-"Star of the Sea," 8, p. 541.
"The Church had no power. Grishin recalled with appreciation Stalin's sneer: how many divisions has the Pope?"
-Frederick Forsyth, Icon (London, 1997), CHAPTER THIRTEEN, p. 334.
Right. I wanted to switch off the blog and to continue rereading Icon. However, having compared Icon with the Time Patrol, it is gratifying to find such an explicit parallel.
Laters.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And Grishin was showing himself less than astute about the Papacy, unlike Everard. Ideas, beliefs, "dreams" are what drives and motivates human beings. Not brute force alone.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it depends on who has the brute force, and where.
Even Stalin made nice with the Orthodox Church during WWII -- because he realized that Russian soldiers were fighting "za rodinu", for the Motherland, and Orthodoxy was an important part of that.
OTOH, if he'd had the Pope as a captive...
Kaor, Mr. Stirlings!
And tyrants have laid violent hands on more than one pope! The last time that happened was when the French Revolution and Napoleon seized Pius VI and Pius VII for being insufficiently submissive to their demands. Ultimately, such bullying of the Church did not work and backfired against the despots. Even Napoleon, during his exile on St. Helena, admitted he made a bad blunder.
I have read of how Hitler had at least THOUGHT of seizing Pius XII during WW II. Because of how that pope, to the extent he believed possible, had opposed the Nazis. Plus, the role played by the Church in rescuing about one million Jews from the Nazis enraged Hitler. So, Stalin capturing the pope was conceivable.
Ad astra! Sean
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