they can begin to be useful to you.’
He kissed her withered cheek and watched her leave, wondering the while that so much vitality should reside in so frail a body, and whether he had enough to sustain the bargain he had made with his backers.
All his life he had been making deals like this one. Always the price had to be paid in the same coin – another fragment of himself. Each depletion made him less assured of his identity, and he knew that in the end he would be altogether empty, and the spiders would spin webs in the hollow of his heart.
Depression came down on him like a cloud. He poured himself a drink and carried it over to the window-seat from which he could look down on the city and the flight of pigeons over its ancient roofs. The Quirinale might be worth a Mass, but nothing – nothing – was worth the lifetime damnation to emptiness which was demanded of him.
To be sure, he had made a contract. He would be the White Knight without fear and without reproach, and the Christian Democrats would let him lead them into power. But there was room still for a footnote, and the Princess Maria-Rina had spelled it out for him…Trust and friendship…Perhaps even more! In the sour bargain he had made, there was suddenly a hint of sweetness.
He picked up the telephone, dialled the number of his office, and asked young Campeggio to bring the afternoon’s correspondence to his apartment.
At ten-thirty on a cloudless morning, Charles Corbet Carlin, Cardinal Archbishop of New York, landed at Fiumicino airport. An official of the Secretariat of State met him at the steps of the aircraft and hurried him past the Customs and Immigration officials into a Vatican limousine. An hour and a half later, he was closeted with Kiril the Pontiff and Goldoni the Secretary of State.
Carlin was by nature a peremptory man, and he understood the usages of power. He was quick to see the change that a few months of office had wrought in the Pope. He had lost none of his charm, none of his swift, intuitive warmth. Yet he seemed to have reached a new dimension of authority. His scarred face was leaner, his speech more brisk, his whole manner more urgent and concerned. Yet, characteristically, he opened the discussion with a smile and an apology:
‘I’m grateful that Your Eminence came so promptly. I know how busy you are. I wanted to explain myself more fully, but I could not trust the information even to a coded cable.’
Then in crisp, emphatic sentences, he explained the reason for the summons and showed Carlin the text of Kamenev’s two letters.
The American scanned them with a shrewd and calculating eye, and then handed them back to the Pontiff. ‘I understand Your Holiness’s concern. I confess I am less clear on what Kamenev hopes to gain by this manoeuvre.’
Goldoni permitted himself a faint smile. ‘Your Eminence’s reaction is the same as mine…A manoeuvre! His Holiness, however, takes a different view.’
Kiril spread his crooked hands on the desk top and explained himself simply. ‘I want you to understand first that I know this man. I know him more intimately than I know either of you. For a long time he was my interrogator in prison. Each of us has had a great influence on the other. It was he who arranged my escape from Russia. I am profoundly convinced that this is not a political manoeuvre, but a genuine appeal for help in the crisis which will soon be upon us.’
Carlin nodded thoughtfully. ‘Your Holiness may be right. It would be folly to discount your experience with this man and your intimate knowledge of the Russian situation. On the other hand – and I say it with all respect – we have another kind of experience with Kamenev and with the Soviets.’
‘When you say “we”, do you refer to the Church or to the United States of America?’
‘To both,’ said Carlin flatly. ‘So far as the Church is concerned, the Secretariat of State will bear me out. There is still active persecution in the satellite countries. In Russia the faith has been totally extinguished. Our brother bishops who went to prison with Your Holiness are all dead. The Soviet frontiers are sealed against the faith. I see no prospect of their being opened in our time.’
Goldoni added agreement. ‘I have already put this view very clearly to His Holiness.’
‘And I,’ said Kiril the Pontiff, ‘do not disagree with it…Now tell me about the American view.’
‘At first blush,’ said Carlin, ‘this looks to me like another version of the old summit meetings. We all remember the arguments…“Let’s bypass the lower echelons and let the leaders talk freely and familiarly about our problems. Let’s skip the details and get down to the fundamental issues that divide us…” Well, we had the meetings. They were always abortive. In the end every discussion was wrecked by the details. What ever good will existed before the meetings was diminished, if not wholly destroyed. In the end, you see, the lower echelons of government are more decisive than the upper ones, because under our system, and under the Russian one, the leader is always subject to the pressures of political and administrative advice from below. No single man can sustain the burden of decision on major issues.’ He smiled expansively at the Pontiff. ‘Even in the Church we have the same situation. Your Holiness is the Vicar of Christ. Yet the effectiveness of your decisions is limited by the co-operation and obedience of the local ordinaries.’
Kiril and Pontiff picked up the letters from his desk and held them out to his two counsellors. ‘So what would you have me do about these? Ignore them?’
Carlin side-stepped the question. ‘What does Kamenev ask Your Holiness to do?’
‘He is very clear, I think. He asks me to communicate the letters to the President of the United States, and communicate also my own interpretation of his mind and his intentions.’
‘What is his mind, Holiness? What are his intentions?’
‘Let me quote again what he says. “Within twelve months, even sooner, we may come to the brink of war. I want peace. I know that we cannot have it with a one-sided bargain. On the other hand, I cannot dictate its terms even to my own people. I am caught in the current of history. I can tack across it but I cannot change the direction of the flow…I believe you understand what I am trying to say. I ask you, if you can, to interpret it as clearly as possible to the President of the United States…” To me, in my knowledge of the man, the message is quite evident. Before the crisis become irreversible, he wants to establish a ground of negotiation, so that peace may be preserved.’
‘But what ground?’ asked Goldoni. ‘Your Holiness must admit that he is somewhat less than precise.’
‘Put it another way,’ said Carlin in his pragmatic fashion. ‘I go back home. I call Washington and ask for a private interview with the President of the United States. I show him these letters. I say: “It is the view of the Holy See that Kamenev wants to begin secret talks to fend off the crisis we all know is coming. The Pope will be the intermediary of the talks…” What do you think the President will say or do then? What would Your Holiness do in his place?’
