The bishop of Rome in Alpha Centauri

I finally read Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, a novel with my name written on it if ever there was one. It’s more than six decades old—having been written in the wake of World War II; its origins there, as well as the fate of its author, are shadowed with tragedy—so I’m not worried about spoiling it for you, but be it known that the following quote comes from the final 50 pages of the book.

After humanity refuses to learn from its errors in the first nuclear holocaust of the late twentieth century, some two thousand years later they do it again, only this time with few survivors likely to see life beyond it. So the Church makes plans for human, and thus Christian, life beyond this planet. Here is the scene when an Abbot gives final instructions and blessings to a few dozen priests before they set sail for an interstellar voyage to a colony in another solar system:

It had not been easy to charter a plane for the flight to New Rome. Even harder was the task of winning clearance for the flight after the plane had been chartered. All civil aircraft had come under the jurisdiction of the military for the duration of the emergency, and a military clearance was required. It had been refused by the local ZDI. If Abbot Zerchi not been aware of the fact that a certain air marshal and a certain cardinal archbishop happened to be friends, the ostensible pilgrimage to New Rome by twenty-seven bookleggers with bindlestiffs might well have proceeded on shank's mare, for lack of permission to use rapid transport jet. By midafternoon, however, clearance had been granted. Abbot Zerchi boarded the plane briefly before takeoff-for last farewells.

“You are the continuity of the Order,” he told them. “With you goes the Memorabilia. With you also goes the apostolic succession, and, perhaps—the Chair of Peter.

“No, no,” he added in response to the murmur of surprise from the monks. “Not His Holiness. I had not told you this before, but if the worst comes on Earth, the College of Cardinals—or what's left of it—will convene. The Centaurus Colony may then be declared a separate patriarchate, with full patriarchal jurisdiction going to the cardinal who will accompany you. If the scourge falls on us here, to him, then, will go the Patrimony of Peter. For though life on Earth may be destroyed—God forbid—as long as Man lives elsewhere, the office of Peter cannot be destroyed. There are many who think that if the curse falls on Earth, the papacy would pass to him by the principle of Epikeia if there were no survivors here. But that is not your direct concern, brothers, sons, although you will be subject to your patriarch under special vows as those which bind the Jesuits to the Pope.

“You will be years in space. The ship will be your monastery. After the patriarchal see is established at the Centaurus Colony, you will establish there a mother house of the Visitationist Friars of the Order of Saint Leibowitz of Tycho. But the ship will remain in your hands, and the Memorabilia. If civilization, or a vestige of it, can maintain itself on Centaurus, you will send missions to the other colony worlds, and perhaps eventually to the colonies of their colonies. Wherever Man goes, you and your successors will go. And with you, the records and remembrances of four thousand years and more. Some of you, or those to come after you, will be mendicants and wanderers, teaching the chronicles of Earth and the canticles of the Crucified to the peoples and the cultures that may grow out of the colony groups. For some may forget. Some may be lost for a time from the Faith. Teach them, and receive into the Order those among them who are called. Pass on to them the continuity. Be for Man the memory of Earth and Origin. Remember this Earth. Never forget her, but—never come back.” Zerchi's voice went hoarse and low. “If you ever come back, you might meet the Archangel at the east end of Earth, guarding her passes with a sword of flame. I feel it. Space is your home hereafter. It's a lonelier desert than ours. God bless you, and pray for us.”

He moved slowly down the aisle, pausing at each seat to bless and embrace before he left the plane. The plane taxied onto the runway and roared aloft. He watched until it disappeared from view in the evening sky. Afterward, he drove back to the abbey and to the remainder of his flock. While aboard the plane, he had spoken as if the destiny of Brother Joshua's group were as clear-cut as the prayers prescribed for tomorrow's Office; but both he and they knew that he had only been reading the palm of a plan, had been describing a hope and not a certainty. For Brother Joshua's group had only begun the first short lap of a long and doubtful journey, a new Exodus from Egypt under the auspices of a God who must surely be very weary of the race of Man.

Those who stayed behind had the easier part. Theirs was but to wait for the end and pray that it would not come.

