Chameleon (24 page)

This line of conversation was just what Pam thought was needed. “Go on, Cass, tell us about it,” she encouraged.

“It wasn’t all that much, but it’s a true story, a slice of life.” Hershey had been sitting relaxed against the back of the sofa. Automatically, as a storyteller will, he sat up and leaned forwards. “Remember Noel Parker?” He directed the question at Fred.

Fred searched his memory. “No, I don’t think so. Should I?”

“He was a priest. Left recently. I recruited him for Massachusetts General.”

“How old is he?”

“Mmm … mid-thirties, I’d say.”

“Too young. I wouldn’t know him.”

“Doesn’t matter. I just thought you might. He’s a bright young man. Went through our training phase with flying colors.

“Part of the training is memorizing a spiel, then personalizing it. We usually approach owners of successful small businesses, and the first contact is by phone. The object is to give the prospective customer a variety of reasons that might make him want to consider our services. So you trot out every attractive credential you can muster.

“Noel is pretty new at this, so he was kind of anxious. After all, you get only one crack per client. If you sign him up, it could mean thousands of dollars. If you blow the initial contact, that’s it forevermore.

“Noel himself told me about one of his first calls. No sooner had he started the conversation—remember he’d never actually met this guy—than he could sense that the potential client’s attention span was not gangbusters and that the guy thought this was a waste of his valuable time. So Noel was understandably nervous. But he launched into his spiel. He mentioned that, along with other credentials, he held a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan. To which the client replied, ‘Who gives a shit?’

“Noel just laughed, God bless him, and plowed on. After citing a few more credentials, Noel said he’d been a Catholic priest for ten years. And the guy says, ‘Now that interests me.’ And Noel was at least inside the door.”

They laughed. Pam’s laughter was a mixture of equal parts of genuine appreciation and gratitude that Fred had been amused and distracted.

“So you see, Freddie, all is not bleak and serious, even in the very serious arena of earning a living.

“But why am I telling you that?” Cass went on. “You look to me like you’re having a ball. A solid practice—and I see your handsome mug in the paper and on the tube with some regularity.”

Fred instantly grew solemn. “I’d give it all up in a minute to get back in the functioning priesthood.”

“You’re kidding!” Cass exclaimed.

“Not for a minute. And I’m sure that underneath it all, the guys feel the same way.”

Cass smiled amiably. “Speak for yourself, kiddo.”

Pam squeezed into the conversation. “Just before you joined us, I was telling Fred that I, for one, didn’t want to go back into the convent, nor, for that matter, forward into the priesthood.”

“Sounds nice and normal to me,” Cass commented.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Fred said, “that you didn’t want to become a priest?”

“Of course I did. Nobody twisted my arm, But that was a different day.”

“No different than today. Don’t you miss offering Mass, the Sunday liturgies, all the things you could do for people as a priest?”

“Fred, that was a long time ago.”

“But don’t you miss it?” Fred persisted.

“It was too long ago. Okay, yes, every once in a long while I remember how it was—and parts of it were very worthwhile. Some of it was even fun. But it was a long time ago, Fred. Loosen up.”

“It can be ours again, Cass. We’re making progress. Have you heard of CORPUS?”

“Sure.”

“Well?”

“Well, I’ve heard of it.”

“You don’t belong, do you?”

“Ever see me at a meeting?”

“You could still belong.”

“I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Why?”

“Because,” Fred explained, “it’s our best … our most practical way of getting back into the ministry. Sure, it’s a small, gradational step. But it’s going to work. Lots of other men, converts from the Protestant ministry, are married Catholic priests now.”

As Fred spoke with deepening emotion, his voice rose. Gradually, other conversation in the room quieted, then ceased. Some few in the group were aware of Fred’s intense commitment to CORPUS. Others were learning of it for the first time.

Pam, aware—as her husband was not—that nearly everyone had tuned in to the interchange, was deeply ill-at-ease. “Fred,” she said, touching his arm, “don’t you diink—”

But it was Cass who interrupted. “Is that what this is all about, Freddie? You want to function as a married priest. And to do that you’d be willing to crawl to Rome and beg to be allowed to do some of the things a deacon can do. God! Some of the things lay people can do now! Well, you can count me out of that one.”