Kiril’s scarred face twitched into a smile of genuine amusement. ‘I should say, talk costs nothing. So long as men can communicate, however haltingly, then there is a hope of peace. But close all the doors, cut all the wires, build the walls even higher – then each nation is an island, preparing in secret a common destruction.’
Abruptly Carlin challenged the argument. ‘There is a flaw in the logic, Holiness. Forgive me, but I have to show it to you. Talk always costs something – this kind of talk especially. Secret parleys are dangerous because once they are brought into the open – and inevitably they must be – then they can be denied by those who took part in them. They can be used as weapons in political dealings.’
‘Remember!’ Goldoni added the potent afterthought. ‘There are no longer two grand powers in the world. There is Russia, and the United States. There is the European block. There is China, and there are the uncommitted nations of Asia and Africa and the South Americas. There is not only the arms race. There is the race to feed the hungry and the race to align vast numbers of mankind with one ideology or another. We dare not take too simple a view of this very complex world.’
‘I hesitate to say it, Holiness,’ said Carlin gravely. ‘But I should not like to see the Holy See compromised by offering itself as an intermediary in bilateral and probably abortive discussions…Personally I mistrust a truce with the Russian bear, no matter how prettily he dances.’
‘You have him in the papal coat of arms,’ said Kiril tartly. ‘Do you mistrust him there too?’
‘Let me answer the question with another. Can Your Holiness trust himself completely in this matter? This is not doctrine or dogma, but an affair of State. Your Holiness is as open to error as the rest of us.’
He had been dangerously frank and he knew it. To be Cardinal Archbishop of New York was to sit high in the Church, to dispose great influence, to command money and resources vital to the economy of the Vatican. Yet, in the constitution of the faith, the Successor of Peter was paramount, and in its history many a Cardinal Prince had been stripped of his preferment by a single word from an outraged Pontiff. Charles Corbet Carlin sat back in his chair and waited, not without uneasiness, for the papal answer.
To his surprise, it was delivered in a tone of restraint and real humility. ‘Everything you tell me is true. It is, in fact, a reflection of my own thought on the matter. I am grateful that you have chosen to be open with me, that you have not tried to bend me by diplomatic words. I do not want to bend you either. I do not want to force you to act against your own prudence. This is not a matter of faith or morals, it is a matter of private conviction, and I should like to share mine with you…Let us have lunch first, and then I want to show you both something. You have seen it before, but I hope today it may take on another meaning for you.’
Then, seeing the doubt and surprise on their faces, he laughed almost boyishly. ‘No, there are no plots, no Borgia subtleties. I’ve learned something in Italy. One should never discuss weighty matters on an empty stomach. I think Goldoni will agree that I’ve reformed the Vatican kitchens if nothing else. Come now, let’s relax for a while.’
They ate simply but well in Kiril’s private apartment. They talked discursively of men and affairs and the hundred intimacies of the hierarchic society to which they belonged. They were like members of an exclusive international club, whose fellows were scattered to every point of the compass, but whose affairs were common knowledge in all tongues.
When the meal was over and the Vatican had lapsed into the somnolence of siesta time, Kiril put on a black cassock and led his two guests into the Basilica of Saint Peter.
The tourists were sparse now, and no one paid any attention to three middle-aged clerics halted by the confessional boxes near the sacristy. Kiril pointed to one of them which carried on its door the laconic legend, ‘Polish and Russian’.
‘Once a week I come and sit here for two hours, to hear the confession of anyone who chances to come. I should like to hear them in Italian as well, but the dialects escape me…You both know what this ministry of the tribunal is like. The good ones come. The bad ones stay away; but every so often there arrives the soul in distress, the one who needs a special co-operation from the confessor to lead him back to God…It’s a lottery always – a gamble on the moment and the man, and the fruitfulness of the Word one plucks from one’s own heart. And yet there, in that stuffy little box, is the whole meaning of the faith – the private speech of man with his Creator, myself between as man’s servant and God’s. There, encompassed by the smell of blood sausage and cabbage water, and the sweat of a frightened man, I am what I was ordained to be: a sublime opportunist, a fisher of men, not knowing what I shall catch in my net or whether I shall catch anything at all…Now come over here.’
He beckoned to an attendant to accompany them. Then he took the arms of the two Cardinals and walked them across to the steps that led down to the confession of Saint Peter, in front of the great altar of Bernini. They descended the steps. The attendant unlocked the bronze grille in front of the kneeling statue of Pope Pius VI. When they entered the recess, he closed the door on them and retired to a respectful distance. Kiril led his two counsellors to the space where a dark hole plunged down towards the grottoes of the Vatican. Then he turned to face them. His voice dropped to a murmur that echoed softly round the enclosure.
‘Down there, they say, is the tomb of Peter the Fisherman. Whenever I am afraid or in darkness, I come here to pray, and ask him what I, his inheritor, should do. He was an opportunist too, you know. The Master gave him the Keys of the Kingdom. The Holy Ghost gave him the gift of wisdom and the gift of tongues. Then he was left, still a fisherman, an alien in the empire of Rome, to plant the seed of the Gospel wherever there was earth to receive it…He had no method. He had no temple. He had no book but the living Gospel. He was conditioned by the time in which he lived, but he could not be bound by the condition…Neither can I. Do you remember the story of Paul coming into the city of Athens, among the philosophers and the rhetors, and seeing the altar of the Unknown God? Do you remember what he did? He cried out with a loud voice: “Men, brethren! What you worship without knowing, I preach!” Is not this an opportunist also? He does not reason with the moment. He does not appeal to a system or a history. He gambles himself and his mission on a word tossed into a milling crowd. Don’t you see? This is the meaning of faith. This is the risk of belief.’
He turned a luminous face on Carlin, not commanding but pleading with him. ‘Before Your Eminence came to see me I was in darkness. I saw myself as a fool shouting a folly to a heedless world. So be it! That is what we preach : transcendent nonsense which we trust in the end will make a divine logic…’
Abruptly he relaxed and grinned at them mischievously. ‘In prison I learned to gamble, and I found that in the end the man who always won was he who never hedged his bets. I know what you’re thinking. I want to navigate the barque of Peter by the seat of my papal breeches…But if the wind is blown by the breath of God, and the water is rocked by His hands…how better can I do it? Answer me! How better can I do it?’
