Alexeara Cansellarion is in his study when he gets the vision from his Goddess, which means he must have fucked up quite badly.
"Abadar would smite you with a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky. - He doesn't do that very often. But for sharing information you gave your oath to keep private - I sure wouldn't insure you against it."
"Yes. We consider it - a favor He does us. Because a people who are held to their word by the power of a god can give it and be trusted even when the need may be very, very great. If we could break our word we would be weaker, not stronger. And the advice I would give a person among your audience who wants to serve Abadar is to meditate on that. Many people want to be a priest to have the spells, to have His favor, to be wealthy. But to work for Abadar is to be trustworthy, to make your word something that people can pay you for and have full faith in what they paid, and it's understanding that which makes one more suited to work for Him."
"Abadar selects as priests people who can do work that benefits Abadar and benefits them. It sounds strange until you realize it is how all free employment works. You offer people work if you want their work more than you want the pay you're offering them; they accept if they want the pay enough to do the work. There are many such numbers, for some employment relationships, and Abadar aspires to one in the middle of the range of possible ones, but - the core idea is very simple. We work for Him, in that He pays us to do things and we choose to do the things at that pay. He does not want our undying obedience, but our diligent work for as long as the relationship serves both sides."
"Why not partner with the abolitionists in the effort to stop it and liberate people from the slave-ships at sea?"
"What a way to put it. The Church of Abadar insures merchant ventures, and condemns piracy, and loses money every time it happens. Are your tactical differences and some awkwardness on your balance sheets more important than the essential freedoms of thousands of people herded like animals across the Inner Sea on ships your church insures?"
" - we generally do not only insure practices that we approve of. We abhor war, but will still let people take out loans to fund it. The loan price has to do with the odds they will pay the loan back, not with our opinion of how they'll spend the money."
"But see, then, how you tie yourself up in knots! You insure the ships, and so you don't like it when people sink them, even though you agree that those people are fighting among the most important evils of our world. Don't you think it's an uncomfortable situation, to profit so much from things you abhor that you get annoyed when people start ending them?"
"I think you could, as a principled matter, offer the loans and also be quietly pleased when the ships become uninsurable because the people who oppose this evil are too numerous. But I think you could also, as a principled matter, charge more for services that enable things you don't want, because it's - not a situation of a surplus being split between you - or, the abhorrence of what you're enabling changes what's a fair price, by quite a lot -"
"I think there's also a worry that any - organized or political exercise of discretion by the Church calls into question our neutrality, which is among our most important assets in resolving disputes - between countries, say - peacefully."
"This is Freedom Radio! We speak the truth, no matter how much trouble it causes. Anyway now you've gone ahead and teased it, and the whole story is rarely worse than a partial one."
" -you know, it's mostly just what I've already said. The institutional Church of Abadar was surprised by the plans to sponsor the pharaoh of Osirion, and it was a serious concern that it would give the appearance of ending our neutrality in geopolitical matters. The Church in Osirion is independent from the Church outside it, to partially assuage such worries."
"Very sensible," she says approvingly. "And, see, I think more reassuring than not saying it. Well, thank you for coming on the show, Archbanker. May we build Axis in this life, and then improve it in the next one."