The Good Shepherd (45 page)

A call from Father Philip Reagan, president of St. Francis Xavier University. “Your Eminence, I feel I should tell you this personally. We’ve been forced to discontinue your nephew’s scholarship.”

“Why?”

“Well - the Student Council demanded an explanation of why he had one. These articles on the archdiocese’s finances in that underground newspaper - all the kids have read them, Your Eminence. It was common knowledge - although I only heard about it this morning - that Timmy’s marks were atrocious and half the time he’s on drugs. There’s no - adequate explanation for him having a scholarship.”

“I trust he can finish the term.”

“Yes - of course. As for him returning next fall, I don’t think he can do it without repeating a number of courses this summer.”

“Why was this situation allowed to develop without anyone even bothering to tell me about it? I’m not talking about the scholarship now. I’m the nearest thing the boy has to a father. You knew that as well as anyone. Do you people
run
schools anymore? Lately, I get the impression that they’re running you.”

“We’re doing the best we can,” Father Reagan said in a strangled voice. “I think Your Eminence should know that Timmy is not exactly one of your admirers. Rather the contrary. He supplied a lot of material for those vicious articles on you.”

“I hope you have evidence for that statement.”

“I can’t produce witnesses, Your Eminence, but we do have a rather effective intelligence system set up out here to help us anticipate crises. Some of the people working for us know Timmy very well. I could arrange to have you talk with the priest who’s running it.”

“No. I’ll take your word for it,” Matthew Mahan said, hearing and hating the defeat in his voice.

He called his sister-in-law to tell her the bad news. Predictably, she began to weep. He murmured soothing phrases into the phone until she calmed down. Then he told her more bad news. He was being forced to cancel her charge accounts. Perhaps she had heard about the series of articles accusing him-? No, of course not. She had heard nothing. The whole thing was incomprehensible to her. He told her not to panic. He would ask Mike Furia to raise her salary. But she would have to learn to manage money better. Cash would have to stop slipping through her fingers. “I’ll try, Matt, I’ll try,” she promised. “But I just think it’s terrible that anyone should attack you. . . .”

He agreed, no question about it, it was
terrible
that anyone should attack such a paragon of sanctity as Matthew Mahan.
H
e hung up and stared out the window at the vanishing sunlight. It was almost six o’clock. Except for twenty minutes at lunch, he had been behind this desk all day. Dennis McLaughlin appeared in the doorway to his office. “Why don’t you take a nap before dinner, Your Eminence?” he said.

“What’s this Eminence stuff from you? Didn’t I tell you to call me Father?”

“I’m sorry - everyone else -”

“I can’t do anything about the rest of them. But I’ve got you right under my thumb. It’s Father or else.”

“Or else you won’t take a nap?” Dennis said with a smile.

For a few moments, Matthew Mahan felt almost good. A month ago, even a week ago, he and Dennis couldn’t have talked this way. Dennis would have retreated, hurt, confused by the apparent rebuke. Did it mean anything? Was it worth it? Worth the loss of respect and loyalty it might cost him - in fact, was already costing him - in his chancery office, worth the possible wreck of his authority as bishop? Yes, he thought.
Let the ninety-nine stay on the hills
.

“All right. All right. I’ll take a nap. For a man who’s supposed to be an authoritarian, I spend an awful lot of my time around here taking orders.”

Two weeks later, Matthew Mahan awoke at 3:00 a.m. He braced himself for a bout of pain, but his stomach was remarkably tranquil. Bill Reed had hauled him into his office a week ago and given him a very hard time about obeying his doctor’s orders, staying on his diet, getting more rest, etc., etc. It was the worst tongue-lashing he’d received since the last time old Hogan summoned him to his sanctum to teach him humility. He had humbly confessed his faults and adhered scrupulously to his diet. So Brother Pain was keeping his distance. That was not why you were awake, Your Eminence, he told himself. No, he knew exactly why he was staring into the darkness, now. That call from Colin McGuiness, the episcopal vicar of the inner city, warning him that tomorrow’s meeting of the inner-city deanery was going to be anything but pleasant.

The archdiocese was divided into a half-dozen deaneries, each governed by an episcopal vicar. Presiding at their meetings, held twice a year, had always been one of Matthew Mahan’s more pleasant chores. Many Archbishops sent auxiliary bishops to represent them, but he felt the meetings were an excellent opportunity to keep in touch with his priests. He had always tried hard to find an interesting speaker, sometimes a priest, sometimes a layman, for each meeting, and attendance was usually good.

Father McGuiness had begun by remarking wryly that the attendance at tomorrow’s meeting was likely to be almost too good. Many young inner-city priests had been deeply disturbed by Leo McLaughlin’s articles. Father Vincent Disalvo was exploiting this disturbance with vengeful skill. There was almost certain to be a demand for the publication of an archdiocesan financial report. There might be even more ugly questions about His Eminence’s personal finances. Vicar McGuiness’s voice had trembled as he transmitted this warning. He obviously expected a blast of preliminary episcopal wrath. Matthew Mahan could almost hear Colin’s relief when he simply thanked him for the call and told him not to lose any sleep about it.