In the narrow enclosure, Goldoni shifted uneasily on his feet.
Carlin stood as obstinate and unshakable as Plymouth Rock. He said evenly, ‘This is perhaps the faith that moves mountains, Holiness. I regret that it has not been given to me in the same measure. I am compelled to work by normal prudence. I cannot agree that the affairs of the Church can be administered by private inspiration.’
Kiril the Pontiff was still smiling when he answered. ‘You elected me by inspiration, Eminence. Do you the Holy Ghost has deserted me?’
Carlin was not to be put off. He pressed his argument stubbornly. ‘I did not say that, Holiness. But I will say this : no one is large enough to make himself the universal man. You want to be all things to all men, but you can never truly succeed. You’re a Russian, I am an American. You ask me to risk more on this Kamenev than I would risk on my own brother, if he were President of the United States. I cannot do it.’
‘Then,’ said Kiril, with unexpected mildness, ‘I will not ask you to do it. I will not ask you to risk anything. I will give you a simple command. You will present yourself to the President of the United States. You will offer him these letters, and one which I shall write myself. If your opinion is asked, you will be free to say whatever you wish, as a private cleric and as an American, but you will not attempt to interpret my mind or Kamenev’s. This way I hope you will feel free to discharge your duty to the Church and to your country.’
Carlin flushed. He said awkwardly, ‘Your Holiness is generous with me.’
‘Not generous, only logical. If I believe the Holy Ghost can work through me and through Kamenev, why should he not work through the President of the United States? It is never wise to discount Omnipotence. Besides,’ he added gently, ‘you may do better for me in opposition. At least you will guarantee the good faith of the Holy See towards the United States of America…I think now, perhaps, we should pray together. It is not expected that we should agree on what is prudent, only that our wills should be set towards the service of the same God.’
As the month of July drew to a close, and the summer exodus from Rome began, Ruth Lewin found herself caught up once more in the cyclic drama of mental distress.
The onset of the action was always the same: a deep melancholy, a sensation of solitude, a feeling of rootlessness, as though she had been set down suddenly on an unfamiliar planet where her past was meaningless, her future was a question mark, and communication lapsed into gibberish.
The melancholy was the worst sensation of all. As a symptom it was familiar to her; yet she could neither reason with it nor dispel it. It drove her into fits of weeping. When the tears stopped; she felt empty and incapable of the simplest pleasure. When she looked in a mirror she saw herself old and ravaged. When she walked out into the city, she was a stranger, an object of derision to the passers-by.
The flaw in her personality must be evident to everybody. She was a German by birth, a Jew by race, an American by adoption, an exile in the country of the sun. She demanded belief and refused it with the same gesture. She needed love and knew herself impotent to express it. She wanted desperately to live, yet was haunted by the insidious attraction of death. She was everything and nothing. There were times when she huddled helpless in her apartment like a sick animal, afraid of the clamorous health of her kind.
All her relationships seemed to fail her at once. She moved like a stranger among her protégés in old Rome. She made expensive telephone calls to friends in America. When they failed to answer she was desolate. When they responded with casual thanks, she was convinced she had made a fool of herself. She was oppressed by the prospect of summer, when Rome was deserted and the heat lay like a leaden pall over the alleys and the sluggish life of the piazzas.
At night she lay wakeful with aching breasts, tormented by a fire in the flesh. When she drugged herself into sleep, she dreamed of her dead husband and woke sobbing in an empty bed. The young doctor with whom she worked came to visit her, but he was too immersed in his own problems, and she was too proud to reveal her own to him. He was in love with her, he said, but his demands were too blunt, and when she drew away he was quickly bored, so that in the end he stopped coming, and she blamed herself for his neglect.
A couple of times she tried the old prescription for unhappy widows in Rome. She sat herself in a bar and tried to drink herself into recklessness. But three drinks made her ill, and when she was accosted, she was brusquely and unreasonably angry.
The experience was salutary. It made her cling with a kind of desperation to the last vestige of reason. It gave her a little more patience to support the illness which she knew must pass, even though she dare not wait too long upon the cure. Each petty crisis depleted her reserves and brought her one step nearer the medicine cabinet, where the bottle of barbiturates mocked her with the illusion of forgetfulness.
Then, one heavy and threatening day, hope stepped into her life again. She had wakened late and was dressing listlessly when the telephone rang. It was George Faber. He told her Chiara was out of town. He was feeling lonely and depressed. He would like to take her to dinner. She hesitated a moment, and then accepted.
The incident was over in two minutes, but it wrenched her out of depression and into an almost normal world. She made a hasty appointment with her hairdresser. She bought herself a new cocktail frock for twice the money she could afford. She bought flowers for her apartment, and a bottle of Scotch whisky for Faber; and when he came to call for her at eight o’clock, she was as nervous as a débutante on her first date.
He was looking older, she thought, a trifle stooped, a little greyer than at their last meeting. But he was still the dandy, with a carnation in his buttonhole, an engaging smile, and a bunch of Nemi violets for her dressing-table. He kissed her hand in the Roman fashion, and while she mixed his drink he explained himself ruefully:
‘I have to go south on this Calitri business. Chiara hates Rome in the summer, and the Antonellis have asked her to go to Venice with them for a month. They’ve taken a house on the Lido…I hope to join them later. Meantime…’ He gave a little uneasy laugh. ‘I’ve lost the habit of living alone…And you did say I could call you.’
‘I’m glad you called, George. I don’t like living alone either.’
‘You’re not offended?’
‘Why should I be? A night on the town with the dean of the foreign press, that’s an event for most women. Here’s your drink.’
They toasted each other and then fenced their way through the opening gambits of talk.
‘Where would you like to dine, Ruth? Do you have any preferences?’
‘I’m in your hands, good sir.’
