The Shoes of the Fisherman

by Morris West

  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 whic
h 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: