Prodigal Father (6 page)

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Authors: Ralph McInerny

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BOOK: Prodigal Father
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“Marie, Marie …”
She made an impatient gesture and turned to go. “Your coffee all right, Father?”
“I made it myself.”
She hesitated, but no parting shot occurred to her and she was gone.
“So you were on retreat last week, Father Dowling.”
“Yes. At the seminary of the Athanasians. Do you know it?”
“Oh, yes.”
Blessed is he whom you choose and call to dwell in your courts.
—
Psalm 65
 
The first time Amos Cadbury was consulted by the Order of St. Athanasius was in the early seventies. He had been highly recommended at the chancery, Father Geoffrey Skipton told him, watching with narrowed and interested eyes for his reaction to this.
“Bishop Baglio?”
A shake of the head. “No. Himself.” Skipton said this in an unsuccessful brogue.
“Ah.”
“You're a Knight of Malta.”
Amos had not cared for this. Thirty years ago his reputation had been well-established and while he respected a potential client's wish to know what kind of lawyer he might be getting, he did not care to have it seem that he was bidding for business. The only reason he had come in response to Father Geoffrey's invitation was that he was a priest. What he would have assumed was that the man had learned he did work for the Church pro bono.
“And what might I do for you, Father?” His voice emphasized the subjunctive.
“It's an unusual matter. I thought it was just canon law at first, but that is unclear.”
With great circumlocution, Father Geoffrey came to the point. Perhaps Mr. Cadbury had followed the sessions of Vatican II and the exciting events that were following on it. Religious orders were asked to renew themselves by returning to the charism of their founders, the purpose for which they initially began.
“That is where the difficulties lie.”
The Athanasians had been founded in Turin in the middle of the nineteenth century by a saintly priest, Don Raffaello Schiavi, first as a community sanctioned by the diocese, then expanding into other parts of Italy. To say that the order had flourished would
have been an exaggeration, but it had attracted vocations, it had been assigned an African mission, and it had established itself in the United States, in Fox River, Illinois. There had been semiannual meetings of local superiors at the mother house in Turin since the close of the Council, but the sunny prospect that had seemed to lie before them at the outset of their meetings changed radically.
“Vocations are down everywhere,” Geoffrey had said. “But we are losing priests.”
The great exodus had begun and the Italians and the Americans could not agree on what the remedy was. In Turin, they wanted to abolish street clothes, the habit to be worn always and everywhere. They wanted the
novus ordo,
the new order of the Mass established after the Council, to be said only in Latin by Athanasians. They wanted to allow some men to live a hermetic life.
“What it comes down to is that they are really against the Council.”
Amos waited.
“The only remedy is divorce, Cadbury. Believe me, I have far more sympathy with people caught in a bad marriage than I ever had before.”
What was wanted was a new corporation that severed all ties with the mother house in Turin, and gave the Fox River institution full autonomy. Amos agreed to undertake the matter, reluctantly at first. He had not liked Geoffrey. He disliked his arrogance, his condescension to the “people in Turin,” his certainty that he had an infallible sense of the spirit of Vatican II. And he had been full of the jargon of that time. The Church must read the signs of the time, which he apparently took to mean it should take its cue from the secular world. The windows were to be thrown open,
apparently to let in the spirit of the age. Habits, clerical dress, fasting and abstinence, all the gloomy and negative attitudes toward sex were out. “Let's brighten up. Look at John XXIII, for heaven's sake.” Amos might have found a way to avoid the task, but the more time he spent with the Athanasians, the less typical did Geoffrey seem. Bartholomew was a delight to work with; he knew to a dime what the assets were. Amos suggested a cash settlement to Turin.
“What for?” Geoffrey cried.
“Under the present legal setup, they arguably own everything here.”
“They never provided a nickel.”
“But everything you accomplished was as members of the Order, the assets, the buildings, the grounds, are community property. I suggest being very generous or this may be in the courts forever.”
A lawyer wants to protect his client from future litigation, from any negative effects of what he does for him. Playing fast and loose with the Italian Athanasians could stir animosities that would not soon subside. Far better a generous parting gift. God knows the Americans could afford it. They had indeed prospered. They were situated on what had once been the estate of a Chicago banker whose second wife had been Catholic and brought him into the Church. Left a widower a second time, old Maurice Corbett's thoughts turned more decidedly to eternal things. He had arranged the loan for the first modest foundation of the Athanasians in Illinois and eventually he left them his estate. The mansion remained but was no longer visible as one came up the long drive from the county road. Amos would see the sun sparkle from the statue of Athanasius atop the main building. The chapel was exquisite, the whole nave a choir, with descending facing pews in
which a sea of seminarians wearing snow-white surplices had knelt.
Within a year, Amos had completed the work. The Athanasians were established as a corporation according to the laws of the State of Illinois. All previous legal provisions for their presence in the state were superseded by the new arrangement. The archdiocese approved, as did the relevant cardinal in Rome.
“So that's that,” Geoffrey had said after the signing of the papers in Amos's office. He was wearing a plaid sport coat and a shirt open at the neck. The spirit of Vatican II?
“That's that.”
“I consider this my gift to the Order, Amos.”
The question of his fee came up and Amos dismissed it.
“Don't be a fool,” Geoffrey urged. “You know how well off we are. And you deserve a chunk.”
Amos promised to give it thought, but, of course, he had no intention of profiting from the work he had done. He was not even sure that it had been the right thing for the Athanasians to do. Oh, he was all for American exuberance. The truth was that the American branch had operated in relative independence from Turin almost from the beginning. It had been Vatican II that had strengthened the sense that they were a single far-flung Order. The effort to define the new sense of unity had fragmented them. But the rhetoric of Geoffrey and the changes at the seminary during the months Amos was arranging the divorce from Turin were strikingly different. Renewal, the spirit of the Council, advancing into the modern world, were like clarion calls, but there was a precipitous drop in student applications for the next year and the student body was only a third the size it had been when the Council closed in 1965. An Athanasian at one of their Chicago
parishes applied for laicization and was free and clear in a matter of months. Others followed.
A month after the signing of the corporation papers, Amos received a call from Father Boniface.
Boniface ushered him into Geoffrey's office and took the chair behind the desk. “I hope this doesn't sound odd, Mr. Cadbury. But I would like you to explain our exact legal status now.”
“Well, as Father Geoffrey no doubt told you …”
“Father Geoffrey is no longer with us. He left.”
He had exacted a sizeable severance package from Bartholomew.
I thought of the days of long ago and remembered the years long past.
—Psalm 77
 