‘Would you like to be quiet or gay?’
‘Gay, please. Life’s been all too quiet lately.’
‘That suits me. Now, would you like to be a Roman or a tourist?’
‘A Roman, I think.’
‘Good. There’s a little place over in Trastevere. It’s crowded and noisy, but the food’s good. There’s a guitar player, an odd poet or two, and a fellow who draws pictures on the tablecloth.’
‘It sounds wonderful.’
‘I used to like it, but I haven’t been there in a long time. Chiara doesn’t like that sort of thing.’ He blushed and fiddled nervously with his liquor. ‘I’m sorry. That’s the wrong beginning.’
‘Let’s make a bargain, George.’
He gave her a quick, shamefaced glance. ‘What sort of bargain?’
‘Tonight nothing is wrong. We say what we feel, do what we like, and then forget it. No strings, no promises, no apologies…I need it like that.’
‘I need it too, Ruth. Does that sound like disloyalty?’
She leaned across and placed a warning finger on his lips. ‘No second thoughts, remember! ’
‘I’ll try…Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing?’
‘Working. Working with my juden and wondering why I do it.’
‘Don’t you know why?’
‘Sometimes. At others it’s pretty meaningless.’
She got up and switched on the radio-player, and the room was filled with the saccharine tones of a Neapolitan singer. Ruth Lewin laughed. ‘Pretty schmalzy, isn’t it?’
Faber grinned and lay back in his chair, relaxed for the first time. ‘Now who’s having second thoughts? I like schmalz – and I haven’t heard the word three times since I left New York.’
‘It’s the Yiddish in me. It slips out when I’m off my guard.’
‘Does that worry you?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘Why should it?’
‘That’s a long story, and it’s not for now. Finish your drink, George. Then take me out and make a Roman of me, just for tonight.’
At the doorway of the apartment he kissed her lightly on the lips, and then they walked, arm in arm, past the ghostly marbles of the Forum. Then for a final surrender to whimsy, they hailed a carrozza and sat holding hands while the tired horse carried them clippity-clop over the Palatine bridge and into the populous lanes of Trastevere.
The restaurant was called ’o Cavalluccio. Its entrance was an old oaken door, studded with rusty nails. Its sign was a prancing stallion, roughly carved into the weathered stone of the lintel and picked out with whitewash. The interior was a large, vaulted cellar, hung with dusty lanterns and set with heavy wooden refectory tables. The clientele was mostly families from the quarter, and the spirit of the place was one of amiable tyranny.
The proprietor, a dumpy fellow in a white apron, set them down in a dark corner, planked a flask of red and a flask of white wine in front of them, and announced his policy with a flashing smile:
‘As much wine as you can drink! Good wine; too, but no fancy labels. Two kinds of pasta only. Two main dishes – a roast of chicken and a stew of veal in Marsala. After that you’re in the hands of God!’
As Faber had promised, there was a guitar player, a swarthy youth with a red bandana round his neck and a tin cup tied to his belt for an alms-box. There was a bearded poet dressed in blue denims, home-made sandals and a sackcloth shirt, who turned an honest penny by mocking the guests with verses improvised in the Roman dialect. For the rest, the entertainment was provided by the clowning of the guests themselves and an occasional raucous chorus called by the guitar player. The pasta was served in great wooden bowls, and an impudent waiter tied a huge napkin round their necks to protect their noble bosoms from the sauce.
Ruth Lewin was delighted with the novelty, and Faber, plucked out of his normal ambience, seemed ten years younger and endowed with an unsuspected wit.
He charmed her with his talk of Roman intrigues and Vatican gossips, and she found herself talking freely of the long and tortuous journey which had brought her at last to the Imperial City. Encouraged by Faber’s sympathy, she exposed her problems more freely than she had ever done, except to an analyst, and found to her surprise that she was no longer ashamed of them. On the contrary they seemed to define themselves more clearly, and the terror they had once held for her was magically diminished.
‘…For me everything boiled itself down to a question of security, and the need to put down some kind of roots in a world that had shifted too quickly for my childish understanding. I never seemed to be able to do it. Everything in my life, people, the Church, the happiness I enjoyed – and I did have moments of great happiness – everything seemed to have the look of “here one day and gone the next”…I found that I could not believe in the permanence of the simplest relationship. The worst moments were when I found myself doubting that anything that had happened to me was real at all. It was as if I had been living a dream – as if I, the dreamer, were a dream too. Does that sound strange to you, George?’
‘No, not strange. Sad, yes, but rather refreshing too.’
‘Why do you say that?’
He sipped his wine thoughtfully, and then gave her a long, searching look over the rim of his glass. ‘I suppose because Chiara is just the opposite. In spite of everything that has happened to her, she seems completely certain of what she wants in life, and how she’s going to get it. There’s only one way to be happy – her way. There’s only one way to be amused or content – the way to which she has been bred. Her marriage to Calitri shocked her dreadfully, but basically it didn’t change her view of life…I think in the end you may be more fortunate than she is.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘I think you must. You may not be happy yet. You may never be truly secure. But you’re more flexible, more ready to understand the thousand ways people live, and think, and suffer.’
‘I often wonder if that is a good thing – or whether it’s just another illusion on my part. You know, I have the same dream over and over again. I talk to someone. He does not hear me. I reach out for someone. He does not even see me. I am waiting to meet someone. He walks right past me. I’m convinced that I don’t exist at all.’
‘Take my word for it,’ said George Faber with a rueful smile. ‘You do exist and I find you very disturbing.’
‘Why disturbing?’.
Before he had time to answer, the bearded poet came and took his stand by their table, and declaimed a long rigmarole that sent the diners into roars of laughter. George Faber laughed, too, and handed him a bank note for reward. The poet added another couplet that raised another roar of laughter, then backed away, bowing like a courtier.
‘What did he say, George? I missed most of the dialect.’
‘He said we weren’t young enough to be single, but we weren’t too old to look like lovers. He wondered if your husband knew what you were doing, and whether the baby would look like him or me. When I gave him the money he said I was rich enough not to care, but if I wanted to keep you I’d better marry you in Mexico.’
