Dad preached how the Elect were so secure nothing could take them out of the hand of God. And how Calvin had shown us that mans so-called free will was fallen and depraved along with everything else so there was no way we could really choose to do anything because only God in His Sovereignty really had choice anymore. “This is because of the doctrine of Total Depravity—man’s total inability to contribute to his own salvation in any way because he is deaf, blind and dead in his sins.” Then he said how some people thought this doctrine of the Sovereignty of God, our intellect being fallen and all so we couldn’t think or choose because of our Total Depravity, was not biblical because there were so many passages about how we were supposed to choose to do the right thing and Jesus seemed to say in some verses you could be lost again if you made the wrong choices, like when He said that “Many will come to me on that day and say Lord, Lord,” and Jesus would say, “Depart from me I never knew you.” But, Dad explained, what this really meant was that these people were not of the Elect in the first place so even though they thought they were Regenerate, they weren’t because God hadn’t predestined them to be saved from before the creation of the world but to be Vessels of Wrath. Dad explained how in the Bible where it said that God desired all men to be saved it just meant that God desired all the people He had chosen to be the Elect to be saved.

Then Dad said how we were not bound by dead, man-made tradition like the Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholics, who believed in free will and other heresies, and how if everyone followed the teaching of Calvin and the other great Reformed theologians like Zwingli, they would understand what the Bible really meant because Calvin was right about it so we didn’t need traditions to follow because we had Calvin and the PCCCCUSA.

Dad closed in prayer and we sang two more hymns, “I Will Make You Fishers of Men” and “Wide, Wide as the Ocean.” Then Dad said we could go.

Outside it was a perfect day. All the Sunday tourists had arrived on the tour boats from Santa Margherita and were taking pictures of each other with the yachts anchored in the background. I saw Gino with his little movie camera following two young priests, filming them as they bought pistachio ice cream cones at the Gelateria. Gino saw me and stopped filming and beckoned me over to him. I ran across the square, past all the Italian families with their perfectly dressed children out for their Sunday after Mass stroll. Gino said, “I go ‘ave lunch wees my friend on ‘ees boat. You wanta to come?”

“Yes, thank you very much.”

“We go at one a serty.”