It wasn't just Father Dowling's reaction, it was the kids' as well. Edna felt that she had lost tons of moral credit with them, especially with Jane, the oldest. The boys had liked going to the Cubs game, no doubt about that, and they pigged out on Wrigley Field food, but they'd resisted Stan's attempts to be a good old buddy with them. The only one he made any headway with was Eric and
that, predictably, involved electronics. Stan had a palmtop that seemed to do everything but contact the moon, and he handed it over to Eric without qualm, no warnings, no mention of how expensive it was. Not until Eric asked him how much it cost. And in the fourth inning his cell phone rang and he spoke enigmatically into it for half a minute and hung up.
“It's a convenience, but it's a nuisance, too.”
And he let Eric look at the phone as well. The two of them huddled, ignoring the game, while he told Eric of all the things it did.
“Want to call someone?”
Eric looked at her and Edna gave him a noncommital shrug. He called one of his friends and gave him a play by play of the inning. Sosa hit a home run and Eric described it as if he were Chip Carey. The Lord only knew how much that call had cost.
“Wait'll you see my laptop, Eric.”
It was a slim little Toshiba, silver and gray, and once again Stan just turned it over and let Eric run it through its paces. When it was attached to the cell phone it had access to the Web. Eric was impressed with Stan's gadgetry if nothing else. But Jane and Carl never broke out of their wary silence until he was gone.
“Who is he, Mom?”
“Someone who came to see Father Dowling.”
She might have been invoking a blessing on the day, on her susceptibility to a man who was so unthreateningly interested in her as a woman.
“They're wonderful kids, Edna.”
“You and Eric hit it off.”
“When I was his age I had trouble making old-fashioned phone calls.”
“Do you have kids?”
“Not that I know of.” But his smile absolved the remark of any serious meaning. “How long have you been separated?”
“Seven years.” That was worse than a lie. She felt that she was being unfaithful to Earl. But what had she done, really? She had dinner with a man, she let him take her and the kids to a ball game. Not what you would confess, for heaven's sake. But somehow they felt like sins. She told herself she was dramatizing something that had no meaning at all.
“What's he do?” her son Eric asked her later.
“I'm surprised you didn't find out.”
“He must be some kind of salesmen.”
He based this on files he had seen on Ed's computer. A list of properties in the area. And religious orders.
“Religious orders?”
Eric nodded. “All of them in Illinois. Around Chicago. One in Fox River.”
“He's a priest, isn't he, Mom?” Jane said.
This was much later. The boys were in their rooms, Edna was fresh from the shower and sitting in her bedroom looking at herself in the mirror, trying to figure out what she looked like to a stranger.
“A priest!”
“You said he was a friend of Father Dowling's.”
“No. I said he came to see him.”
“He acts like a priest.”
“And how would that be?”
“I don't know. He just does.”
“Maybe you're right.” The suggestion had given her the strangest sensation, casting the dinner and ball game into a very different light, and she seized on it as a way to stop Jane's silent reproach. But it had been her girlish response to Stan that filled
her mind, the too-easy laughter, the desire to please, the sense of being flattered out of her shoes by his interest.
“Didn't he say what he did?”
“No. And I didn't ask. Why would I?”
Putting the ball in Jane's court ended the conversation, but Edna lay awake reviewing the day, thinking again of the earlier dinner with Stan. She had called home and said that something had come up, she would be late, could Jane just make spaghetti and a salad and look after things. But she had not wanted to say what had come up. Now that Jane had mentioned it, she found it all too possible that she'd had a date with a priest.
After a sleepless night, she went to work and sat at her desk. Some time during the night she had resolved to put the question to Father Dowling. The pastor's reaction to her remark that she'd had dinner with Stan increased her doubt about the man. Finally, she decided to settle the matter.
She went over to the rectory without calling first and faced the formidable obstacle of Marie Murkin.
“Is Father in?”
“Oh, yes.”
“In his study?”
She swept past Marie and went down the hall to the study. The door was open and Father Dowling looked up, surprised, then delighted.
“Edna. Come in.”