Ruth Lewin blushed. ‘A very uncomfortable poet, but I like him, George.’
‘I like him too. I wish I could afford to be his patron.’
They were silent a while, listening to the clatter and the muted, melancholy music of the guitar. Then, casually enough, Faber asked:
‘What will you do with yourself during the summer?’
‘I don’t know. Just now I’m dreading it. In the end I’ll probably take one of those CIT tours. They can be pretty dull, I know, but at least one isn’t alone.’
‘You wouldn’t think of joining me for a few days? Positano first, then Ischia.’
She did not shrink away from the question, but faced it in her forthright fashion. ‘On what terms, George?’
‘The same as tonight. No strings, no promises, no apologies.’
‘What about Chiara?’
He gave her a shrugging, uneasy answer. ‘I won’t question what she does in Venice. I don’t think she’ll question me. Besides, what harm is there? I’ll be working for Chiara. You and I are both grown up. I’d like you to think about it.’
She smiled and refused him gently. ‘I mustn’t think about it, George. You’re finding it hard enough to cope with the woman you have. I doubt you could handle me as well.’ She reached out and took his hand between her palms. ‘You have a rough fight ahead of you, but you can’t win it if you split down the middle. I can’t divide myself, either…Please don’t be angry with me. I know myself too well.’
He was instantly penitent. ‘I’m sorry. I guess it sounded pretty crude, but I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘I know you didn’t, and if I try to tell you how grateful I am I’ll cry. Now will you please take me home?’
Their driver was still waiting for them, patient and knowing, in the darkened alley. He roused his dozing horse and set him on the long way home: the Margherita bridge, the Villa Borghese, the Quirinale Piazza, and down past the Colosseum to the Street of St Gregory. Ruth Lewin laid her head on Faber’s shoulder and dozed fitfully while he listened to the clip-clop of the ancient nag and searched his troubled heart.
When they reached Ruth Lewin’s apartment, he helped her alight and held her for a moment in the shadow of the doorway.
‘May I come up for a little while?’
‘If you want to.’
She was too sleepy to protest, and too jealous of the little that was left of the evening. She made him coffee, and they sat together listening to music, each waiting for the other to break the dangerous spell. Impulsively, George Faber took her in his arms and kissed her, and she clung to him in a long and passionate embrace. Then he held her away from him and pleaded without reserve:
‘I want to stay with you, Ruth. Please, please let me stay.’
‘I want you to stay too, George. I want it more than anything in the world…But I’m going to send you home.’
‘Don’t tease me, Ruth. You’re not a girl like that. For God’s sake don’t tease me!’
All the needs of the years welled up in her and forced her towards surrender, but she drew away from him and pleaded in her turn. ‘Go home, George. I can’t have you like this. I’m not strong enough for it. You’ll wake in the morning and feel guilty about Chiara. You’ll thank me and slip away. And because you feel disloyal I won’t see you again. I do want to see you. I could be in love with you if I let myself, but I don’t want half a heart and half a man…Please, please go!’
He shook himself like a man waking out of a dream. ‘I will come back, you know that.’
‘I know it.’
‘You don’t hate me?’
‘How can I hate you? But I don’t want you to hate yourself because of me.’
‘If it doesn’t work out with Chiara…’
She closed his lips with a last light kiss. ‘Don’t say it, George! You’ll know soon enough…Perhaps too soon for both of us.’
She walked with him to the portico, watched him climb into the carrozza, and waited until the fading hoof-beats had died into the murmur of the city. Then she went to bed, and for the first time in months she slept dreamlessly.
In the Great Hall of the Gregorian University, Jean Télémond stood facing his audience.
His address lay before him on the rostrum, translated into impeccable Latin by a colleague of the Society. His back was straight. His hands were steady. His mind was clear. Now that the moment of crisis had come, he felt strangely calm, even elated by this final and resolute commitment of a lifetime’s work to the risk of open judgement.
The whole authority of the Church was here, summed up in the person of the Pontif, who sat, lean, dark, and oddly youthful, with the Father General on one side of him, and Cardinal Leone on the other. The best minds of the Church were here: six Cardinals of the Curia; the theologians and philosophers, dressed in their diverse habits – Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, and men of the ancient order of St Benedict. The future of the Church was here: in the students with scrubbed and eager faces, who had been chosen from every country in the world to study at the seat of Christendom. The diversity of the Church was here, too, expressed in himself, the exile, the solitary seeker, the exotic who yet wore the black tunic of brotherhood and shared the ministry of the servants of the Word.
He waited a moment, gathering himself. Then he made the sign of the Cross, delivered the opening allocution to the Pontiff and the Curia, and began his address:
‘It has taken a journey of twenty years to bring me to this place. I must therefore beg your patience while I explain myself, and the motives which prompted this long and often painful pilgrimage. I am a man and a priest. I became a priest because I believed that the primary and the only perfectly sustaining relationship was that between the Creator and the creature, and because I wished to affirm this relationship in a special fashion by a life of service. But I have never ceased to be a man, and as a man I have found myself committed, without recourse, to the world in which I live.
‘As a man, my deepest conviction – confirmed by all my experience – is that I am one person. I who think, I who feel, I who fear, I who know and believe, am a unity. But this unity of myself is part of a greater unity. I am separate from the world, but I belong to it because I have grown out of its growth just as the world has grown out of the unity of God as the issue of a single creative act.
‘I, therefore, the one, am destined to participate in the oneness of the world, as I am destined to participate in the oneness of God. I cannot set myself in isolation from creation any more than I can, without destroying myself, set myself in isolation from the Creator.
‘From the moment that this conviction became clear to me, another followed it by inevitable consequence. If God is one, and the world is one issue of His eternal act, and I am a single person spawned out of this complex unity, then all knowledge – of myself, of creation, of the Creator – is one knowledge. That I do not have all knowledge, that it presents itself to me by fragments and in diversity, means nothing except that I am finite, limited by time and space and the capacity of my brain.
