Shawn threw his hands above his head and glanced at Jack while mockingly rolling his eyes. “Can you believe this guy? Now he’s trying to add Latin to confuse and impress me as a way of having a debate. It’s college all over again. And do you know where he is going with this? He’s going to the infallibility argument, the same one we had in college. Certain things never change!”

Shawn redirected his attention back to James, who was still holding up his hand like a traffic cop. “Am I right, lardo? Isn’t this about to dissolve into our old argument about papal infallibility such that when he speaks ex cathedra, meaning from the his official position as Bishop of Rome and head of the Church, on matters of faith or morals he is infallible? Isn’t that what this discussion is coming down to?”

“Let me finish my major point before we get sidetracked,” James said, forcing himself to stay calm in the face of Shawn’s impertinence. “The fact of the matter is this: Any publication about the contents of the ossuary and the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of God, according to the patriarch Cyril of Alexandria and the founder of the study of Mariology, and the Mediatrix Extraordinaire, according to Bernard of Clairvaux, will do irreparable harm to the Church in this regrettable era of low clerical authority stemming from the child-molestation crisis. Hundreds of thousands of people will have their faith challenged unreasonably. The celibacy issue, already being challenged, will be further challenged; priestly numbers will drop beyond their critical numbers today. I have over ten parishes under my authority of the Archdiocese of New York without a pastor. I don’t have enough priests as it is!”

“That’s not my problem,” Shawn snapped. “It’s the Church’s fault. They have to come out of the Dark Ages and stop painting themselves into the corner by relying on this infallibility issue rather than dealing with fact. It’s like the Galileo affair all over again.”

“That affair was not about papal infallibility.”

“Well, you could have fooled me. Galileo was tried for heresy because with his telescope he proved Copernicus’s heliocentric theory to be correct, whereas Church dogma said the Earth was the center.”

“It was an issue of sacred magisterium and sensus fidelium but not papal infallibility,” James snapped back.

“Whatever,” Shawn flaunted. “It was an inexcusable disregard of fact and truth.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“Of course it’s my opinion!”

“Episodes like the Galileo affair have to be viewed in the context of the time at which they occurred.”

“I don’t think fact and truth are contingent on time,” Shawn stated, interrupting James. His words were becoming progressively slurred from the scotch and wine, as he had started drinking before Jack and then James had arrived. “Does anyone else here besides James believe such a thing?”