In God's House (34 page)

Mardi Gras morning I woke up in the Hay-Adams Hotel across from the White House. The Washington Post had a photograph of Lorne Greene reigning over the Sunday night Bacchus parade in New Orleans. I knew Kate was taking the kids to the city to see the parades. Her parents lived one block off the main parade route. From the weather reports, I imagined Kate and the kids would be bundled in warm clothing, standing somewhere along Saint Charles Avenue, waiting for the first parade of the day, Zulu.

I took a morning flight out of National Airport in Washington with Fathers McDougall and Patterson. Des had forwarded the Wolleski document to a number of bishops, many of whom had requested that we visit and consult with them. Today we were to begin our campaign. Over the coming weeks we planned to crisscross the country, moving to a different city every two or three days.

We quickly established the pattern that we would repeat in most dioceses we visited. The consultation began with a day-long meeting with a small group of diocesan clerics and officials – the bishop, his vicar general, the diocesan attorney, the canon lawyer who headed their diocesan tribunal, and a local psychiatrist or psychologist who consulted with the diocese regularly. We discussed cases involving specific, named clerics, who were euphemistically referred to as “problem priests”, and we reviewed the relevant civil, criminal, clinical and canonical factors. The
following day we addressed the entire diocese, hundreds of priests, in a rural retreat setting. Sometimes principals and administrators of the local Catholic school system were in the audience as well.

The anticipated one-week trip to three dioceses lasted nearly the whole forty-plus days of the Lenten season and extended to sixteen dioceses. In some places I had to play all three speaking roles as Matt and Des had pressing business to attend to in Washington.

It soon became a blur to me. As I moved from city to city, diocese to diocese, I began to wonder what our mission was. What was it Des, Matt and I believed we were doing? Was our mission to save children from the Church, or were we trying to save the Church from itself? In either case it was clear we were failing. Nothing was being accomplished. The child victims were never mentioned once by anyone except us.

After one Monday session, I was chastised by Matt in our hotel suite over a performance I had given earlier that day during our presentation to an entire diocese of hundreds of priests in the chapel of a rural retreat house. During the question and answer session, a fat, young priest wearing thick glasses had approached the microphone.

“Mr. Chattelrault, you talked about millions that could be lost in civil cases. Exactly whose money are you talking about here? Should we do something to protect our pension funds? Protect the good priests?”

“What do you mean by good priests?” I said. “Who are the good priests? If the entire diocese is in this room as I was told they would be, then it is certain from my experience that there are men among us in this room who have sexually abused children. And it is also certain, to my mind, that everyone in this room knows
exactly who the guilty priests are. One of the things I have learned is that priests who sexually abuse children and adolescents do not live in a vacuum. They live in communities like this one. Their lifestyles make others suspect them; there are complaints made against them; they are shuttled from one parish assignment to another. Everyone in their community knows who they are. No one contacts the police.”

“But… but—”

“No, I’m talking here. Let me tell you – tell all of you – I know all of you have a penis and I know all of you can get an image of an erect penis in your mind. But none of you have children, and not one of you – none of you – can imagine what a parent feels when they are forced to picture an erect penis entering the vagina or rectum of their seven-year-old child, or their young teenager.”

“But… but—”

“Father, if you were a good priest – indeed, if any of the men in this room were good priests – there would be no bad priests in this room; they would all be locked away in jails. If you were a good priest following the teachings and example of Christ, you would be consumed with empathy and sympathy for the young victims and their families. You would not care only about yourself and your money.”

The fat fellow was red in the face. I picked up my file from the podium and stepped away from the microphone. With my file in my hand and in a voice loud enough to be heard in the last row without the aid of a microphone, I said, “A man who has reason to believe children are being sexually abused and does not contact the police is not a good priest. He’s not even a good man.”

I walked out of the room. Twenty minutes later Des and Matt found me seated at the wheel of our rental car. No one said anything as we returned to the hotel.

Once we were settled in the hotel suite, Matt opened up on me. “Renon, we can’t have any more performances like your act this afternoon. If word gets around to other bishops about what you said—”

Interrupting him, I said, “Wha’? Wha’ the fuck happens then? So, I don’t get to talk to any more of these bastards? Fuck ’em. That piece of shit priest deserved what I said. They all did. I don’t know the Bible, but I swear if it’s really the Good Book as some say, then it would sanction the killing of adults who prey on children sexually and those who cover up their crimes.”

