The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis De Bernières
Authors: Louis De Bernières
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bookshop.’
‘Indeed,’ replied Profesor Luis, ‘I am very proud of the fact that I have taught almost everybody to read.’
‘I have noticed,’ observed Dionisio, ‘that there is such a thirst for reading matter that people walk along reading the writing on cigarette packets over and over. I think I could very easily get hold of some books.’
‘And as for the tractor, which would be a miracle indeed, those of Don Emmanuel and Antoine remain buried in mud in the village of our origin. But I do not think it would be possible to get them here. Even if we repaired them on the spot, which we could not, they could be incapable of crossing the mountains as we did on foot.’
‘I know how to do it,’ said Dionisio.
‘Then we will. Look, I have blown a smoke ring.’
11
The Submission Of The Holy Office To His Eminence (3)
I said, You shall call me father
and never cease to follow me.
But like a woman who is unfaithful to her lover,
so you, Israel, were unfaithful to me.
Jeremiah 3:19
YOUR EMINENCE, WE submit this section as the third and final part of our report upon the state of the nation’s spiritual health, and we take the liberty of appending an addendum, outlining what action we consider should be taken in the light of our findings.
But to commence, we examine the phenomenon of heretical belief. In order to do this we have been constrained to define our terms by delimiting exactly what is meant by the word ‘heresy’. Tertullian
(De Praescriptione Hereticorum
, C . 200 AD ) defines it as a doctrine that cannot be found in the original teaching of the apostles. We have consulted the
Summa Theologica
and the
Summa Contra Gentiles
of St Thomas Aquinas, noting that he was the first of the Doctors to maintain that heresy was a sin ‘meriting not merely excommunication, but death also’ (an opinion no more, we hope, embraced by the Church). We have consulted the Bull
Ad Abolendam
of Pope Lucius III (1184), but most particularly the proceedings of the Lateran Councils, beginning in 1215 under the pontificate of Innocent III. We noted Canon Three of the Fourth Lateran Council, which outlines the provisions to be taken against heresy, thus engendering the ‘Inquisition’, whose activities have proved to be the most shameful of all the shameful blots upon the history of our faith. We find in Pope Innocent’s actions solely the extenuating circumstance that he shared in the commonly held terror that the six hundred and sixty-sixth year of the Beast of the Apocalypse was imminent, in the form of Islamic encroachments into Christian territories. We contend that the very idea of inquisition is itself heretical in origin, since the first one recorded was during thereign of al Mamun (813–833). His ‘mihna’ was an Islamic institution whose function was to extract public confession that the Koran is the ‘created speech of God’. To conclude, we decided to adopt the definition of heresy as ‘a doctrine or body of doctrines held in opposition to the stated doctrine of the Catholic Church’. We pass over those opinions expressed by Protestant faiths and by the various sects of Islam, concerning ourselves solely with those held by people who profess their Catholicism. We leave it to Your Eminence to decide what is truly heretical and what is merely curious.
We have discovered that most Christian heresies arise in the first place out of attempts to resolve the ‘problem of evil’. This is as true in our own day as it was in the days of St Bernard of Clairvaux and Raymond VI of Toulouse. Your Eminence will, we hope, pardon the desultory manner in which this section of our report wheels and circles back upon itself; he will understand that this is because we have been constantly obliged to return to the theme of how it is possible to reconcile the superabundance of evil in this world with the omnipotence and beneficence of God. That is, ‘
unde malum?
’
Thus we relate different heretical opinions in the
‘Indeed,’ replied Profesor Luis, ‘I am very proud of the fact that I have taught almost everybody to read.’
‘I have noticed,’ observed Dionisio, ‘that there is such a thirst for reading matter that people walk along reading the writing on cigarette packets over and over. I think I could very easily get hold of some books.’
‘And as for the tractor, which would be a miracle indeed, those of Don Emmanuel and Antoine remain buried in mud in the village of our origin. But I do not think it would be possible to get them here. Even if we repaired them on the spot, which we could not, they could be incapable of crossing the mountains as we did on foot.’
‘I know how to do it,’ said Dionisio.
‘Then we will. Look, I have blown a smoke ring.’
11
The Submission Of The Holy Office To His Eminence (3)
I said, You shall call me father
and never cease to follow me.
But like a woman who is unfaithful to her lover,
so you, Israel, were unfaithful to me.
Jeremiah 3:19
YOUR EMINENCE, WE submit this section as the third and final part of our report upon the state of the nation’s spiritual health, and we take the liberty of appending an addendum, outlining what action we consider should be taken in the light of our findings.
But to commence, we examine the phenomenon of heretical belief. In order to do this we have been constrained to define our terms by delimiting exactly what is meant by the word ‘heresy’. Tertullian
(De Praescriptione Hereticorum
, C . 200 AD ) defines it as a doctrine that cannot be found in the original teaching of the apostles. We have consulted the
Summa Theologica
and the
Summa Contra Gentiles
of St Thomas Aquinas, noting that he was the first of the Doctors to maintain that heresy was a sin ‘meriting not merely excommunication, but death also’ (an opinion no more, we hope, embraced by the Church). We have consulted the Bull
Ad Abolendam
of Pope Lucius III (1184), but most particularly the proceedings of the Lateran Councils, beginning in 1215 under the pontificate of Innocent III. We noted Canon Three of the Fourth Lateran Council, which outlines the provisions to be taken against heresy, thus engendering the ‘Inquisition’, whose activities have proved to be the most shameful of all the shameful blots upon the history of our faith. We find in Pope Innocent’s actions solely the extenuating circumstance that he shared in the commonly held terror that the six hundred and sixty-sixth year of the Beast of the Apocalypse was imminent, in the form of Islamic encroachments into Christian territories. We contend that the very idea of inquisition is itself heretical in origin, since the first one recorded was during thereign of al Mamun (813–833). His ‘mihna’ was an Islamic institution whose function was to extract public confession that the Koran is the ‘created speech of God’. To conclude, we decided to adopt the definition of heresy as ‘a doctrine or body of doctrines held in opposition to the stated doctrine of the Catholic Church’. We pass over those opinions expressed by Protestant faiths and by the various sects of Islam, concerning ourselves solely with those held by people who profess their Catholicism. We leave it to Your Eminence to decide what is truly heretical and what is merely curious.
We have discovered that most Christian heresies arise in the first place out of attempts to resolve the ‘problem of evil’. This is as true in our own day as it was in the days of St Bernard of Clairvaux and Raymond VI of Toulouse. Your Eminence will, we hope, pardon the desultory manner in which this section of our report wheels and circles back upon itself; he will understand that this is because we have been constantly obliged to return to the theme of how it is possible to reconcile the superabundance of evil in this world with the omnipotence and beneficence of God. That is, ‘
unde malum?
’
Thus we relate different heretical opinions in the
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