There is no reason why we cannot start a new society on another planet just as we started a new society in the New World.
In fact, we have no choice. Europa lives. This planet is dying.
There is no time to lose. I calculate that the launch window for Europa will occur for only a few days next month.
That is my proposal.
ABBOT: Are the children invited?
ARISTARCHUS: The space children are. It would make no sense to perpetuate genetic defects.
ABBOT: I see.
Abbot Leibowitz’s Proposal
Here are the facts:
The human species may or may not be finished on earth. Perhaps the incidence of sterility is lower in Seattle or New Zealand. We do not know.
But it makes no difference. In either case, I could not go.
Why not?
Because I believe that God exists and that he created the Cosmos (the Big Bang, as you vulgarly call it, embarrasses you, Aristarchus, doesn’t it?), that he created man through evolution, in the latest moment of which, perhaps the last Ice Age, man became ensouled and came to himself as man, body and spirit; that God thus created man as a person who had gifts of knowledge and love but most of all of freedom, that he somehow encountered a catastrophe, God alone knows what, used his freedom badly, and chose badly — perhaps chose himSELF, the one thing he can never know of itself, rather than God — and has been in trouble ever since. That, as a consequence, God himself intervened in the history of this insignificant planet, through a covenant with an even more obscure tribe, the Jews, through his son, a Jew who actually lived as a man on this earth, him and no other, through founding a church, the Catholic Church based on a very mediocre, intemperate Catholic, Peter, also a Jew; that he, God, is somehow inextricably and permanently, even hopelessly, involved with the two, the Jews and the Catholic Church, until the end of earth time.
In a sense, nothing has changed. Here is the Christian remnant, still hanging on, a slightly mad enclave of odd sorts, gentile-bums collected from the hedgerows and invited to the feast. And over there in Israel, we know, is still the Jewish remnant, still hanging on, long ago dispersed and now come back to the same place, proud and stiff-necked as ever, still persecuted, still fighting Assyrians. What has changed?
I am both. I am both Jew and Catholic, whether Jew or Catholic like it or not, and generally they do not, usually have no use for each other, in fact, and even less use for me. The Jews think I have apostasized, and the Catholics think I am a Jew. They don’t think of Jesus and Mary as Jewish. But me? I’m still a Jew. And they’re right. I am. Catholics are a queer lot — I’ve never really gotten used to them. I admire their, our, faith, adopted it in fact, but I wish they loved learning more, as they loved it in the High Middle Ages, loved science and art more, like our brother Aristarchus here, just as they loved them in the age of the great Giotto and Roger Bacon and the monk Copernicus and the great Galileo; like Moses Maimonides and Einstein; like the monk Gregor Mendel. We are a church of sinners, yes, but can’t sinners love science and art?
But the two, Jew and Catholic, are inextricably attached to each other, like Siamese twins at the umbilicus, whether they like it or not, and they both detest it, until the end of earth time.
I believe that we have the promise of God and his son that he, Jesus Christ, having come once to save us from the death of SELF in search of ITSELF without any other SELF, will also come again at the end of the world. We also have his promise that the Church will endure until the end of the world.
Now, it is also the case that I have no reason to believe that the Holy Father or a single bishop has survived the holocaust. As Dr. Jane Smith recently told me, jokingly but more seriously than she knew, I may very well be the Pope. That is to say, as an abbot, I have the episcopal power of consecrating priests. And if there are no bishops left and no Pope left, guess who that leaves. As abbot, I am in the apostolic succession, the direct line of laying on hands which goes back to Christ himself.
As Pope, my first act will be to revive the University of Notre Dame around a nucleus of Jewish scientists whom I shall lure from Israel. The Catholic Church is responsible for the birth of science in the West, but it got too rich, got distracted by family quarrels, and dropped the ball, which the Jews picked up.
Are you getting the point, Captain? I may be the only man left on earth who can consecrate priests. The only candidates for the priesthood I can see, not counting my little malformed innocents, are these boys, your sons, Krishna, Vishnu, Siddhartha, Oppie, Carl Jung, Chomsky, and John. Whether or not one or another chooses to become a priest is his business and God’s business, but it is my business to be around, to stay here in case the human race survives and needs priests.
And if it is the end, it is still my obligation to remain, because the Church will survive until the end of earth time and until Christ himself comes, and so, if I’m the putative head of the Church, as putative head I stay.
My proposaclass="underline" Will your craft fly like an airplane? Yes? Can you land it anywhere? Yes? Like a helicopter? Yes? Very well.
I propose a variant of Dr. Jane Smith’s proposal. I propose that you fly Dr. Jane Smith and the children and my odd little brood here and my two monks, yourself, and me, and whoever else wants to go, to Lost Cove, Tennessee.
There, as Dr. Jane Smith and I have reason to believe, the residual radiation is not so bad, that under the blue haze of the Smoky Mountains, the ultraviolet flare may not be excessive, and that your beautiful children may remain fertile.
Accordingly, I propose to you, Captain, that you accede to Dr. Jane Smith’s wish that I marry the two of you properly — your marriage in space by yourself is canonically suspect to say the least — and that I baptize the children in Lost Cove Creek.
I wish to come with you for one reason — otherwise, I would rather remain here in my beloved Utah and be let alone and die in peace — but I am obliged to be present to serve the survivors as priest and ordain as priest any one of them who might wish to become a priest, and to await the coming of the Lord if it is the end. I’d as soon wait for him here, but what can you do? Veh.
Why should you of Copernicus 4 believe any of these things, which must surely seem preposterous to you? The only reason, from your point of view, is that you have no choice. You know now that if what I say is not true, you are like the gentiles Paul spoke of: a stranger to every covenant, with no promise to hope for, with the world about you and no God. You are stuck with yourselves, ghost selves, which will never become selves. You are stuck with each other and you will never know how to love each other. Even if you succeed, you and your progeny will go to Europa and roam the galaxy, lost in the Cosmos forever.
I agree with Dr. Jones: we should leave as soon as possible — but for Tennessee, not for Europa.
Question: If you were the captain, which of the two proposals would you accept? or would you accept neither? Do you have a better idea?
(a) I’d go with Aristarchus Jones and the others to New Ionia.
(b) I’d marry Dr. Jane Smith and take her and the children to Lost Cove, Tennessee.
(c) I’d go to Qumran and fight with the Israelis.
(d) I’d go to Jordan and fight with the Arabs.
(e) I’d drop the abbot and Jane Smith in Tennessee, send the children to Europa with Jones and Tiffany, leaving me and Kimberly to take our chances in Uxmal.
(f) I’d take no chances. I’d cover all bets, even the million-to-one shot that there might be something to Abbot Leibowitz’s preposterous claim. I’d go with him and Jane and the children to Lost Cove, Tennessee, wait for whatever he’s waiting for, monitor my sperm count — yet keep Copernicus 4 fueled and ready to go. (This, roughly, was Dr. Jane Smith’s response, in a rather vulgar aside to the Captain, after hearing the abbot’s proposal, in which she lapsed into a dialect of her Southern Methodist origins: “Well, why not? Who knows? The whole thing is preposterous, of course: two niggers and a Jew claiming to be Roman Catholics, a Jewish pope and two black monks. Popery and monkery in the middle of nowhere. But what have we got to lose? They’re Christians, after all. I’ll go along with it, especially the marriage ceremony and the baptism.”)