The Flaming Sword by Breck England

Author:Breck England [England, Breck]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633539730
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2019-03-12T15:05:35+00:00

The Sistine Chapel, Rome, 1400h

The hymn had been sung, the vows taken, and the doors closed and locked. The preacher climbed up to the lectern and looked over the assembled cardinals, who sat in hastily constructed ranks of seats on both sides of the chapel. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment soared up the wall behind the lectern, its devils with bile-colored faces herding the damned into the sulfur of Hell, while the righteous slipped heavenward through golden air as if magnetized by the colossal bronze hand of the Christ. Before this spectacle the young preacher stood, all in white like a miniature angel. Cardinal Estades had nominated him, both supporters and opponents of In Salutem Ecclesiae had signed off on him, and everyone was curious to hear him.

By custom, the homily that began the conclave laid out the challenges facing the Church so that the college could consider them in choosing the Pope. The honor of reading the homily was traditionally highly sought after, but there had been no time for the usual wrangling. In fact, most of the logical candidates had decided to be unavailable; the divisions in the room were so deep, it would be a mortal stroke to a career to take one side or another. The earnest young priest who agreed to do it, a teacher of homiletics in the Papal university, was to some a brave man and to others a sacrificial lamb.

“Brothers, the glorious city of God is my theme,” he began in English, the language most of the cardinals understood, in a voice nervous but determined, “and the promise of the Church of Christ to the faithful in the earth. It is a surer hope than anything the tottering world can hold out. As the Prophet Isaias taught, every one that shall be left in Sion, and that shall remain in Jerusalem, shall be called holy.

“Before the Church today is the great question: What does it mean to ‘remain in Jerusalem’?”

“Some passionately argue that the citizens of Jerusalem have been given over to Sodom and Gomorrah, that the rupture of ancient canons brings down the gates of the temple, inviting corruption into the holy place.”

Seated near the lectern, Cardinal Tyrell nodded, turned his massive head, and raised his eyes to look directly into the eyes of John Paul Stone across the aisle. Stone stared back at him. Tyrell listened with satisfied surprise as the preacher went on to enumerate the abominations that Zacharias II had forced on the Church: divorce, “gender equity” in the priesthood, perversions of marriage, the abandonment of celibacy. Around him, he noted, heads were nodding in agreement.

“These measures, in their view, taken in the name of compassion and inclusiveness, threaten the very foundations of the Church Militant, the Church founded to war against these very evils. So, as the prophet Isaias warned, in taking these measures we might have been as Sodom, and should have been like Gomorrah.”

The preacher stopped and drank from a glass of water.

“Others speak with an utterly different voice.

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