“I thought you said you wanted to be a priest!”

“I did. What it comes down to is why we—you and I—quit the priesthood. That’s what it comes down to.” Cass, fueled by Fred’s fervor, was becoming emotionally involved in the debate. “You left in order to get married.”

“Of course.”

“And I did not.”

“You didn’t!?” Fred was surprised. While he had not canvassed all former priests by any means, the overwhelming majority of those who had talked about it had pinpointed marriage as their primary reason for leaving.

“No, I didn’t,” Cass repeated, “and neither did you.”

“I should know my own mind.” There was irritation in Fred’s tone. “I know why I resigned. It’s the same reason everyone in this room did.”

“Is it now? Think of all the priests you knew when you were growing up, when you were in the seminary, after you were ordained—all you knew before the council. Can you think of one or two—if that many—who left for whatever reason and got married during that time?”

Fred did not immediately reply. Then, “If you’re saying the dam broke after the council, I wouldn’t argue that.”

“That’s not quite the point. How about us? You were a priest for … what?”

“Twenty years.”

“Twenty years. A career, by God. Well, what was it with us? We were priests for ten, fifteen, twenty years; celibates, enjoying days off together, spending vacations together, the epitome of male bonding. What happened? After five or ten or fifteen or … twenty years, we woke up one morning and said, ‘Hey, wait a minute … mere’s girls!’? Is that the way you think it happened?”

“Of course not—”

“Left to get married! With me, it was just about the exact opposite. Debbie was one very ill lady. She’d drifted off sick leave and lost her job. It was tight, but she was making it on a combination of worker’s comp and help from my priestly salary. It was no time to leave the security of Mother Church and get a job out in the cruel, hard world.

“Don’t you see, Fred, it was the worst possible time to leave, at least for me. I didn’t leave to get married. The only thing that changed for me when I left was that I was out of a job. Okay, so we were now a legitimate couple. We didn’t have to worry any longer whether we would meet anyone we knew in the infrequent times we dared go out together. But by the single act of resigning, we went from a nice cozy security to insolvency.

“We didn’t leave to get married, Fred. If we had, we’d have done it long ago, when we were much younger men. When the juices were really flowing. When we were young priests, we—all of us—met any number of great women who would have made terrific wives. So did all those priests who preceded us. They lived and died celibates. And we will not.”

“I wouldn’t argue with you, Cass, about the women we met when we were young. Most of them were fine Catholic women and most of them were already married, And there’s something else you’re overlooking: Before the idea of leaving occurred to us, it had already dawned on nuns. Typical. Women got the idea first. After they left, when they were free to marry, it was only natural that we would be attracted to such fine, strong women. Our backgrounds were almost identical. We shared a deep commitment to religion, to Catholicism. And they were free to marry. They were not already attached.”

“Nice argument, Fred, but it won’t wash. One of the results of Vatican II—for me, the major achievement—was the questioning attitude that remained after the council was concluded. All we ever did as kids—and adults—was learn and take orders. We never questioned. But when we finally did, we found out there weren’t all that many good answers around.

“We went back to our origins, and asked things like where and when did the cultic priesthood come from? When did the successors of the humble Apostle Peter get all the trappings of a king? When did they get to be infallible and why? Where did a mandated clergy come from and why?

“For a lot of us the answers of old weren’t good enough. For ten, fifteen, or twenty years, it was worth the sacrifice of being celibate. And then it was not. We didn’t leave and get married because our hormones suddenly got to be too much for us to control. We left because we saw the Church in a new light. And the changed Church we now saw was not worth the sacrifices it Still demanded.”

Hershey delivered the argument with a flourish. The by-now attentive audience almost applauded.

But Fred Stapleton was not vanquished.