‘Every discovery I make points in the same direction. No matter how contradictory the fragments of knowledge may appear, they can never truly contradict one another. I have spent a lifetime in one small branch of science, palaeontology. But I am committed to all sciences, to biology, to physics, to the chemistry of inorganic matter, to philosophy, and to theology, because all are branches of the same tree, and the tree grows upwards towards the same sun. Never, therefore, can we risk too much or dare too boldly in the search for knowledge, since every step forward is a step towards unity – of man with man, of men with the universe, of the universe with God…’
He glanced up, trying to read in the faces of his audience a reaction to his words. But there was nothing to. read. They wanted to hear his whole case before they committed themselves to a verdict. He turned back to the typescript and read on.
‘Today I want to share with you a part of the journey which I have made for the past twenty years. Before we begin it, however, there are two things I want to say. The first is this. An exploration is a very special kind of journey. You do not make it like a trip from Rome to Paris. You must never demand to arrive on time and with all your baggage intact. You walk slowly with open eyes and open minds. When the mountains are too high to climb you march around them and try to measure them from the lowlands. When the jungle is thick you have to cut your way through it, and not resent too much the labour or the frustration.
‘The second thing is this: When you come to record the journey, the new contours, the new plants; the strangeness and the mystery, you find often that your vocabulary is inadequate. Inevitably your narrative will fall far short of the reality. If you find this defect in my record, then I beg you to tolerate it and let it not discourage you from contemplation of strange landscapes which, nevertheless, bear the imprint of the creative finger of God.
‘Now to begin…’
He paused, twitched his cassock over his thin shoulders, and lifted his lined face to them in a kind of challenge.
‘I want you to come with me, not as theologians or philosophers, but as scientists – men whose knowing begins with seeing. What I want you to see is man: a special kind of being who exists in a visible ambience at a determinable point in time and space.
‘Let us look at him in space first. The universe which he inhabits is immense, galactic. It stretches beyond moon and sun into an enormity of dimension which our mathematics can only express by an indefinite extension of zeros.
‘Look at man in time. He exists now at this moment, but his past goes back to a point where we lose him in a mist. His future prolongs itself beyond our conception of any possible circumstance.
‘Look at man by numbers, and you find yourself trying to count the grains of sand on a shoreline without limit.
‘Look at him by scale and proportion and you find him on the one hand a minuscule dwarf, in a universe without apparent limits. Measure him by another scale and you find in partial control of the enormity in which he lives…’
The most sceptical of his hearers – and there were many in the audience who were disposed to be dubious of him – found themselves being caught up and carried along by the strong current of his eloquence. The passion of his conviction expressed itself in every line of his weathered face, in every gesture of his thin, expressive hands.
Rudolf Semmering, the grim, soldierly man, found himself nodding approval of the noble temper of his subject. Cardinal Rinaldi smiled his thin, ironic smile and wondered what the pedants would make of this valiant intruder into their private domain. Even Leone, the harsh old watchdog of the faith, leaned his crabby chin on his hand and registered a reluctant tribute to the unflinching courage of this suspect spirit.
In Kiril the Pontiff the conviction grew, swift as a conjurer’s mango plant, that this was the man he wanted: a man totally committed to the risk of living and knowing, yet anchored firm as a sea-battered rock to belief in a divinely planned unity. The waves might tear at him, the winds might score his spirit, but he would stand unshaken and unshakable under the assault. He found himself murmuring a message to sustain him. ‘Go on! Don’t be afraid. Your heart is right, and it beats in time with mine. No matter that the words stumble and the record falters. The vision is dear, the will points straight and true towards the Centre. Go on!…’
Télémond was in full course now, expounding to them his view of matter – the material of the universe which expressed itself in so many different appearances, and finally in the appearance of man.
‘…“God made man of the dust of the earth!” The Biblical image expresses aptly the most primitive conviction of man – a conviction confirmed by the most advanced scientific experiment – that the stuff of which he is formed is capable of indefinite scaling down to particles infinitely small…At a certain point of this scaling down, man’s vision of himself becomes blurred. He needs spectacles, then a microscope, then a whole array of instrumentation to supplement his failing sight. For a moment he is lost in diversity – molecules, atoms, electrons, neutrons, protons…so many and so different! Then suddenly they all come together again. The universe, from the farthest nebulae to the simplest atomic structure, is a whole: a system, a quantum of energy – in other words, a unity. But – and I must ask you to lean and linger and think upon this most important “but” – this universe is not a static whole, it is in a constant state of change and transformation. It is in a state of genesis…a state of becoming, a state of evolving. And this is the question which I ask you to face with me now. The universe is evolving and man is evolving with it – into what?…’
They were with him now. Critics or captives of the idea, they were with him. He could see them leaning forward in their benches, intent on every phrase and every inflection. He could feel their interest projected towards him like a wave. He gathered himself once again and began to sketch, with swift, decisive strokes, the picture of a cosmos in motion, rearranging itself, diversifying itself, preparing itself for the coming of life, for the coming of consciousness, for the arrival of the first subhuman species, and the ultimate arrival of man.
He was on his own ground now, and he marched them forward with him, out of the misty backward of a crystallizing world to the moment when the change to life from non-life took place, when the megamolecule became the micro-organism, and the first biotic forms appeared on the planet.
He showed them how the primitive life-forms spread themselves in a vast network around the surface of the spinning globe; how they joined and disjoined into a multitude of combinations; how some conjunctions were swiftly suppressed because they were too specially adapted to a time and a condition of the evolutionary march; how others survived by changing themselves, by becoming more complex in order to guarantee their own endurance.
He showed them the first outlines of a fundamental law of nature – the too specialized life-form was the first to perish. Change was the price of survival.
He did not shrink from the consequences of his thought. He took his audience by the scruff of their necks and forced them to face the consequences with him.
