Till Death (4 page)

Perhaps … just maybe … it didn’t hurt that he had been a priest and she had been a nun. Lennon chuckled when she thought of her employees’ background: Who would have thunk it?

What were the odds when she was a student at Marygrove, breaking every rule on that Catholic college’s books, as well as some laws that had not yet even been invented, that she one day would be boss of a priest and a nun?

Five years ago when he was hired at the magazine, Jerry Anderson was fresh from a Detroit inner-city parish. He had been a priest fifteen years.

In a way it helped that Lennon was cleaning house at that time. Positions were open across the board. And most of the hirees had not known each other. Anderson did not have to work around longtime friendships and cliques. He, as well as the others, could start on a level playing field. He needed this as a buffer to his previous calling.

He referred jokingly to this postclerical position as his “first honest job.” Not that he hadn’t worked as a priest. But now he was entering the mainstream of American life.

Pat Lennon, of course, knew of his background. It was all over his résumé. He and she decided it was better that his former occupation not be concealed. For one thing, many of his coworkers were investigative reporters; they undoubtedly would have sniffed it out early on. Better to be open about it.

Dora Riccardo, on the other hand, had left the convent in 1990, about five years before the sweep at
Oakland Monthly
. For her first five years after leaving the religious life, she had been a Kelly Girl. So she was pretty much at home in this mainstream.

The reaction of the duo’s coworkers was merely a passing interest, and some amusement: Not one of them had ever dreamed that one day he or she would be working shoulder to shoulder on even ground with a priest or a nun.

From time to time, while brown-bagging lunch or on a coffee break, the subject of religious life would come up. Of the two former religious, Anderson was far more open about his previous lifestyle.

Three

Jerome Anderson was born in 1955, about a decade before the Second Vatican Council began. He entered St. Joseph Minor Seminary, a high school and college whose only purpose was the training of young men for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1980 to serve wherever sent in the six-county Archdiocese of Detroit. His first priestly assignment was to St. Ursula’s parish. He considered this appointment a challenge. The pastor, Father Angelico, was notorious; so his disposition came as no surprise to anyone condemned to work with him.

Anderson was not eager to accept the unhappy challenge. In this he was far from unique. No one in the diocese would be masochistic enough to find pleasure in being sent on such a mission.

His sentence ran from 1980 to 1985. Father Rick Casserly had been rescued a full ten years before Anderson’s arrival, having served from 1965 to 1970. St. Ursula’s was the maiden voyage for each of these two priests; interestingly—amazingly—neither had been embittered by the experience.

When Anderson appeared on the scene, even though Casserly had been out of the picture for a decade, his reputation still flourished. Casserly was known by many parishioners as “the priest who smiled”—an allusive commentary on the atmosphere that prevailed in the face of Father Angelico’s irascible despotism.

Anderson turned to Casserly for direction and support. Both were professionally offered.

Privately, Anderson considered this assignment punishment for his sins. If fracturing seminary rules and regulations had been sinful, he might have had grounds for this conclusion. However, by the time he went through the seminary, discipline was on the wane. As the years of his training passed, fewer and fewer rules remained.

Nonetheless, he’d never encountered a regulation that he hadn’t flouted or tried to violate.

Ostensibly, seminary rules had weakened and grown fewer in number mostly because the student population also was decreasing. The seminary administration decided that possibly it was the rules and regulations that made it a challenge to recruit and/or retain students. Eventually the thinking was that if there were no rules whatsoever, many more young men would be attracted. The faculty actually reached that point and found that it didn’t work.

Jerry Anderson’s personality was such that, metaphorically, he needed to kick against the fence of rules and regulations. When the rules disappeared so did his fence. But the testing, challenging spirit lingered on.

In moments of serious reflection, he wondered why they’d ever accepted him into the seminary. A far deeper puzzle was why, even after all that mutual exposure, the seminary faculty had recommended him for ordination.

His academic grades were merely adequate. His attitude toward rules was confrontational. His classroom demeanor, while attentive, bordered on disdain or downright hostility. Particularly when hard moral questions were raised he was wont to argue against the institutional Church—especially against the presumptions of Church law that almost always favored the institution, hardly ever the individual.

