The Shoes of the Fisherman

by Morris West

  He was free to act but he had no promise of the consequences of his action. He was ordered to pray, but he had to pray in darkness and could not demand to know the form in which the answer might come . . .

  He was still wrestling with the dilemma when the Father General of the Jesuits telephoned and requested an audience with him. He had, he said, a mass of business to discuss with the Pontiff, but this could wait until the day set for normal audiences. This time he wanted to convey to the Holy Father the substance of his last talk with Jean Télémond.

  ‘When I went to see him, Holiness, I found him in deep confusion. I have never known a man so shocked. It took me a long time to calm him. But of this I am convinced. The submission he had made to Your Holiness was firm and true, and when he died he was at peace . . . ’

  ‘I am glad to hear it, Father. I knew what he was suffering. I wanted so much to share it, but he felt he had to withdraw from me.’

  ‘He did not withdraw, Holiness,’ said Semmering earnestly. ‘The thought in his mind was that he had to carry his own cross and work out his own salvation. He gave me a message for you.’

  ‘What message?’

  ‘He said that he did not believe he could have made this final and necessary Act of Faith without you. He said that when the moment came it presented itself to him as the greatest risk of his life. A risk of his integrity and of reason itself. It was almost – and I use his own words – as if he might be launching himself into insanity. He said that the only thing that gave him courage to make the leap was that Your Holiness had already made it before him, and that you had not shirked a single risk of speculation or of authority . . . I wish I could convey to Your Holiness the intensity with which he expressed himself.’ He gave a grim, restrained smile. ‘I have learned to be very sceptical, Holiness, of displays of fervour and religious emotion, but I am convinced that in this struggle of Father Télémond I was witnessing the very real battle of a soul with itself and with the powers of darkness. I felt myself ennobled by the victory.’

  Kiril was moved. ‘I am grateful, Father, that you have told me. I am myself facing a crisis. I am sure Jean would have understood it. I hope he is interceding for me now with the Almighty.’

  ‘I am sure he is, Holiness. In a way his death was a kind of martyrdom. He met it very bravely . . .’ He hesitated a moment and then continued, ‘There is another thing, Holiness. Before he died Father Télémond told me that you had promised that his work would not be lost or suppressed. This was, of course, before the Holy Office issued its opinion. All Father Télémond’s manuscripts have now come into my possession. I should like an indication of how Your Holiness would prefer us to deal with them.’

  Kiril nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’ve been thinking of that too. I have to agree with the option of the Holy Office that Jean’s opinions require re-examination. Speaking privately, I believe that there is much of value in them. It would be my thought to submit them to new study, and possibly to publish them later with annotation and commentary. I should think the Society of Jesus admirably equipped to carry out this work.’

  ‘We should be happy to undertake it, Holiness.’

  ‘Good. Now I should like to ask you a question . . . You are a theologian and a religious superior. How far was Jean Télémond justified in taking the risks he did?’

  ‘I have thought about that a long time, Holiness,’ said Rudolf Semmering. ‘It is a question I have had to ask myself many times, not only with Father Télémond, but with many other brilliant men inside the Society.’

  ‘And your conclusion, Father?’

  ‘If a man is centred upon himself, the smallest risk is too great for him, because both success and failure can destroy him. If he is centred upon God, then no risk is too great because success is already guaranteed – the successful union of Creator and creature beside which everything else is meaningless.’

  ‘I agree with you, Father,’ said Kiril the Pontiff. ‘But you ignore one risk – the one which I am facing now – that at any moment up to the moment of death man can separate himself from God. Even I who am His Vicar.’

  ‘What do you want me to say, Holiness?’ asked Rudolf Semmering. ‘I have to admit it. From the day we begin to reason until the day we die, we are at risk of damnation. All of us. This is the price of existence. Your Holiness has to pay it like the rest of us. I could judge Jean Télémond because he was my subject. But you I cannot judge, Holiness . . .’

  ‘Then pray, Father – and have all your brethren pray – for the Pope on a tightrope.’

  The meeting of the Roman Curia, which had called to discuss the international situation and his proposed visit to France, was set down for the first week in November. It was preceded by a week of private discussions in which each of the Cardinals was invited to explore with the Pontiff his private opinions.

  He did not attempt to sway them, but only to expose to them his thinking and to give them the confidence which they deserved as his counsellors. They were still divided. There were the few who agreed, the many who doubted, those who were openly hostile. His own fears were no less, and he still hoped that when the Curia came together in assembly, they would find a common voice to counsel him.

  To assist them in their deliberations he had called Cardinal Morand from Paris, Pallenberg from Germany, Ellison from London, Charles Corbet Carlin from New York. Cardinal Ragambwe was there by accident because he had flown from Africa to confer with the Congregation of Rites on the new liturgical proposals.