It was 5:00 a.m. before he took his own advice, and even then he only slipped into a kind of waking doze full of disconnected, vaguely threatening images - Mary Shea weeping in Rome, Davey Cronin’s anguished face crying out wordlessly - until his alarm went off at six. He felt half drugged with weariness as he and Dennis plodded through the morning mail.

“I’m a little worried about this meeting,” he confided to Dennis as they left the residence to walk through the May sunshine to the waiting limousine. He told him about Colin McGuiness’s call.

Dennis nodded grimly and got in the car feeling like a man on the way to his own execution. He had heard the same things from his brother in far more vivid terms. Ninety percent of the younger priests in the diocese had read the series, Leo boasted, and their respect for the great man was gone forever.

To compound their difficulties, the deanery was meeting in the gymnasium of St. Sebastian’s Church. That made Father Vincent Disalvo the host, and he was obviously enjoying it. When they arrived, his black militant and white student followers were eagerly serving coffee to the sixty or seventy priests sitting on the steel folding chairs on the floor of the gymnasium. The only consolation in sight was the refusal of the archdiocese’s four black priests to go along with Disalvo. They obviously resented his grab for leadership and sat as far away from him as possible.

Vicar McGuiness shook hands with Matthew Mahan at the head of the steps leading to the stage. “Hello, boss,” he said. “How are things?”

“Snafu, as usual,” Matthew Mahan said. He was startled to note that Colin was almost bald and on his way to a middle-age paunch. The years went by so quickly. Colin had been his secretary for the first two years of his episcopacy.

“I’m afraid things aren’t much better down here,” he said. “I know you expect me to do something to head off this kind of thing but -”

“I know you’re not a magician, Colin. Let’s see how the situation develops.”

He looked down at the audience and was startled to see eight or ten nuns sitting in the center of the priests on the right-hand side of the aisle. “Who invited them?” he asked Colin.

“The Ad Hoc Committee.”

“
What’s
that?”

“The Ad Hoc Committee for a More Relevant Deanery.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything. What is it? Who’s on it?”

“I don’t know. I only heard about it yesterday.” Colin tried to smile, but the result was a sick smirk. “It’s not exactly a vote of confidence in my vicariate.”

“Who’s on it?”

“Who else? Vinny Disalvo, Vinny Disalvo, and Vinny Disalvo, plus four or five more yes-men.”

This time, Matthew Mahan had to force a smile. He remembered rather mournfully that he had enjoyed Colin McGuiness’s jocular sarcasm when he was his secretary. He also saw in the contrast between his bland, mediocre face and Dennis McLaughlin’s cool intelligence the distance he had traveled in the last ten years.

“Who’s the speaker, Colin?” he asked.

As a step toward autonomy, he had entrusted the task of finding speakers to the local vicars. It had not been a particularly successful experiment. Lacking Matthew Mahan’s prestige, they were unable to attract first-rate people. “I’ve invited this fellow from New York, Monsignor Joe Snow. He’s the Associate Vicar for Religious. An old pal of mine from Rome. His mother is living in St. Patrick’s parish with a married sister.” Colin glanced nervously at his watch. “He should be here any minute.”

George Petrie arrived, cool and debonair as ever. The vicar-general usually acted as the chairman at deanery meetings. “Good morning, Chairman George,” Colin McGuiness said, mock Chinese style. “Whatever you do, do not declare one of those nuns out of order.”

“That won’t be necessary. It’s obvious that they are out of order.”

“I can’t take those kinds of puns at 10:00 a.m.,” Matthew Mahan said.

Monsignor Snow arrived. Tall, ruggedly built, with a hawk nose and a complexion that at first looked swarthy and was actually pale. One of those heavy-bearded men who always looked like he needed a shave. He proceeded to give a speech that Matthew Mahan could only consider a disaster. Delivered in a rasping voice, it might have come from a man of eighty.

“There is a cliché which religious bandy about these days and it sounds specious. It is this phrase: The spirit is moving. I ask what spirit? Whose spirit? I submit that the spirit of God cannot be at the heart of any movement that refuses to recognize the divinity of the Church. For some religious, the word ‘structure’ is a dirty word. But any intelligent mind recognizes the need for some form of structure for the stability of any organization.

“The spirit of God cannot be at the heart of any movement that refuses to recognize the teaching authority of the vicar of Christ on earth.

“The spirit of God cannot be at the heart of any movement that accepts as infallible the fuzzy opinions of pseudo-theologians (and their number is legion) and rejects out of hand the teaching magisterium of the Church.

“The spirit of God cannot be at the heart of any movement which indulges in the contestation of religious authority.”

Monsignor Snow declared that under the cloak of renewal and adaptation, many tragedies are taking place and have taken place. “Change most certainly was needed in religious life but not destruction nor revolution. Everything that is old is not bad, and everything that is new is not good. The ideal is to hold onto the best of the old and to accept the best of the new. Change for change’s sake is utterly ridiculous.”

