No Greater Love (24 page)

Andrea was particularly impressed by the preamble to the story of Rickey and Robinson. How deeply moved Rickey had been one day when he observed an earlier black athlete, qualified in every way to play in the major leagues, sitting by himself, endlessly rubbing his hands. Trying to erase the dark color from his skin. The color that was the only thing that kept him from competing in the all-white majors. And there was nothing the athlete could do about it.

Not until Jackie Robinson came along and heroically broke the color line.

Andrea could not get over how similar the plight of women was to the prejudice against African-Americans.

No matter how long or how hard that young athlete rubbed his skin, he could not blot out the color. Black was the inescapable and incidental hue of his skin.

Color had nothing to do with his ability to do what he wanted to accomplish. Yet color alone prevented him from accomplishing it.

So it was with Andrea. And Patty. And so many others whom Andrea would one day meet.

Their sex was what clothed their souls, their personalities, their bones. Their sex was what kept them from becoming what they wanted to be. And there was nothing they could do about it.

The athlete could not become white. Andrea could not become male.

There was, however, a difference that proved to be decisive. No one could sanely or reasonably argue that black men could not play at least as well as, if not far better than white men. Barring black men from baseball, football, basketball, whatever, was sheer, naked prejudice, flat-out racism.

Without question, black men were not allowed to play big league baseball due solely to their color. It was not due to lack of ability; it had nothing to do with ability. There was nothing even remotely associated with a single rational argument.

There was a slight, but again decisive, difference between the color barrier that had blocked black athletes from baseball and the sexual classification that barred women from the priesthood. And that difference was the reason for the prejudice.

The ostensible reason advanced by the Catholic Church for the “impossibility” of ordaining women is: Jesus did not select any women to be Apostles.

That's it. That is the rationalization for the argument against ordaining females.

It is hardly a substantial enough argument to bother with a serious refutation. But, unlike the erstwhile barring of blacks from baseball, at least the Church law blocking women from ordination
does
have a reason—no matter how spurious—behind it.

Where baseball had a heroic martyr to break through the artificial barrier, Andrea could not envision a Jackie Robinson-type female who could accomplish the same sort of breakthrough in the Church.

Secular courts of law would not dare to touch a case of gender discrimination perpetuated by a major, mainline religion.

No Catholic bishop—active or retired—has dared to simply ordain some women, as did the Episcopal bishops of the seventies. And if one or another were to do so, the Vatican surely would simply declare the ordination illicit and invalid. And the priesthood would still be a dream for Catholic women.

All Andrea needed to experience was that one word—“unworthy”—to know that she was jousting against windmills. Once that priest had passed sentence on her, she never again seriously aspired to the priesthood.

She firmly believed that Patty, as determined as she was, would not breach the barrier. Not a hundred, not a thousand Pattys.

While Patty tried to figuratively knock down the door, Andrea planned to squeeze through a window. All she had to do was find an appropriate pastor and parish. The rest would be pretty much a downhill glide all the way.

She had been quite certain she had found the missing link. Last summer she had staged a full court press, attending a different church each weekend, even, in some parishes that seemed very close to the ideal, attending daily Mass.

Her exhaustive research appeared to pay off in late August when she chanced upon St. George's parish in Southfield, whose pastor was Father Benedict Manor.

Southfield, a northern suburb of Detroit, was a rapidly developing, still evolving suburban metropolis. It almost had a downtown, but had to settle for an extensive civic center with courts, police department, municipal offices, and an extensive library. Many doctors had offices throughout the suburb, which also boasted a major Catholic hospital and a good mix of black and white residents, many of them professionals.

It was the sort of mobile metropolis in which Andrea felt comfortable.

St. George was a large parish of 3,000 families, a grade school, and a pastor who should have been quintuplets, all of them priests. Instead, Father Manor was the lone inhabitant of the sprawling rectory originally designed to house four or five priests. And, indeed, before the priest shortage hit, St. George did support a pastor and two associates. The then pastor actually expected a third associate, who, as fate would have it, never arrived.

Instead said pastor, Leo Andover, lost one, then the other associate. Left to his own devices, he developed an arrhythmia. He gathered together his medical records and brought them to the chancery. The head of the archdiocesan curia granted Father Andover an early retirement, and he became a snowbird. He helped at various Detroit-area parishes, supplying a weekend ministry through spring, summer, and fall. Then he wintered in California with his sister and brother-in-law.

That was five years ago. In the succeeding years, Father Manor had made few waves.

The principal of St. George's school was in her mid-forties. Forget teaching nuns. During her entire career to date she had filled educational and administrative duties in parochial schools exclusively.

A volunteer couple from the parish conducted an Adult Education venture, consisting mainly of guest speakers and film presentations. An active St. Vincent de Paul Society was the only apparent effort at Christian Service.

There were other activities going on in the parish. But the great lack was continuity, organization, and a spark of enthusiasm. Andrea saw herself as the mortar that would tie up all the loose ends and pull things together. She arranged an interview with Father Manor.

It was a desperately hot early Friday afternoon in late August. Andrea was kept waiting only a few minutes before the priest entered his office. She stood—it couldn't hurt—and shook hands. He motioned to her chair and she reseated herself.

He flopped into his heavily upholstered, leather-covered swivel chair. He wore black socks, black trousers, and a black shirt, the sort of shirt that takes a small, white plastic collar insert. The insert was missing and the top two buttons were open.

Father Manor was perspiring, even though the rectory was comfortably air-conditioned. The perspiration likely was caused by the priest's obesity. His hair looked windblown, rather than combed. “Just finished my swim,” Father Manor wheezed. “Every Friday. Got to stay in condition. We've got three thousand families or more. If I go down”—he chuckled and everything moved—“the whole place grinds to a halt.”