Matt said, “You gotta understand, the concept of keeping the Church free from scandal is tattooed on these guys’ souls.” He laughed and slapped my arm. “Monsignor Moroux was telling the truth when he told Des you’re a loose cannon.”

“I’m not a loose cannon. I aim carefully.”

Every night my hotel room looked the same. Legal pads filled with notes I had scribbled were stacked on the desk and spread on the bed. I’m not sure what I thought I’d learn by poring over these notes every night. I now knew of over four hundred priests who had sexually abused children. A clinical text I’d read claimed a forty-year-old pedophile in a position of trust could have as many as two hundred victims. I had visited less than 10 per cent of the dioceses in the country, and yet there could be as many as eighty thousand children who had been sexually abused over the years in these dioceses. It was unfathomable to me, and unimaginable that no one knew these secrets.

Six months earlier, I had been convinced that I faced absolute evil in the form of a single aberrant Catholic priest who had sexually defiled seventeen children, and a vicar general and bishop who had covered up his crimes. Now, the Church appeared to me as lethal and morally dead as any criminal enterprise on earth. Based on the evidence I had from the dioceses I’d visited, I believed there had to be five to ten thousand sex-abuser priests in the United States, which meant every single bishop must have been involved in covering up their crimes. And it was only logical to assume a similar situation existed in every other significantly Catholic country in the world.

Matt cooked dinner for me and Des. But first I had to play fetch with a tennis ball until Matt’s dog, Mozart, lost interest and calmed down from the excitement of having visitors in the house.

I wasn’t hungry. I picked at the food, paid more attention to the wine. “How many victims do you think there are?” I asked.

Matt said, “When you factor in the child’s family members as victims – and family members are victims, collateral damage, and Catholic families are large – then you’re probably looking at over a million in this country whose lives have been severely damaged or destroyed by people in whom they placed their faith and trust. Maybe a lot more.”

“What in the world can we do about this?” I asked.

“Ask Des. He’s our supreme optimist.”

Des ignored the shot and enthusiastically offered, “Cardinal Laurence from Atlanta was at the nunciature for dinner last week. I brought him up to speed and he’s a good guy who is with the program. He said he’d take this issue to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in May. He wants a proposal from us, policies and procedures, a manual for the American bishops to adopt. I think he can take the bull by the horns.”

Pouring another glass of wine, I said, “There’s something I hate to bring up, fellows. But it has occurred to me that the three of us may be criminals now.”

“What?” Matt asked.

“Every time we go into a diocese we learn the identities of more child molesters, heinous criminals. Do we report this to local police authorities? No. We just go to the airport without stopping at the police or prosecutor’s office. There are laws in a lot of states that mandate that anyone possessing knowledge of a sex crime against a child report same or they are guilty of a crime for failure to report. I can’t differentiate what we do from what the bishops do. We’re part of the conspiracy to cover up these crimes.”

There was a long silence. Matt’s silence seemed like a stunned silence. Des was more stoic. “We’re doing good work. Some priests have been removed to treatment facilities.”

“What’s the difference between moving a criminal cleric to a new parish and hiding him away in a distant treatment center? There’s no difference,” I said.

Matt asked, “Where would you put them, if not in a treatment facility?”

“Prison. I’d put them in prison. All of them belong in prison.”

Des said, “I grant you, it’s a tough place we’re in, but we can’t blow up the Church before we’ve placed it in a position to save children and save itself. Cardinal Laurence—”

“Do you think Cardinal Laurence or anyone else has any idea that there are thousands of priests having sex with minors and little children in this country?”

Matt said, “No. No one knows the whole truth. You probably are as close to the truth as anyone has ever been. Your briefcase holds the worst secrets of the American Church. We will prepare a proposal for Cardinal Laurence to present to the Conference of Bishops, a plan.”

“What happens if the world comes to know what we know? What happens then?”

“If the world learns what we know now, the moral authority of the Church will be severely diminished, maybe destroyed,” Des said.

“Will bishops understand that, in doing nothing, they’re putting the Church’s moral authority at risk?” I asked.