  The place of their meeting was to be the Sistine Chapel. He had chosen it because it was luminous with memories of his own election and all the others which had taken place there. He himself spent the night of the vigil in prayer, hoping to prepare himself to interpret his thoughts to the Curia and to receive from them some clear and concerted expression of the mind of the Church.

  He was no longer confused, but he was still afraid, knowing how much might hang upon the outcome. The proposition which Semmering had presented to him was devastatingly simple – that a man centred in God had nothing to fear. But he was still troubled by the knowledge that he had been all too easily separated from this centre and led astray into egotism. It was not the enormity of the act that troubled him, but the knowledge that the small lapses might be symptomatic of greater and undiscovered weaknesses in himself.

  So, when the Cardinal Camerlengo led him into the Chapel and he knelt to intone the invocation to the Holy Spirit, he found himself praying with a vivid intensity that the moment would not find him wanting. When, the prayer was done, he stood to address the Cardinals:

  ‘We have called you here, our brethren and our counsellors, to share with you a moment of decision in the life of the Church. You are all aware that in the spring of next year there may well be a political crisis which will bring the world closer to war than it has been since 1939. We want to show you the shape of the crisis. We want to show you also certain proposals that have been made to us which may help to minimize it.

  ‘We are not so naïve as to believe that anything we may do in the material order will effectively change the dangerous military and political situation which exists today. The temporal domain of the Holy See has been reduced to a small plot of ground in Rome, and we believe that this is a good thing because we shall not be tempted to use man-made instruments of intervention, when we should be using those provided us by God Himself.

  ‘We do believe, however, and believe with firmest faith, that it is our commission to change the course of history by establishing the kingdom of Christ in the hearts of men, so that they may establish for themselves a temporal order based firmly upon truth, justice, charity, and the moral law.

  ‘This is our charge from Christ. We cannot abrogate it. We must not shrink from a single one of its consequences. We dare not neglect any, even the most dangerous, opportunity to fulfil it.

  ‘First let us show you the shape of the crisis.’

  With swift, decisive strokes he sketched it for them �
�� the world embattled as it looked to one man sitting on a pinnacle with the nations spread below, and the atomic threat hanging above. None of them disagreed with him. How could they? Each from his own vantage point had seen the same situation.

  He read them Kamenev’s letters and those from the President of the United States. He read them his own commentaries and his own assessment of the characters and the dispositions of both men. Then he went on:

  ‘It may seem to you, my brethren, that in the intervention we have already made, there is a great element of risk. We admit it. It is clearly defined even in the letters from Kamenev and the President of the United States. We as Supreme Pontiff recognize the risk, but we had to accept it or let slip out of our hands a possible opportunity to serve the cause of peace in this dangerous time.

  ‘We are aware, as each of you is aware, that we cannot count wholly on the sincerity or the protestations of friendship of any man who holds public office, even if he be a member of the Church. Such men are always subject to the pressure of influence, and opinion, and the actions of others over whom they have no control. But so long as a light of hope flickers, we must try to keep it alight and shield it from the harsh winds of circumstance.

  ‘We have always believed, as a matter of private conviction, that our connexion with the Premier of Russia, which dates back seventeen years to the time of our first imprisonment for the faith, had in it an element of Divine Providence which might one day be used by God for Kamenev’s good or ours, or for the good of the world. In spite of all risks and doubts this is still our conviction.

  ‘You are all aware that we have received an invitation from the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes on her feast day, February 11 next year. An invitation has also been added from the government of France to make a State visit to Paris afterwards. We do not have to tell you the risks of one kind or another which such an historic step would entail. Nevertheless, we are disposed to make it. Immediately we do so other invitations will no doubt be issued, to visit other countries of the world. We should be disposed to accept these also as time and circumstances permitted. We are still young enough, thank God, and transport is now swift enough to permit us to do so without too great or too disastrous an interruption to the work of the Holy See.

  ‘We have said we are disposed to do it. Before making a final decision, we are anxious to have your opinion as our brothers and counsellors. We point out that if we decide to make the visit an immense amount of work will have to be done in a short time to prepare the public mind and to secure, so far as is possible, a friendly attitude from our brethren of other communions in Christendom. We do not wish to make a barren spectacle of our office. We do not want to raise historic animosities. We wish to go forth in charity to show ourselves as a pastor and to proclaim the brotherhood of all men, without exception of nation, race or creed, in the Fatherhood of one God.

  ‘If we do decide to go out thus into the world – this new world which is so different from the old – then we do not wish to insist on niceties of protocol and ceremony. These are affairs of court, and if we are a prince by protocol, we are still a priest and a pastor by the anointing and the laying-on of hands.

