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 insuperable nature of papal infallibility. Rather, we may look to its elegant reliance upon the common context of the word ‘prior’ to understand the relationship between the infallible utterances of this world, and Cardinal Mazzare’s. Although we lack detailed documentation in this place-”
God be praised, thought Barberini with an irreverent smile.
“-I find that both down- and up-time constraints upon papal infallibility invariably stipulate that a prior pope’s ex cathedra statements and doctrinal decrees may not be overturned, contravened, or ignored by later popes. Consequently, I do not see a paradox at all as long as we accept that ‘prior’ is not a term subject to recontextualization: it means ‘to occur before.’ Nothing more, nothing less.
“Cardinal Mazzare suggests, on the other hand, that we must eschew such a common-sense definition of the word and instead dive into a maelstrom of temporal paradoxes from which we cannot ever hope to emerge. He also proposes to resolve supposed ‘contradictions’ in the footnote in Gaudium et Spes which asserts that some of its own infallible elements ‘have a permanent value; others, only a transitory one.’” Wadding smiled. “This statement neither contains nor engenders any contradictions. It is merely a reminder that the Truth that is God cannot be beheld by His children all at once. Indeed, as the Creator told Moses, no man may behold the face of God and live. Therefore, since we cannot survive exposure to the entirety of His Truth at once, we must have it relayed to us in successive parts, each new epiphany being withheld until our souls have grown enough to be ready for it.
“Cardinal Mazzare provided us with a most instructive analogy for this process: he likened it to the way in which children change. And what does the note to Gaudium et Spes say, really, other than this: that the basic rules we learn as spiritual infants are not tossed aside, but enriched and expanded as we grow. A five-year-old child might have a sense of right and wrong, and even justice. But would any one of us maintain that his understanding then will be the equal of that which he possesses when he is fifteen, or thirty-five, presuming he grows in Christ as he grows in his body?”
Father-General Vitelleschi was frowning. “Are you therefore suggesting, Your Eminence, that the population of the up-time world was more ready for complex truths than the population of our own world?”
Wadding nodded. “That is a distinct possibility. After all, the up-time world had three and a half more centuries experience in adapting to the complexities of religious toleration and political equality. The increasing phenomena of marriage between Catholics and Protestants, and then Jews and Gentiles, gave them ample opportunity to work out in daily practice what we down-timers see as unthinkably radical theological and social change.”
“And how does this instruct us?” asked Vitelleschi.
Wadding bowed his head. “It shows us that our Lord is truly a kind, loving, and above all, foresightful parent. He waited for the up-timers to grow into these accomplishments before he set them the challenges implicit in Vatican II. Allow me to illustrate what I mean in mundane terms: would you teach your little child to climb a cliff-face before he can walk? No, because it is imperative that, as a parent, you make sure that he walks, and then acquires other requisite skills, before he may confront the cliff-face. Similarly, God ensured the gradual maturation of the up-time world and Church, before sharing what was for them the infallible wisdom of Vatican II. For Cardinal Mazzare and his peers, Vatican II was an exhilarating new cliff to climb; for us, it would simply be a fast and fatal fall.”