"Right. Admin Service teachers and a couple of heavy destroyers ought to take care of those; anything else you'd recommend?"
"Not at this time, Ranger, though it might help if you could leave a detachment from the Lindner. I'm sure Colonel Cortin would provide them lodging, and Lucius and I will protect them from the Brotherhood."
"I'll see to it."
"We'll leave you to brief Mike, then."
"Thank you, Protector."
Once they were alone, Medart spent a few moments studying Odeon. "You do look the same, except for your hands." he said at last.
Odeon looked at his hands, which no longer had the blue circled triangles. That was a relief, now, not the terrible loss it would have been before his talk with Medart last night. "You heard him confirm that I'm still a Catholic priest, Jim. I would've thought that would violate the separation doctrine."
Medart shook his head. "Not necessarily. Most of us are Omnist or agnostic, that's true. Once in a while, though, there's a deeply religious one, and there's nothing prohibiting a priest." He grinned. "If you want to get technical, I'm a priest myself, and so are a couple of the others—but since that's true of all adult Omnists, nobody pays much attention to it. They'll pay attention to you, since you're the first non-Omnist priest, but that attention in itself doesn't violate the doctrine. As long as you don't try to impose your beliefs on others, or imply that the Empire in any way favors one religion over another, your beliefs and devotions are between you and your God or gods."
"I can handle that, I think, if it won't prohibit me from exercising my priestly functions for Catholics who need them."