‘…Even so early in the evolutionary chain, we are faced with the brutal fact of biological competition. The struggle for life is endless. It is always accompanied by death and destruction, and violence of one kind or another…You will ask yourselves, as I have asked myself a thousand times, whether this struggle necessarily transfers itself, at a later stage of history, into the domain of man. At first blush the answer is yes. But I object to so crude and total an application of the biological pattern. Man does not live now on the same level at which he lived when he first made his appearance on the planet. He has passed through successive levels of existence; and it is my belief, supported by considerable evidence, that man’s evolution is marked by an effort to find other less brutal, and less destructive modes of competition for life…’
He leaned forward over the rostrum and challenged them with the thought that he knew was already in their minds.
‘You ask me why I do not invoke at this moment a divine intervention in the pattern of human evolvement. It is because we must continue to walk along the exploratory path which we have set ourselves. We are limiting ourselves only to what we see. And all we are seeing at this moment is man emerging as a phenomenon in a changing universe. If we are troubled by what we see, we must bear the trouble and not seek too easy an answer for it. I make this point although man has not yet appeared to our exploring eyes. We have leapt forward to meet him. Now we must go back.’
He could almost feel their tension relax. He stole a swift glance at the front row of the audience. Leone was shaking his white head and making a whispered comment to a Cardinal on his left. Rinaldi was smiling and he lifted one hand in an almost imperceptible gesture of encouragement. Kiril the Pontiff sat erect in his chair, his scarred face immobile, his dark eyes bright with interest.
Gently now Télémond led them back to the main stream of his story. He showed them the primitive life-forms reproducing themselves, multiplying, joining and rejoining, groping ingeniously but indifferently towards stability and permanence. He drew for them the tree of life and showed how it branched and yet grew upwards; how certain twigs died and fell off; how certain branches ceased to grow; but how, always, the main thrust of growth was upwards in the direction of the large brain and the complex organism, and the most flexible mechanism of survival. He showed them the first subhuman species – the hominoid, which was the prelude to the human – and finally he showed them man.
Then, brusquely, he presented them with a puzzle.
‘…;From where we stand now we see a continuity and a unity in the evolutionary process. But if we look closely, we see that the line of advance is not always a firm and a definite stroke. It is dotted in places, or broken. We cannot say where, in point of time, life began. Yet we know that it did begin. We know that the pterodactyl existed. We have dug his bones out of the earth. But where and by what mutations he came to be is not wholly clear to us. We see him first as plural …;many pterodactyls. But was there a first couple or were they always many? We do not know…So, with man, when we first find him on the earth, he is many. If we speak as scientists, there is no record of the emergence of man as a single couple. In the historic record written in primal clay, men are suddenly present. I do not say that they came suddenly, any more than that the pterodactyl came suddenly. All the evidence points to a slow emergence of the species, but at a certain point in history man is there, and with man something else is there as well…Consciousness… Man is a very special phenomenon. He is a being who knows, he is also a being who knows that he knows. We have come, you see, to a very particular point of history. A creature exists who knows that he knows…
‘Now, my friends, I want you to address yourself to my next question only as scientists, only as witnesses of the visible evidence. How did this special phenomenon emerge?
‘Let us step back from him a moment. Let us consider all those phenomena which preceded him, many of which still coexist with him, from the micro-organism to the hominoid ape. All of them have something in common – a drive, a groping, an urge to fit themselves for survival. To use an overworked and imprecise term, it is an instinct to do those things, to enter into those combinations and those associations which will enable them to proceed along their proper line of continuity. I prefer to choose another word than instinct. I prefer to say that this drive, or this capacity, is a primitive but evolving form of what culminates in man…Consciousness…’
Once again he had brought them to a crisis and he knew it. For the first time he felt really inadequate to display to them the whole range and subtlety of the thought. Time was against him and the simple semantic limitation and the rhetorical power to persuade them into a new, but still harmonious view of the nature and origin of humankind. Still, he went on resolutely, developing for them his own view of the cosmic pattern – primal energy, primitive life, primitive consciousness, all evolving and converging to the first focal point of history, thinking man. He took them farther yet, by a bold leap into their own territory, showing all the lines of human development converging to a final unity, a unity of man with his Creator.
More vividly than ever before he could feel the mood of his audience shifting. Some were in awe, some were dubious, some had settled themselves into complete hostility to his thought.
Yet, when he came to his peroration, he knew that he had done the best he could and that for all its sometime vagueness, and sometime risky speculation, his address had been the true reflection of his own intellectual position. There was nothing more he could do but commit himself to judgement and rest courageous in the outcome. Humbly, but with deep emotion, he summed it up for them.
‘I do not ask you to agree with me. I do not put any of my present conclusions beyond reconsideration or new development, but of this I am totally convinced: the first creative act of God was directed towards fulfilment and not destruction. If the universe is not centred on man, if man as the centre of the universe is not centred on the Creator, then the cosmos is a meaningless blasphemy. The day is not far distant when men will understand that even in biological terms, they have only one choice: suicide or an act of worship.’
His hands trembled and his voice shook as he read them the words of Paul to the Colossians:
‘“In Him all created things took their being, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible…They were all created through Him and in Him; He takes precedence of all, and in Him all subsist…It was God’s good pleasure to let all completeness dwell in Him, and through Him to win back all things, whether on earth or in heaven, unto union with Himself making peace with them through His blood, shed on the Cross.” ’
He did not hear the thunder of applause as he stepped down from the pulpit. As he knelt to pay his respects to the Pontiff, and lay the text of his address in his hands, he heard only the words of the blessing and the invitation – or was it a command? – that followed:
‘You’re a bold man, Jean Télémond. Time will tell whether you are right or wrong; but at this moment I need you. We all need you.’
…Yesterday I met a whole man. It is a rare experience but always an illuminating and ennobling one. It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment, or the courage, to pay the price…One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.
This is how I read Jean Télémond. This is why I have decided to draw him to me, to ask for his friendship, to use him as best I know in the work of the Church…Leone is uneasy about him. He has said so very bluntly. He points, quite rightly, to ambiguities and obscurities in his system of thought, to what he calls a dangerous rashness in certain of his speculations. He demands another full examination of all his writings by the Holy Office, before he is permitted to teach publicly or to publish his research.