“Cass”—Fred had his eyes on Hershey, but he was openly addressing the entire gathering—”we have lived our entire lives intimately bound up in the Church. You can joke about it, but we don’t call it ‘Mother Church’ for nothing. Especially us, Cass. Think! Remember! If not all of us, then a very high percentage, came from devout Catholic families who treasured the priesthood . That’s certainly where the idea of becoming a priest began for us. We were altar boys and we memorized the Latin euphonically. We served Mass for every kind of priest imaginable—old, young, thin, fat, devout, irreverent, fast, slow, saints, and sinners.

And all the time, that’s what we wanted to be. That’s what we wanted to do.

“We spent up to twelve years in the seminary while we made up our minds and the faculty made up its mind about us. We were ordained. It was the culmination of our dreams. We spent years of committed service as priests before, for whatever reason, we left … so far, a fair enough picture?”

“So far.” In all honesty Cass couldn’t fault the narrative even if, in the light of the council, it was, he thought, a bit simplistic.

“As a matter of self-examination,” Fred continued, “why do I want to return to the active ministry? Lots of reasons—but then no one does anything for a single reason.

“Why do I want to function as a priest again? Because the same things that attracted me as a boy draw me now. I love the cultic priesthood and I really don’t care where it came from or why. I miss the miracles only a priest can work in counseling sessions. And, believe me, as a practicing psychologist, I can clearly tell the difference between purely psychological therapy and the opportunity to soothe a troubled conscience by making contact with God’s love. I love and miss all of the small day-today miracles a priest performs.

“But mostly, ‘Mother,’ as we call the Church, whether sarcastically or fondly, is in trouble. She doesn’t even realize how much trouble she’s in. Soon there will be so few nuns the vocation will be little more than a memory, and a dusty memory at that. The median age of priests is so high now and there are so few remaining active that ‘burnout’ vies with retirement and death in thinning the ranks. Seminaries are virtually empty, especially when you contrast the few enrolled with the need for many times that number.

“Lots of reasons are given for the drastically low number of seminarians. But part of one reason—a large part I think—is us. You said it yourself, Cass: The priests we knew before the council remained active into the next life. When we were kids and we thought of becoming priests, we subconsciously put our ambition in the context of permanency. Young men today cannot overlook us. We were good priests and now we function as priests no more. Young men don’t have to argue about why we left. All they need know is
that
we left. If we found the priestly life that difficult, that impossible, they think why should they get involved. Why should they make the sacrifice? For what?

“Finally,’ Mother’ is in trouble because she can’t or won’t see any of this. The Church needs us. She needs our experience, Our expertise, and our presence. The Church needs our unique contribution. But ‘Mother’ believes she can get along quite well without us. Here is a’Mother’ who thinks she can get along without some of her most completely trained and most needed children. Not only would it be a joy to return to the active ministry, it would go a long way to repay the debt we owe the institution that nourished our religious lives since we were children.

“Cass, in the final analysis, we must save the Church from herself.”

The hush in the room was remarkable. What had begun as a lighthearted party had evolved into a debate between two of the most successful people at that party. Hershey and Stapleton had started their adult lives as simple parish priests. Abandoning that, the former quickly rose to the top of the local chapter of Massachusetts General Insurance. He was now impressively wealthy.

The latter, while not in Hershey’s financial stratum, was prosperous, but beyond that, he was respected, well regarded in his field, and, at least on the local level, a celebrity.

Among the listeners to their debate, an aura of agreement seemed to flow from one to the other. When Hershey scored a point, though there was no literal movement in the room, one could sense that the majority had been convinced. Only to feel the conviction shift as the other made his point.

Stapleton, with his emotional appeal to affection—even love—that everyone here at least once had for “Mother Church,” had the upper hand at the moment.

“Fred,” Hershey came back, “it’s a mighty strange ‘Mother’ you want to save from herself. Take the two of us, her children, for example. Me first.

“I left the priesthood in about as filial a way as any mother could expect. I didn’t cause any sort of ruckus; no press conferences, no public statement of any kind. I didn’t make any demands about eventually getting a pension, even though I had worked for the Church better than ten years. Now, just about any conscientious organization you can think of gives an employee a vested right to some sort of pension after ten years of employment. Fortunately, I don’t need one. But other guys do, and they’re not going to get it. If big bad businesses can care enough for their employees, you’d think a mother would be at least as decent to her children.