  ‘What more can we say to you? These first months of our pontificate have been full of labour and full of problems. We have learned much more than we should ever have believed possible, about the nature of our office, the problems of our Holy Mother Church and Her constant battle to make Her human body a fit vessel for the Divine Life which infuses Her. We have made mistakes. We shall no doubt make many others, but we ask you, our brethren in the pastoral office, to forgive us and pray for us. Last week we suffered a grievous personal loss by the death of our dear friend, Father Jean Télémond of the Society of Jesus. We beg you to pray for him, and we beg you to pray for us also, who stand on this stormy eminence between God and man.

  ‘The question is before you, dear brethren. Shall we go out from Rome and travel like the first Apostles to confront the twentieth century, or shall we stay at home here in Rome and let our brother bishops take care of their own vineyards in their own fashion? Shall we let the world look after its own affairs, or shall we, as Supreme Pontiff, risk our worldly dignity to step down into the market-place and proclaim the Unknown God . . . ?

  ‘Quad vobis videtur? How does it seem to you?’

  He sat down on the throne prepared for him and waited. Silence hung over the assembly like a cloud. He saw the old men looking one at the other, as if they were exchanging a thought that they had already discussed in private. Then slowly, Cardinal Leone, senior among the seniors of the Church, stood up and confronted the assembly:

  ‘. . . I will not rehearse for you, brethren, the hundred and one reasons for or against this project. His Holiness knows them as well as we. I will not recount the risks because they are as vividly present in the mind of the Pontiff as they are in ours. There are those among us – and I say frankly that I am one of them – who have grave doubts about the wisdom of a papal visit to France or anywhere else, for that matter. There are others, I know, who see such a visit as a gesture both timely and efficacious. Who is right and who is wrong? Only God can decide the outcome, and history pass a verdict on it. I do not think that any of us here would wish to increase the burden of His Holiness by attempting to sway him this way or that.

  ‘The position is very simple. The authority of the Holy Father is supreme in the matter. Now or later he must decide on what is to be done. Whether our votes are for or against, he must decide . . .’

  For a brief moment he stood doughty and challenging and then flung the last words down like a gage in front of the Curia:

  ‘Placetne fratres? What say you, my brothers? Does that please you or not?’

  There was a moment of hesitation and then one after the other the red caps came off, and the murmur of assent: ran round the assembly:

  ‘Placet . . . It pleases us. We are agreed.’

  This was something Kiril had not expected. It was more than a formality. It was a vote of confidence. It was a gesture, prepared by Leone and the Curia to affirm their loyalty and to comfort him in his trial.

  It was more yet – an irony like the handful of flax burned under his nose before they crowned him, so that he would always remember his mortality. It was a committal of the Church, not to him, but to the Holy Spirit who, even in spite of him, would keep Her whole and alive until Judgement Day.

  Now everything that he had inherited, everything that he had secretly demanded in his office, was in his hands : authority, dignity, freedom of decision, the power to loose and bind . . . And he had to begin paying for it . . . So there was nothing to do but say the ritual words of dismissal, and let his counsellors go.

  One by one the Cardinals came and knelt before him and kissed his ring in token of fealty. One by one they left. And when the door closed upon the last of them, he rose from his throne and knelt on the altar step before the tabernacle.

  Above him was the towering splendour of Michelangelo’s ‘Judgement’. In front of him was the small golden door, behind which dwelt the Hidden God. The weight of the Cross was on his shoulders. The long Calvary was about to begin. He was left, as he would be left henceforward for all the days of his life.

  EXTRACT FROM THE SECRET MEMORIALS OF KIRIL I PONT. MAX.

  . . . I am calm now because the moment of decision has come and passed, and I cannot rescind the choice I have made. But the calm is at best a truce: uncertain, embattled, dangerous to him who rests in it too confidently.

  The next day or the next, the clash of arms will begin again: the battle of myself with myself, of man with his ambient world – and with his God, whose call to love is always and most strangely a call to bloody conflict.

  The mystery of evil is the deepest one of all. It is the mystery of the primal creative act, when God called into existence the human soul, made in His own image, and presented it with the terrifying choice, to centre itself upon itself, o
r to centre itself upon Him without whom it could not subsist at all . . . The mystery renews itself daily in me, as it does in every man born of woman.

  Where do I go? Where do I turn? I am called like Moses to the mountain-tip to intercede for my people. I cannot go down until they carry me down dead. I cannot go up until God elects to call me to Himself. The most I can expect of my brothers in the Church is that they will hold up my arms when I grow weary of this lifelong intercession . . . And here is the shape of another mystery: that I who am called to spend so much find myself so poor in the things that are of God . . .

  ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.’