Des grumbled, “Bishops would never believe that anything could adversely impact the moral authority or the supreme power of the Church.”

Matt was the ringleader. It was his decision that he and Des should travel to meet my family, see the land of Louisiana. When I told Kate they were coming down and asked if she could put them up in the guest cottage at Coteau, she suggested I stay at Coteau as well. Kate offered to swing by my town home and pick up some casual clothes for me. She said I could stay in the master suite in the big house with her and added, “Maybe we can even fool around.”

The prospect of being back in Coteau with everyone had the effect of recharging me, shaking away some of the exhaustion that had dogged me day and night on the road. I had talked to Kate and the kids often over the past two months since I’d met Matt and Des, describing them as best I could.

We arrived at Thiberville airport Friday morning at ten. Sasha was standing in the baggage-claim area with Kate. When Kate told me Sasha couldn’t go to school because of a tummy ache, she winked.

“It’s all better now,” Sasha said. She was not a shy kid. Rather than hiding behind Kate, she kept looking behind Matt. “My daddy said you had a dog, Mozart. Where’s Mozart, mister?”

Matt bent down on one knee, face to face with her, eye level, and said, “You can call me Matt, okay? You’re Sasha, right?”

“Un-huh. I mean, yes, sir.”

“Un-huh’s okay. It’s good to call strangers who are grownups
‘sir’, but we’re gonna be friends. I’m just Matt, and that guy with muscles hauling our bags off the conveyor belt – his name’s Des.”

“Where’s Mozart?” Sasha said.

“Do you like airplane food?” Matt said.

“No way. When we go skiing, I bring my own food in my backpack.”

“Well, maybe I’ll get Mozart a backpack. See, Mozart doesn’t like airplane food either. But he sent some gifts for you.”

Matt reached into a carrier bag and pulled out two Cabbage Patch Dolls and two Care Bears. “I don’t know what kinds of toys little girls like, but somebody told me these were the right things, and your dad told me you had a stuffed doll and stuffed animal collection that filled your room. Mozart got into this bag and put each one of the dolls in his mouth. He wanted to play fetch with them. I had to fuss at him. He decided it was a good idea to leave them in good shape for you.”

“You’re pretty funny for a priest and everything.”

Desmond laughed and said, “Matt’s stealing all my thunder here, Sasha. Your dad said you loved the movie, so I got you all the
Star Wars
figures. They’re in my suitcase.”

Sasha squealed, “This is really great. Jake and Shelby are gonna be soooo jealous.”

“Oh, we didn’t leave them out,” Des said. “I brought them a couple of signed baseballs and a signed football from a collection I’ve had since I was a kid.”

Kate kissed and hugged me, squeezed my hand. “It’s good to see you,” she said. Then she kissed Des and Matt on the cheek. “You guys are sweet to bring these gifts. It’s not like Sasha’s not spoiled enough.”

Matt smiled. “Gifts are good. In my med-school years, I worked all summer every year at camps for underprivileged children who I don’t think ever got gifts. I learned more from those children than I ever learned in school.”

I found it was an official Chattelrault holiday when we arrived home in Coteau. Jake and Shelby had skipped out on school too. The visit of Matt and Des was a big thing for the whole family. The boys were in the swimming pool. It was a heated pool, partially covered, but I knew it had to be cold at this time of year. It didn’t take twenty minutes for Des and Matt to borrow trunks from me and Shelby, and dive in and begin playing “Marco Polo”. Soon everyone but Kate was in the pool. She was cooking in the kitchen, bringing out small portions of Cajun dishes poolside. We stayed in the pool long enough to get sunburned.

When Kate and I announced we were taking Matt and Des to a classic old country supper club with a Cajun band that evening, the children insisted on coming too. Kate and I offered the back seat of my car to the guys, but they opted to grab Sasha and climb into the back of Shelby’s jeep, undaunted by the deafening music of the Rolling Stones pouring out of its huge speakers. We followed the jeep as it bounced along the winding country roads, crossing bridges over two muddy bayous lined with moss-covered oaks. Shelby suddenly swung left to take a shortcut across the sunbaked rows of an abandoned bean field, and all five in the jeep started laughing and shouting over the music as they bounced over plowed rows of dirt that were as solid as concrete. Matt and Des hung on to little Sasha as all in the jeep were convulsed in laugher. Kate shook her head and grinned. “So, these are the two guys you’ve been telling me are so brilliant. Riding anywhere with Shelby and Jake is not the brightest idea.”