She pulled the door shut, sat across from him, and suddenly did not know what to say. Father Dowling waited patiently, giving no sign that he found this visit unusual. Finally, he asked about the Center. She found her tongue and said that everything was fine. She was desperately trying to think of something about the
Center that she could use as an excuse for barging in on him like this, when he said, “Any more strange visitors?”
“Did you talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“My Jane asked me a question about him.”
This was so awfully like going to confession, something she had never done face to face, as was sometimes now done.
“About Stan Morgan?”
“Eric looked him up on one of those search engines, Google, and drew a blank.” She inhaled. “Jane asked if he's a priest.”
Father Dowling laughed. “No, he was looking for a priest. A former priest.”
“And he isn't one himself?”
“I'm sure that would have come out in our conversation. It didn't. What made Jane think so?”
“Because I embarrassed her. She didn't like it at all that I let him take us to the ball game. She thought of it as a kind of date.”
“But it wasn't?”
“Not in that sense. Oh, I don't know. Father, I feel awful.”
“For accepting an invitation to dinner? For letting a man show his generosity and take you and your kids to a ball game?”
“Father, I was flattered.”
“Perhaps he was, too. That you accepted. That's all it was, wasn't it?”
“Yes! Oh, Father, don't think—”
“Edna, what I think is that you are a wonderful wife and mother, that there wouldn't be a Senior Center if it weren't for you, and that you have a conscience as delicate as a Carmelite's.”
His words brought all the relief of the formula of absolution after confession. Edna did not cry, she was not given to easy
crying, but her eyes welled with tears. If she ever loved a priest it would be Father Dowling; she did love him—how could she not, after all he had done for her when Earl was arrested and then the awful trial and afterward, asking her what she thought of turning the school into a center for senior parishioners?
“It's just a big white elephant now, Edna,” he had said. “The parish could save money by tearing it down, but I can't bring myself even to think of that. A center would be a way of justifying the expense of the building, not to mention what it might mean for the old folks. We're becoming a parish of old folks, Edna.”
And so she had become the director of the Senior Center. It had enabled her to keep the family together and begin the long wait until Earl would be set free. Most important of all, it had lifted the cloud she and the kids were under because of what Earl had done—if he had really done anything, the thing of which he was accused. But he had felt guilty and he had been found guilty and she and the kids shared in it. Yet as director of the Center she had received the endorsement of Father Dowling and now, all these years later, she doubted that many people even wondered where her husband was.
“Why don't
I
take you and the kids to the ball game?”
“Oh, Father.”
“How about Saturday? Phil Keegan could come along, if you wouldn't mind.”
“But it's an afternoon game and you have confessions.”
“Father Boniface is coming this weekend. He can take confessions for me.”
She felt that she was on a cloud when she left. In the kitchen, she stopped and talked with Marie and accepted the offer of tea.
“Father said that he has a helper this weekend.”
“Father Boniface.” Marie stirred her tea. “He's all right. Did I ever tell you about the Franciscans?”
She had, many times; it was Marie's way of establishing her seniority in the parish, her long suffering, illustrating the moral that no matter how bad things look they can get better in a minute.
“Boniface is no Franciscan, Edna.”
“He seems nice.”
“He's a saint,” Marie said emphatically, as if she were presiding at a consistory in St. Peter's. But then she changed gears. “Do you remember that man who came looking for Father Dowling when he was on retreat?”
There seemed to be no ulterior intent in the question, but Edna preserved a receptive silence.
“A wonderful man. He sat right where you're sitting and we had the nicest conversation. I only wished I could have helped him. He came back, but Father Dowling wasn't any help.”
“He was looking for someone?”
“Some former priest as it turned out. God knows why.”
“Maybe he's one, too.”
Marie's laughter was merry. “Edna, when you've known as many priests as I have you can tell them a mile off. And he sat right at this table. No, he was no priest nor ever had been.”
Added to her talk with Father Dowling, this assurance sent Edna back to her office with a sense that she had been shriven several times over.

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