This excerpt provides a lovely sample of Miller’s fine grasp of both Christian theology and ecclesiastical language, without losing the heart of it all. The whole book is quite beautiful. I can’t believe it took me this long to read it.

As I got to this part—what is in effect a short story or novella contained in a larger set of stories spanning 1,500 years or so—it reminded me of Robert Jenson’s discussion of the papacy in the second volume of his systematic theology, published in 1999. I seemed to recall Jenson coming to the very question of whether the pope might continue the office of the bishop of Rome elsewhere than Rome, including elsewhere than earth. Here’s the passage:

Two matters remain . . . . The first is a question so far skirted: Granted that there must be a universal pastorate, why should it be located in Rome? Why not, for example, Jerusalem? The question is odd, since Roman primacy developed first and the theology thereof afterward. But it nevertheless must be faced.

Pragmatic reasons are not hard to find, and the dialogues have gone far with them. So international Catholic-Anglican dialogue: it occurred “early in the history of the church” that to serve communion between local diocesan churches “a function of oversight . . . was assigned to bishops of prominent sees.” And within this system of metropolitan and patriarchal sees, “the see of Rome . . . became the principal center in matters concerning the church universal.” And so finally: “The only see which makes any claim to universal primacy and which has exercised and still exercises episcope is the see of Rome, the city were Peter and Paul died. It seems appropriate [emphasis added] that in any future union a universal primacy . . . should be held by that see.”

It is clear that the unity of the church cannot in fact now be restored except with a universal pastor located at Rome. And this is already sufficient reason to say that churches now not in communion with the church of Rome are very severely “wounded.” Just so it is sufficient reason to say also that the restoration of those churches’ communion with Rome is the peremptory will of God. Yet such considerations do not provide quite the sort of legitimation we look for in systematic theology and that we found for the episcopate and for the universal pastorate simply as such.

The historically initiating understanding of Roman primacy is perhaps itself the closest available approach to what is wanted. For in the earlier centuries of the undivided church, it was precisely the local church of Rome, and not the Roman bishop personally, that enjoyed unique prestige. The bishop of Rome enjoyed special authority among the bishops because their communion with him was the necessary sign of their churches’ communion with the church of that place. If the pope's universal pastorate is based on a unique prestige of the Roman congregation, then obviously in Rome is where it must be exercised.

In the fathers’ understanding of the apostolic foundation of the church, the founding history of each apostolic local church was a different act of the Spirit. This act was thought to live on in a special character of that church, in what one might perhaps call a continuing communal charism: the continuing life of each apostolically founded church was experienced as an enduring representation of her role within the Spirit-led course of the apostolic mission. The specific authority of the church of Rome derived from her honor as the place to which the Spirit led Peter and Paul, in the book of Acts the Spirit's two primary missionary instruments, for their final work and for their own perfecting in martyrdom; the Spirit was therefore expected to maintain the Roman church as a “touchstone” of fidelity to the apostolic work and faith.

But one need not enter the realm of science fiction* now to imagine a time in which Rome, with its congregation and pastors, no longer existed. Yet the role that initially developed around that church, once developed and theologically validated, would still be necessary. Surely an ecumenical council or other magisterial organ of the one church could and should then choose a universal pastor, elsewhere located. The new ecumenical pastor might of course still be styled “bishop of Rome,” but this is neither here nor there to our problem. Probably we must judge: identification of the universal pastorate with the Roman episcopacy is not strictly irreversible. On the other hand, hard cases make bad law.

Indeed I did remember correctly, though almost too correctly. For where you see the asterisk in the final paragraph, there is a footnote where Jenson writes the following:

In A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller, it having become nearly certain, after millenia [sic] of repeated nuclear catastrophes and repeated slow rebirths, that this time nuclear warfare will render the earth permanently uninhabitable, three cardinal bishops are sent to the small human colony of Mars.

Face palm! I was right to think of Jenson’s discussion, since Jenson literally tells the reader he’s thinking of Miller’s novel. Well then! I’ve come full circle. Though having just finished the book, I’m at least in a position to note that Jenson was quoting from memory, since he refers to a colony on Mars rather than a planet in the Alpha Centauri system.

Oh well. Read both books, is the moral of this story.