I do not disagree with Leone. I am not so bold that I am prepared to gamble with the Deposit of Faith, which is, after all, the testament of Christ’s new covenant with man. To preserve it intact is the whole meaning of my office. This is the task which has been delegated to Leone in the Church…
On the other hand I am not afraid of Jean Télémond. A man so centred upon God, who has accepted twenty years of silence, has already accepted every risk, even the risk that he can be mistaken. Today he said so in as many words and I believe him…I am not afraid of his work either; I do not have the equipment or the time to judge truly of its ultimate value. This is why I have counsellors and experts learned in science, theology and philosophy to assist me…
I am convinced, moreover, that honest error is a step towards a greater illumination of the truth, since it exposes to debate and to clearer definition those matters which might otherwise remain obscure and undefined in the teaching of the Church. In a very special sense the Church too is evolving towards a greater fullness of understanding, a deeper consciousness of the divine life within itself.
The Church is a family. Like every family it has its homebodies and its adventurers. It has its critics and its conformists; those who are jealous of its least important traditions; those who wish to thrust it forward, a bright lamp into a glorious future. Of all of them I am the common father…When the adventurers come back scarred and travel-worn from a new frontier, from another foray, successful or unsuccessful, against the walls of ignorance, I must receive them with the charity of Christ and protect them with gentleness against those who have fared better only because they have dared much less. I have asked the Father General of the Jesuits to send Jean Télémond to keep me company at Castel Gandolfo during the summer. I hope and, pray that we may learn to be friends. He could enrich me, I think. I, for my part, may be able to offer him courage and a respite from his long and lonely pilgrimage
In an odd fashion he has given me courage as well. For some time now I have been engaged in a running debate with the Cardinal Secretary of the Congregation of Rites on the question of introducing the vernacular liturgy and a vernacular system of teaching into the seminaries and churches of missionary countries. This would mean inevitably a decline of the Latin liturgical language in many areas of the world. It would mean also an immense task of translation and annotation, so that the works of the Fathers of the Church would be made available to clerical students in their own language.
The Congregation of Rites takes the view that the merits of the change are far outweighed by its disadvantages. They point out that it would run counter to the decisions of the Council of Trent, and to the pronouncements of later Councils and later Pontiffs. They claim that the stability and uniformity of our organization depend much on the use of a common official tongue in the definition of doctrine, the training of teachers, and the celebration of the liturgy.
I myself take the view that our first duty is to preach the Word of God and to dispense the grace of the Sacraments, and that anything which stands in the way of this mission should be swept aside.
I know, however, that the situation is not quite so simple. There is, for example, a curious division of opinion in the small Christian community in Japan. The Japanese bishops want the Latin system preserved. Because of their unique and isolated position, they are inclined to be timorous about any change at all. On the other hand, missionary priests working in the country report that work is handicapped when the vernacular is not used.
In Africa the native Cardinal Ragambwe is very dear that he wants to try the vernacular system. He is very aware of the risks and the problems, but he still feels that a trial should be made. He is a holy and enlightened man, and I have great respect for his opinion.
Ultimately the decision rests with me, but I have deferred it because I have been so vividly aware of the complexity of the problem and of the historic danger that small and isolated groups of Christians may, for lack of a common communication, be separated from the daily developing life of the Church. We are not building only for today, but for tomorrow and for eternity.
However, listening to Jean Télémond, I felt myself encouraged to make a decisive step. I have decided to write to those bishops who want to introduce the vernacular system and ask them to propose to me a definite plan for its use. If their plans seem workable, and if at the same time a certain select number of the clergy can be trained in the traditional mode, I am disposed to let the new system be tried…I expect strong opposition from the Congregation of Rites, and from many bishops in the Church, but a move must be made to break the deadlock which inhibits our apostolic work, so that the Faith may begin to grow with more freedom in emerging nations.
They are all jealous of their new identity, and they must be led to see that they can grow in, and with, the Faith towards a legitimate social and economic betterment. We are not yet one world, and we shall not be for a long time, but God is one, and the Gospel is one, and it should be spoken in every tongue under heaven…This was the mode of the primitive Church. This was the vision which Télémond renewed for me: the unity of the spirit in the bond of Faith in the diversity of all knowledge and all tongues
Today I held the last series of audiences before the summer holidays. Among those whom I received privately was a certain Corrado Calitri, Minister of the Republic. I had already received most of the Italian Cabinet, but I had never met this man. The circumstance was sufficiently unusual for me to comment on it to the Maestro di Camera.
He told me that Calitri was a man of unusual talent, who had had a meteoric rise in the Christian Democratic Party. There was even talk that he might lead the country after the next elections.
He told me also that Calitri’s private life had been somewhat notorious for a long time, and that he was involved in a marital case presently under consideration by the Holy Roman Rota. Now, however, it seemed that Calitri was making serious efforts to reform himself and that he had put himself and his spiritual affairs into the hands of a confessor.
There was, of course, no discussion of these matters between myself and Calitri. An audience is an affair of state and has nothing to do with the spiritual relationship of Pastor and people.
None the less, I was curious about the man, and I was tempted for a moment to call for the file on his case. In the end I decided against it. If he comes to power, we shall have diplomatic connections, and it is better that it should not be complicated by a private knowledge on my part. It is better too that I do not interfere too minutely in the varied functions of the tribunals and the congregations. My time is very limited. My energies are limited, too, and presently they are so depleted that I shall be glad to pack and go from this place, into the comparative serenity of the countryside.
I see very clearly the shape of a great personal problem for every man who holds this office : how the press of business and the demands of so many people can so impoverish him that he has neither time nor will left to regulate the affairs of his own soul. I long for solitude and the leisure for contemplation. ‘Consider the lilies of the field…They labour not, neither do they spin!’ Lucky the ones who have time to smell the flowers, and doze at noonday under the orange trees…!