Meir blinked. “Personnel? You mean military personnel who might attack Bellver?”
Ezekiel shrugged. “Anything is possible at this point.”
“I suppose anything is, since you’re obviously still trying to pull together the final details of your final plan.” Seeing the look on Miro’s face, he scowled. “Wait: do you even have a plan at this point?”
Ezekiel smiled faintly. “I have some basic ideas; nothing so firm as a plan, just yet. But trust me; we shall reclaim the Stones from their Spanish prison.”
“You mean, by main force?”
“Well, yes, if it comes to it. What did you think?”
“I thought you were still sane. I presumed you would find a way to sneak them out, with maybe a rough moment or two along the way. But rescuing them by assaulting Bellver?” Meir stared at his friend. “Have you forgotten, Ezekiel? It’s on top of a hill. It is a fortification with towers and a separate lazarette, surrounded by outlying battlements. The terrain makes it almost inaccessible, except for the cart paths up to the place.”
“Yes, Meir; I remember all that. I know we won’t rescue them simply by battering our way in.”
“Well, what do you expect to do, Ezekiel Miro? Ask angels to pluck them out for you?”
Ezekiel started, stared at Meir and then laughed. “Yes. Something just like that.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Cardinal Antonio Barberini dipped his pen into the waiting ink as the other attendees in the Garden Room settled into their customary seats. Vitelleschi stood and raised his hands in something that looked like both a call for silence, and a benediction. “Today we resume our deliberations with the issue that Cardinal Wadding introduced last time: does the up-time ecumenical council known as Vatican II reflect God’s intents across all eternity? Or was it specifically, and only, infallibly valid in relation to the up-time world?” He turned to Cardinal Mazzare. “If you would be so good as to begin our discussions, Your Eminence.”
Mazzare folded his hands in front of him and seemed to be collecting his thoughts. As he did, Barberini noted that the up-timer’s posture was more studied, more implicitly cautious than usual. Antonio put his nose back into his note taking, but reflected that today’s session might prove very interesting, indeed.
Mazzare began. “Today’s topic troubles me more than any other, simply because the passage that Cardinal Wadding cited at the close of the last session seems implicitly contradictory. How can infallibility be transitory? Is the truth not the truth? Is the will of God not the will of God? We all agree that there is but one God and one Truth and they are the same. But then how is it that some of these timeless verities are ‘transitory’?”
Mazzare spread his hands. “I would offer the following answer, which is not entirely unlike the one Cardinal Wadding seems ready to propose: in short, although God and his truth are constant and unchanging, humankind is not. Vatican II was convened to make the Church more accessible. God loves his children, and as they grow, he wishes to communicate with them in a manner suitable to their new maturity. The delegates of Vatican II understood this and merely included a reminder to future popes and councils that, as the ages accumulate and humanity grows in grace and wisdom, the same process will probably need to be undertaken again. Our Holy Father is truly our Holy Parent, who shows his love for us by adjusting his lessons, his language, and his challenges to our level of maturity and readiness. He does not give us more than we can handle, nor does he keep us frozen as infants: he expresses his thought and love to us as befit our needs, just as we aspire to a greater understanding of Him. Neither side of the human relationship with God is static; it is perpetually a dynamic equilibrium.”
Vitelleschi’s right eyebrow rose slightly. “Cardinal Mazzare, you have not yet spoken to the matter of papal authority, of how the doctrines and dogmas of up-time popes should be received in this world.”
Mazzare shrugged. “I do not speak to it because the answer seems obvious; if they were popes, they were infallible in matters of faith and morals. And they were popes. On the other hand, they are dead popes. Their authority does not impinge upon the popes of this time any more than the popes who have died here in this world.”
Barberini looked up for a moment, surprised by the falling tone at the end of Mazzare’s statement. Clearly, this was all he intended to say on the matter. Which was surprising, because the final declaration sounded more like an evasion dressed up as an assertion, rather than a solid argument. Barberini was not surprised that Wadding was on his feet a moment later.
Vitelleschi glanced at Wadding, then back to Mazzare. “Cardinal Wadding seems eager to question you on this statement, Cardinal Mazzare.”
Mazzare smiled. “I rather expected he might. I am happy to share the floor with my colleague.”
Wadding wasted no time probing at the exegetical evasions that Barberini himself had detected. “Your Eminence, you say that the popes in your world are analogous to the prior ones in our own world, correct?”
“Insofar as their infallibility is concerned, yes.”
“But how can this be?”
“How can this not be, if they are all popes?”
“Let us leave aside the issue of infallibility for just a moment. Let us instead remain focused on the issue of whether the popes of your world are so truly analogous to the past popes of our world. I question the accuracy of this analogy for the most obvious of all possible reasons: my world’s long chain of prior pontiffs have exercised their Extraordinary Sacred Magisterium to establish dogmas and doctrines that are now binding upon the present pope, Urban VIII. Do you agree?”
“Of course.”
“By which you implicitly agree that no present pope has the power to set aside that which was infallibly decreed by a prior pope?”
Mazzare cleared his throat. “Depending upon what you mean by the word prior, yes, I provisionally agree with that.”
Barberini almost set down his paper to listen; he had never heard Larry Mazzare equivocate before.
Wadding smelled blood. “Unless there are additional meanings of which I am unaware, ‘prior’ means to come before, to precede in time. And that is the crux of the difference we must consider: the pontiffs who have gone before us in our world-the very same as those who went before Urban VIII in your up-time world-are ‘prior’ popes. But those who came after Urban VIII in your world are not prior to the papacy of Urban VIII in this world.”
Mazzare smiled. “Yet we are even now discussing the infallible doctrines and dogma decreed by up-time pontiffs, which were first presented to His Holiness Urban VIII two years ago. Their presence in the canonical records of the Church thus precede these discussions and, as you have conceded, their perfection derives from the same Sacred Magisterium that is immanent in the current and prior popes.”
“Yes-and as also manifested in the up-time popes who came after Urban VIII, who are later popes,” corrected Wadding calmly.
“Yet here are their dogmas and directives, now; their existence precedes this discussion.”
Even to Barberini, Mazzare’s argument seemed somewhat ingenuous-and thus, desperate.
Wadding was pointing at Urban, “So you would have this pope constrained by the decrees of men who lived long after he died, and who you assert will now never be born, since the history of this world has been changed by your arrival in it?”
Mazzare spread his hands. “At no point did I say that this issue would be free of paradoxes. So allow me propose an escape from this one: God intends all things, yes?”
Wadding’s voice and face were wary. “Of course.”
“So it was known to God that Grantville would come back in time?”
“He is all powerful and all knowing, so this must be true.”
“Then, if Holy Writ is divinely inspired, either it should furnish us with explicit guidance for how the Church should respond to such a paradoxical challenge, or it already contains an implicit answer for us. I assert the latter: no explicit guidance is needed because infallibility transcends all other considerations, including those of time and sequence.”
Wadding smiled. “Cardinal Mazzare, do you really expect Holy Writ to include warnings about multiple realities and Churches? Should we really be surprised at the lack of specific injunctions to ‘hold only unto thine own pope?’” He turned to face Vitelleschi. “Father-General, I agree that Holy Writ is not deficient, but not because of the