“I can well imagine.” For a moment, Andrea harkened back to her youth and all her unwanted weight. However, she had been the victim of a thyroid condition. Father Manor probably was a host to food. She guessed the swimming might well be the extent of his exercise. Just think what would happen if he didn't get that swim!

“So …” Manor leafed through the documents that Andrea handed across the desk. He said nothing more than “So …” as he read them without apparent comprehension. Then, “Says here you're going to the seminary.” He looked at her with heightened interest. “Something happen when I wasn't looking? You gonna be a priest?”

“No, Father—”

“Bennie. Call me Bennie. Everybody does.”

“Uh … okay. No, Bennie, I'm a major in Pastoral Ministry.”

“Pastoral Ministry,” he repeated. “Hey, what's that? I'm the pastor. And what I do has got to be called ‘Pastoral Ministry'… no?”

Andrea had the strong feeling that he was putting her on.

“Father—”

He raised a hand, stopping and reminding her.

“Bennie,” she corrected herself, “I've got a sneaking hunch that you know very well that (a) the seminary is not advancing women to be ordained, and (b) Pastoral Ministry is a graduate degree that can be earned by the laity for service in the Church.”

Manor smiled as a small child might when caught in a little mischief. “Yes, yes. You're right. Just a little funnin.'” He leaned forward, placed her documents back on the desk and nudged them toward her.

She wished he had taken the documents more seriously. But, realistically, she had known this would be a hard sell.

She aligned her documents by tapping them together on the desk, then tucked them into her attaché case. “Bennie”—she was beginning to like the sound of it—“I think you hit the essence of this whole thing when you said, ‘If I go down, the whole place grinds to a halt.'”

“You agree?” He seemed surprised.

“I couldn't agree more. Do you know how many priests it took to keep this parish from grinding to a halt? I mean, twenty or thirty years ago?”

“Yeah, sure. There was a pastor and two associates. And that was hardly enough. Back then,” he emended, “they were called assistants. Probably a better name for them. They ‘assisted' the pastor; they didn't ‘associate' with him.” He smiled broadly.

“But,” he went on, “you're right about the three priests not being enough. I've read some of the correspondence between old Father Andover and the chancery. He was flat-out begging for help. And,” he said with conviction, “there weren't anywhere near as many families then as we have now!”

“Exactly,” she agreed. “And the guys downtown expect you to do the work of three—or even four priests. But I ask you, Bennie, how long can they expect you to keep doing the hard job you're doing right now? And doing it so well?

“If you wear out—and who could blame you?—this fine parish grinds to a screeching halt.”

He lowered his head in thought, thus forming four or five chins. A minute or so passed. He looked up, a bit of anguish showing. “But what can I do about it? It's not a case of withholding priests that they've got on tap. Sometimes they'd do that in the old days. They'd squirrel away some guys who were really available, waiting for the right spot or the right request for help. Those were the days when it paid to get mad as hell—and get some help in the bargain.

“But now”—his gesture denoted hopelessness—“what can we do? What can
I
do? The priest shortage is real. They can't send help. There isn't any help to send!”

“That, if I may be so bold as to say it, Bennie, is where I come in.”

“You?”

“Little me. In June of next year, I will graduate from the seminary. I will be a pastoral minister.”

He'd have known this if only he'd taken the trouble to actually read the documentation she'd presented. But, no mind; she'd just have to remember that Bennie didn't like to read. She was willing to spell it out for him.

“The people—your people—need you for the essential things nobody but you can give.”

“They do.” It was halfway between a question and a statement.

“Yes. Only you in St. George's parish can offer Mass.”

“That's true.”

“Of course that could be remedied. Other priests could be recruited to help on weekends and holy days.”

“Well, really, I can handle things just fine on holy days.”

“Well, that's brave of you. Let's concentrate on weekends then.”

“We do get help.”

“You do?” She knew he did.

“But I have to scrounge around.…”

“And that takes a lot of time from important things. Like preparing your homily each week.” Actually, thought Andrea, give him his due: He did offer a fairly decent sermon.

“Well, yes,” he said. “Now that I think of it, it does take a lot of time.”

“Time that could be better spent.”

“Absolutely.”

“I could see to that. Notice I didn't say, I could
do
that.”

“Hmmm.” It was a distinction he hadn't considered until she called his attention to it.

“How about the liturgy commission of your parish council? Easy enough for some of them, say on a rotating basis, to arrange for sufficient weekend help. Could even develop into permanent assistance.”

“That's an idea.” Manor wondered why he hadn't thought of this. He'd just taken it for granted that the searching out of extra priests was solely the beleaguered pastor's job.

Andrea pressed on. “How about an evangelization program?” She knew they didn't have one Actually, outside of Mass and a parochial school, there wasn't much going on in St. George's parish. It was open season for the enterprising young woman.

“Well …” Manor was growing defensive. “… there's been some talk of that.”

“I don't mean for a minute, Bennie, that any of these services and activities should be
your
responsibility. Only that I'll bet the guys downtown wonder about them. I mean, a parish this size … and you just a short time from retirement. It's not unheard-of that sometimes pastors are made to delay their hard-earned retirement until a few of these services are in operation.”

Really? he thought.

There had been talk over the clergy grapevine of retirements granted earlier than programmed. Usually with some medical urgency. In that sort of situation, the question was whether to grant full retirement income or prorate it. But Manor was not aware of any priest being forced to postpone his retirement. The very thought of it made him perspire in abundance and produced in him a strangely claustrophobic anxiety. As if he were trapped within St. George's parish, and the parish, in terms of the rectory and church, were shrinking and closing in on him.