Inside the old, sagging, wooden dinner-dance place, Kate did the ordering from a menu of dishes foreign to Matt and Des. Soon we were tucking into the rice, chicken and andouille sausage of a classic jambalaya, and feasting on shrimp remoulade, marinated crab fingers, hush puppy fritters made from special cornflour, and a seafood gumbo with a bit of everything from the Gulf of Mexico in it.

Before we got to the pecan pie and praline ice cream, Des announced, “I don’t know how to do what you call the Cajun
two-step
,
Kate. I only learned one dance as a boy. But let’s give it a go anyhow.” Des took Kate to the floor and to the accompaniment of the old-timers’ ensemble of accordion, guitar, fiddle and drum they danced one wild polka after another.

Most of the night, Matt sat at the far end of the table, talking with Jake and Shelby about their lives, interests, likes and dislikes. At Matt’s side, Sasha had a stack of crayons and coloring sheets the waitress handed out. She worked as she always did, diligently, becoming frustrated as she could not consistently color within the lines. I watched Matt at times as he picked up colors and helped her, and I heard him say, “Now, Sasha, think about it. Who put these figures on these pages? Who made these lines? Do lines really matter? Of course not. You’re an artist expressing yourself and we’re gonna turn these sheets over to the blank side where there are no lines at all. Then you can draw any line with any color you want. And when you finish making these crayon renderings, if you allow me, I would love for you to give me two of them if you want to. I will frame one for my office wall, and the other I will hang at a low level in my den at home, low enough for Mozart to admire it.”

Sasha smiled broadly. “Okay. Deal.”

Just before closing time, Des said, “One more dance, Kate.”

“No way. You’ve thrown my back out, Des.”

Matt stood and offered his hand to Kate. “It sounds like a waltz. I think I can muddle through that without injuring you.” Matt was a talented dancer and the two of them glided in circles small and large, smiling and laughing.

Des sat next to me, put an arm around me, and took a pull off a long-neck beer. “This is some life, some country, some culture you got down here, Ren. What a night! First time I danced with a woman all night and what happens? I’m jilted for a head-shrinker, Matt. Them’s the breaks, eh son?”

When the kids were asleep upstairs in their rooms, Kate served cognac and coffee on a glass-topped table by the pool. Desmond
was still marveling to me about the dreamlike landscape of south Louisiana, the richness of the food, and the fabulous sounds of the Cajun band he’d been dancing to.

At some point, I got up to check on the automatic pool sweeper. I was standing on the edge of the deep end, where the device was trapped in a corner. Together, Des and Matt snuck up behind me and pushed me into the pool, fully clothed. It was like ice water. When I surfaced, shouting, “That’s not fair,” Matt said, “You’re right. Fair’s fair.” And he dove in headfirst with all of his clothes on, popping to the surface and calling out to Des, “Are we in this together or what?” Des walked to the shallow end and down the steps until he was over his head too.

Kate tried to escape. She ran, she shrieked, even showed a flash of anger, but we tossed her in too, blue jeans, sweatshirt and all.

We were out of the pool as quick as we were in it. Once we’d dried and changed, I built a big fire in the den, and we arranged ourselves comfortably around it and started to talk. Kate was interested in the guys, in why they became priests. Des said, “I never wanted to be a priest when I was growing up. I wanted to play professional hockey. Then in college I took a comparative religion course and became interested in the history of religions. I felt I wanted to be part of that life. I’d been baptized and raised in a Catholic family, so I chose that course, but I’ve never really thought of myself as a Catholic cleric. I’m a Christian who happens to be Catholic.”

Matt said, “I was attracted to medicine, especially psychology. I believe a huge segment of society suffers some form of psychological condition or disorder and most are treatable, but these people go through life without any diagnosis or medical regime. The quality of life they have is less than it should be. The mission of the Church is supposed to be healing. I converted to Catholicism for that reason and within the Church I’ve been able to work with a lot of damaged priests. Some of them were restored, like alcoholics going into recovery; priests who have been able to return to church parishes and touch many lives in a positive way.
But I’m no saint of any kind. I just like giving whatever I have to help heal suffering wherever I find it.”

