When Paul Taunton hears his Spanish Professor take opposition to a Vatican Council, he is on board. His instincts tell him that Christianity doesn’t need to copy a culture that is on the brink of losing all of its guardrails.
Ecumenism was the new preaching point. “Let’s all be one,” was the cry. “Let’s melt away our differences.” It would prove in time to be the wrong direction. Principle and truth are never surrendered for mob harmony.
The Professor and Paul’s opposition is taken up by an ambitious reporter at the Le Monde French journal in Paris. Margot Dubois carries their message into print and into international discourse. She is relentless in her pursuits. She invents strategies and plans that ruffle several Vatican authorities. That puts Paul in the hot seat and makes him a target of Church authorities.
To make matters worse, Paul’s Bishop in Cleveland, a ranking member of the Council’s work on Ecumenism, learns of Paul’s suspected involvement in opposition to the Council, and gives Paul a warning to desist.
But Margot persists with Paul’s counterattacks on the Council. She gives him an undercover name and brings his arguments to the very front pages of Le Monde.
All the while Paul continues his doctoral dissertation and preparations for his public defense. His fifth-floor room at the International Seminary has a view of Rome’s famous Pantheon, a place where Paul often goes to reflect and test his assertions and assumptions.
If there is one point Paul makes throughout his words and actions in the novel, it is that the change the Council pursues will eventually lead to moral subordination. His final worst worry is that, “Morality will become an extinct species.”
Paul would be amazed today to know how much of a visionary he was sixty years ago.
