Colonel Hand had found the book quite charming and remembered a bit of it.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” he murmured. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
Chapter 20
Magdeburg
“And here comes the only concession,” Rebecca continued, reading from the sheet in her hand. “It is in the last two items, on matters of religion. ‘Point Eight. All provinces shall be required to designate a single established church, with the exception of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, which may designate several.”
“All of them province-wide?” interjected Constantin Ableidinger. “Or must each provincial district choose a single church?”
He held up a stiff, admonishing forefinger. “I warn you! We Lutherans will not tolerate sloppiness in such matters!”
Rebecca bestowed the smile upon him that she always bestowed on Ableidinger’s antics. The one that exuded long-suffering patience rather than serenity.
“Stop clowning around, Constantin,” grumbled Gunther Achterhof. “What difference does it make? We’re not going to abide by it anyway.”
The little exchange had given Rebecca time for further thought, during the course of which she realized that Ableidinger’s heavy-handed humor might actually contain a serious kernel—whether he realized it or not, which he probably didn’t.
“Maybe we will, Gunther,” she said. She raised her own forefinger in response to the look of outrage on his face. The gesture in this case was one that indicated a desire for forbearance rather than admonishment. “But let us not get ahead of ourselves. There is still one more provision in Point Eight and a final Point Nine in the Charter of Rights and Duties.”
The pitch of her voice shifted back to a slight singsong as she resumed quoting from the sheet. “The remaining provision in Point Eight is that: ‘These churches shall receive financial support from their respective provinces.’ Finally: ‘Point Nine. No church, whether established or not, shall be forbidden to exist, provided that it abides by the laws of the nation and its province.”
She laid down the sheet. “As I said, a concession of sorts, at the very end.”
“Not much of one,” observed Helene Gundelfinger. “All it recognizes is the abstract right of non-established churches to ‘exist.’ That’s a rather metaphysical proposition, taken by itself. The way that provision is couched, it seems to me, a province could recognize a church’s ‘existence’ while simultaneously forbidding its members to meet, to collect funds, or to have church leaders.”
She turned toward Werner von Dalberg, who was seated far enough down the long table to her right that she had to lean forward a little to see him. “Am I right, Werner?”
The FoJP leader from the Oberpfalz was the one person in the group who had extensive legal training.
He grinned. “Metaphysics has nothing on the law. That issue could be contested in the courts for years. In the event—the not-improbable event, actually—that a church so victimized should employ me as their lawyer, I would argue that the term ‘to exist’ implies all those things that were simultaneously banned, and hence the ban is null and void.” His eyes got a slightly-unfocussed, distant look. “Interesting question, actually. I’m sure the judges would rule in my favor when it came to being able to collect funds. Without money on which to operate, any and all human institutions are vacant abstractions. And for much the same reason, I’m pretty sure they’d rule in my favor when it came to the right to meet. The designation of officers of the church, however—by whatever method—is considerably more—”
“Werner!” Rebecca interrupted him. “We can come back to this at a later time. We have more pressing issues to deal with.”
He gave her a rueful, apologetic smile. “Sorry. I got a bit carried away. Lawyers, you know. Philosophers flee at our approach.”
Rebecca gave the sheet on the table in front of her a last, considering look. “Actually, my objection was not to your lawyering but to the specific subject, which for the moment is somewhat trivial. Taken as a whole, I think the right strategy for us in response to this attack from Berlin is precisely ‘to lawyer.’ ”
Predictably, Gunther Achterhof’s face darkened. “Rebecca, if you think for a minute that we’re going to tolerate—”
“Let. Her. Finish,” said Helene.
“Yes, please,” added Magdeburg province’s governor, Matthias Strigel. “Rebecca, go on.”
“They have made several bad errors, in my opinion. Within the great error of their purpose itself, I should say. The first and the worst was arresting Wilhelm Wettin. The second, and almost as bad, was to convene in Berlin. The two mistakes together make everything they’ve done legally invalid.”