“This shit’s getting too serious,” Des said. “I’d rather dance or swim.”

We sat there sharing great memories and funny stories until the sun was almost in the sky.

When I stumbled into the kitchen Saturday morning, Kate told me Sasha had kidnapped Matt early. She’d banged on the door of the little house, handed him a packed backpack and together they had saddled up horses named Dreamer and Pretty One and ridden off into the surrounding countryside.

As I poured coffee, I looked out the window and saw Des tossing a football with Shelby and Jake.

“Our kids are gonna kill Matt and Des!”

“I don’t think they came here to get rest,” Kate said. “They’re great guys.”

I nodded, “I’m lucky they came into my life.”

She hugged me tight. “They’re lucky you came into their lives too.”

Late in the afternoon, the horse-riders returned, walked and cooled down their mounts, groomed them and came up to the house where Kate had fired up a barbecue pit. It was a mild March night. Kate grilled blackened redfish and corn on the cob that she served with a side of crawfish étouffée and fried green tomatoes.

While Kate cooked, the kids pulled wood from a pile on the side of the cottage and built a big bonfire near the pond, encircling the woodpile with wooden rocking chairs they took from the porches of the cottage and big house. By the time we sat down to eat at the long table under one of the big oaks, the fire was blazing in the distance.

During the evening, Shelby, Matt, and Des must have told every joke they knew. Jake and Sasha did what they did best – squabbled interminably. Jake was talking about fishing in the pond.

“Well, here’s the deal. Our pond is nine years old, so I know there’s a six pound bass out there somewhere, a big one. Nobody ever caught anything bigger than two pounds. Dad says I can mount anything over four pounds. Tomorrow, will you help me catch the big one?”

“Has anyone ever seen the big one?” Matt asked.

Sasha said, “I see the big one every day when I feed the ducks. Sometimes I catch the big one on bacon and popcorn, but I always let it go. And I’ll never tell Jake where it is.”

Jake laughed, “Ya gotta understand – Sasha has an imagination that is… well, her whole mind is imagination. She lives in a dream world.”

“Not true, Jake.”

Kate jumped in, “Now look, you two, I told you already. None of this bickering while company is here.”

“Okay,” Sasha said. Turning to Matt, she asked, “Will you fish with me? See, I can’t touch a gross worm and need someone to bait my hook.”

Matt laughed, “Think I can do that.”

When the fire burned down to embers, everyone was quiet. There were birds calling out in the night.

Shelby said, “Ya know, I’ve never seen one of those birds. They only sing at night. What kind of birds only sing at night?”

“Blind birds,” Jake said.

Matt and Sasha put their fishing gear in a canoe and shoved off. Jake and Des loaded into a pirogue, a low-slung Cajun boat built to navigate waters only inches deep.

Kate and I were sitting in chairs that almost touched. She reached out and held my hand. I looked in her eyes, thinking about how we had been together in bed the past two nights, how much we obviously loved each other still. I knew she understood by my expression that I was asking her a question and she slowly shook her head side to side.

From where we sat, we could see the fishing rodeo on the pond. Jake was pulling in lots of small bass and releasing them. I think Des boated one. Matt was tied up, literally, spending all his time untangling Sasha’s fishing line from low-hanging branches.

When Jake started hollering, Shelby came outside and joined Kate and me as we walked toward the pond.

“Matt’s got the big one! He’s got him!” Jake shouted. The closer we got the louder Jake shouted, “He’s got him! He’s got him! The big bass!”

Matt’s fishing pole was bent to the breaking point. He reeled slowly. Finally, fearing the pole would snap, Matt laid it in the boat and pulled the line by hand. He landed the monster in the canoe and almost tipped it over.

Kate shouted, “I’ll mount that one myself.”

As we watched, Matt hauled Sasha’s rusted old tricycle into the canoe. All of us remembered how Sasha’s trike had mysteriously disappeared at the same time she was badgering us every day to buy her a two-wheeler with training wheels. We had believed the trike had been stolen, the only thing ever taken from our place.