Applause was light. A priest sitting next to Vincent Disalvo - his name slipped through Matthew Mahan’s tired brain - stood up and said, “As a member of the Ad Hoc Committee for a More Relevant Deanery, I would like to suggest to the vicar that from now on the members of the deanery should be consulted on the choice of speakers.”

“The chair has not recognized you, Father,” said Monsignor Petrie. “You are out of order in the first place. And in the second place as well. Your comment is grossly impolite to our distinguished guest.”

“We don’t have time for politeness,” called a voice several rows behind Father Forgotten-Name.

“I don’t agree. We have time for politeness. And for order,” said Monsignor Petrie. “You all know the rules of these meetings. They are in force. They will remain in force. If anyone has a question or disagreement with the speaker, I trust it will be substantive.”

Total silence.
Roma locuta est,
thought Matthew Mahan wryly. If only it were
finita.

Monsignor Snow leaned over and murmured in Colin McGuiness’s ear. He in turn murmured in George Petrie’s ear, and he in turn explained to the audience, “Monsignor Snow’s mother is ill. He only has a few hours in the city and he’d like to spend as much time with her as possible. If you have no questions, he’d like to be excused.”

Monsignor Snow thrust his rolled-up speech into his inner jacket pocket, banged down the wooden steps beside the stage, and stalked out of the gymnasium. “If that’s what they’re preaching in New York,” Matthew Mahan murmured to George Petrie, “perhaps we ought to declare them a mission territory.”

“He’s probably going back to suggest that Cookie do the same thing for us,” the vicar-general replied. “Who do you think has more clout?”

“Oh well, I’ve always wanted to be a missionary bishop.”

Studying the rows of faces before him, Matthew Mahan tried to judge their mood. The young ones all looked saturnine. The pastors, almost all of them sitting in a clump in the first few rows on the right, looked depressed.

“Before we go on to business from the floor,” George Petrie said, “Cardinal Mahan would like to say a few words to you.”

In the first row, Monsignor Paul Scanlon, massive as ever, with a senatorial head of gray hair, raised his hand. Another good pastor who had presided over St. Luke’s parish for twenty years, watching it change from Irish to Spanish. Unfazed, he had spent a summer in Puerto Rico and came home speaking the language fluently. He was getting a little old, but he was still an effective, impressive priest. “May I presume to inject a bit of business first, Mr. Chairman?”

“I suppose so, Monsignor.”

Scanlon rose and sonorously presented a resolution, offering the unanimous congratulations of the deanery to Cardinal Mahan on his elevation.

“That isn’t business,” said George Petrie, “that’s a pleasure. May I hear the ayes in favor?”

There was a rumble of assent. “Any nays?” asked George with a jovial smile.

About ten or fifteen voices from various parts of the audience responded. Some were clear, some were murky, but they were definitely saying nay.

George Petrie lost his aplomb. “I can’t believe what I just heard. Do the nays have the courage to identify themselves and give us an explanation for this gratuitous insult?”

Matthew Mahan leaned back in his chair. He was aware of a faint smile frozen on his face. In search of a casual gesture, he lit a cigarette. He could hear Bill Reed rasping at him,
You must cut out smoking.
For an insane moment, he wondered if those young nay-saying voices knew that there was no reason to congratulate His Eminence. What if he told them? Told them the whole story about
frater taciturnus?

There was no response to Vicar-General Petrie’s challenge. “George, may I,” Matthew Mahan said, and slid the microphone down the table in front of him. “I think we’re being rather childish,” he said. “I think Monsignor Scanlon has gotten a clear majority for his resolution. I thank him for it, from the heart. I know many of us would like to see it unanimously approved. But maybe we can’t expect unanimity in these confusing times.”

The silence was stony. What do you expect, a round of applause for your benevolence? Matthew Mahan asked himself.

He stubbed out his cigarette and moved the microphone closer to him.

“Now I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes about St. Clare’s Hospital. I know there has been considerable opposition to
my
plan to close it. I’ve reconsidered that plan and have decided to try to keep the hospital open on a new basis - operating largely as an outpatient clinic. I’ve acquired the services of one of the best doctors in the city, William Reed, to plan and direct this change. It isn’t a perfect answer, I know. But to keep the entire hospital going would require the investment of millions to practically rebuild the whole plant from the ground up. It’s still going to cost us almost $1 million on an outpatient basis. We’re going to triple or quadruple the present emergency room facilities, and we’re also going to provide a lot more psychiatric counseling. I hope I will have your support for this decision. And I hope you will do your best to win the community’s support.”

The priest sitting next to Father Disalvo raised his hand and was recognized by George Petrie. “As vice-chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee, I would like to request a recess so we can respond to what His Eminence has just told us.”

“Will five minutes be enough?”

Five minutes would be enough. The Ad Hoc Committee members rose and filed out of the gymnasium. There were sixteen or seventeen of them, all young. Eddie McGuire rose from the ranks of the pastors and walked to the stage. He looked dreadful. He must have lost fifty pounds in the last six months. “Matt,” he said, “you’ve got to get tough with those young punks. You can’t let them walk all over you.”