The Kremlin Games(46)
Chapter 28
October 1632
The Ring of Fire had happened a year and a half ago and Bernie had been in Russia the better part of a year when he was given the first official pronouncement on the Ring of Fire. It was far from the first pronouncement. Monasteries had pronounced first that it hadn’t happened at all and later that it was the work of the Devil because if God had done it He would have put it in Russia, not the Germanies, for not even God could care much for those barbaric people. Certainly not more than he cared for Holy Russia.
Through it all, the office of the patriarch had made no pronouncement, taking a wait-and-see attitude. From what Natasha had told him, that had been a very near thing. But here it was. In Russian, of course. Bernie could struggle through Russian writing by now, but not well. Natasha read it to him.
Patriarch Filaret’s Advisory
on the Ring of Fire
It is clear through multiple sources that God, in his infinite wisdom, has chosen to take a hand in the conflict among the German States. He provides through this example clear evidence of both His infinite power and His will, that the Roman Church and the Protestants, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, or other peculiar sects, are wrong. God has endeavored to make clear to them that which of their errors is most wrong is not a matter worth fighting over.
That is clearly God’s message to them. But what is God’s message to us? It is obvious that we are not in need of the sort of correction the German States required, else surely God would have placed the Ring of Fire here, in Holy Rus. While His admonishment, gentle as it is, is for the Germans, the gifts which He sent with it are clearly for all the world. Willingly or not, the knowledge the up-timers bring is spreading to all the world. To their credit, the up-timers themselves seem willing enough to share most of the knowledge that God gifted their ancestors and our descendants with. This is an especially gracious gift to Holy Rus. For, while we have been strong in our adherence to scripture and the true faith, circumstances have left us behind the more western nations in some of the more mundane and earthly matters. We have been blocked by Poland from sharing in the technical advances made in the west.
The czar, in his wisdom, has long had a policy of trying to correct that problem so that we, the true heirs of Christianity and the Roman empire, could maintain the faith in relative safety, while at the same time limiting the corrupting influences from the west. God has smiled on Czar Mikhail’s endeavor by providing new skills developed over time; many of them developed right here in Holy Rus. Yet like greedy children we complain “Why an American village? Why not a Russian village?” We know, after all, that in the twentieth-century Holy Rus was one of the two great powers. After studying the history, it is obvious that God chose an American village to protect Holy Rus, especially the church. The Russia of that time had fallen into corruption. For most of the twentieth century the Russian Orthodox Church, in fact all Christianity, had actually been banned. It was to protect us from this corruption that God chose an American village.
He placed it in Germany to remind us that He sees the whole world and cares about even those who have fallen away from the true church. More than that, He placed it in Germany to remind us not to be too proud to listen and learn from others and to protect us from too much of their direct influence, so that we might learn from them without becoming them. To protect our great Russian culture and still allow us the benefits of the good things they brought with them.
“That,” Bernie said with a grin, “is the work of a top-flight spin doctor.”
“What’s a spin doctor?” Natasha asked.
“Someone whose job it is to spin the facts so that the best possible face is put on them.”
Natasha looked at him.
“God didn’t put the Ring of Fire in Germany because he likes Germany better but because none of the faiths the Germans are fighting over are the right one,” Bernie said, shaking his head in admiration. “I never would have thought of that.”
“Do you think God cares more for Germany than for Russia?” Natasha asked quietly. Natasha had never struck Bernie as all that religious but the notion that God didn’t think you were worth worrying about had to hurt.
“No,” Bernie said with more conviction than he really felt. “What I think is that if the Ring of Fire had showed up anywhere where there was just one established religion, that religion would have landed on it with both feet. If the Ring of Fire had landed Grantville, say, here in the Time of Troubles, then we would have been hit by Russian troops with Russian Orthodox priests urging them on before they knew anything except that something strange and scary had happened. And by the time anyone really figured out what had happened, it would have been really hard for them to backtrack. The Russian Orthodox Church would have been stuck with a policy of kill the daemons.”