On the positive side, he was a compelling speaker. Highly motivational, he related exceptionally well to youth. He had a good sense of humor, a quality not easily glossed over.

He claimed to be six feet tall. Close; actually he was more like five foot ten. He loved sports and participated at every opportunity. It was no surprise his body was firm and well muscled. His blond hair was full, though almost brush-cut short. His originally prominent nose had been broken twice, once playing football, the other time on the basketball court. His style of play raised basketball from a noncontact game to a collision sport.

In any case, after the second fracture, a plastic surgeon gave him a new and more classically perfect profile. Fortunately his nose had not been broken since.

All of this, together with a ton of naiveté, Anderson had brought with him to his first assignment at St. Ursula’s parish.

For a while, Father Angelico had Jerry Anderson cowed, though Anderson was not easily intimidated. That it took some time for him to flex his own personality spoke volumes for the depth of the pastor’s meanness. But by three years into his five-year tour of duty, Jerry Anderson had gotten his feet solidly beneath him.

It was at this time that, in one of their routine changes of personnel, the teaching order of Theresians brought in a new face to teach a freshman high school class. Her formal name was Sister Mary Perpetua, Religious Sisters of St. Theresa (RSST).

It could not exactly be called love at first sight. Because all Father Anderson could see was a face—pinched by an unforgiving wimple that made it look as if Sister had just been sucking a lemon—and hands.

Sister Perpetua belonged to a very strict religious order. Relatively recently almost all religious orders had been given the option of wearing either the habit (traditional or modified) or lay clothing. It had been a decade since the conclusion of Vatican II and things were moving, seemingly, for just about everyone but the Theresians: They had stuck with the past.

Along with the traditional habit, the Theresians appeared to have taken some sort of vow to stamp out good cheer, which was why Sister Perpetua, together with Fathers Casserly and Anderson, stood out amid the crowd: She smiled.

There was absolutely no way of discerning what Sister Perpetua really looked like under those yards and yards of dark brown cloth; even her face was distorted by the tight wimple. The founders of the older religious orders intended to make chastity easier to observe by making their followers pretty much asexual. In the unlikely event of an assignation, the players would be pretty much spent by the time Sister had been helped to disrobe.

One thing was incontrovertible: Perpetua was tall. She stood five foot eight. Whatever other proportions she possessed were hers alone to know; everyone else had to guess.

Sister Perpetua and Father Anderson got along well—better as time passed. They smiled at each other. Even when there wasn’t much about which to be happy.

The smiles were noted by the other Theresians as well as by Father Angelico. Perpetua paid for her indiscretion by having menial jobs heaped upon her until her back was almost literally broken.

Anderson would have suffered a similar punishment except that he was now in the process of self-emancipation. No longer would he be indentured to Angelico. Not since the stewardship of Father Casserly had the pastor had this much trouble controlling an assistant.

Not only was Anderson casting off the yoke of servitude the pastor forced on those associated with him, Jerry was also becoming choosy about which Church laws to impose on the laity. He was particularly incensed by the Church’s marriage laws. His distress grew in the ten years he continued in the active ministry after moving on from St. Ursula’s. It would be the proximate reason he would leave the priesthood.

That and his imagination as to what Sister Perpetua looked like under that enshrouding habit.

As was the case with many priests who left, Anderson was offered a job with Tom Becker. Jerry had expected as much since he and Rick Casserly were both members of Father Koesler’s St. Ursula’s alumni group. Casserly made certain that Tom, his former classmate, would at least offer a position.

Anderson was grateful. As he put it, quoting more than one expriest who had joined the mainstream, “Life gets pretty tough when Mother Church removes her nipple from one’s mouth.” He gave serious and grateful consideration to Becker’s offer.

Then, suddenly, in a manner of speaking, all his ducks, like a syzygy, were lined up in a row.

Jerry Anderson had had some success editing and writing a series of parish bulletins. He’d had letters published periodically, a couple of them in the
New York Times
. Chris Reynolds was trying to save his magazine. And Pat Lennon, with the approval of the boss, was cleaning the slate.

Several of Jerry’s former parishioners, aware of his interest in writing, urged him to apply for a job in that field. And then came lunch with Sister Perpetua—now having reclaimed her pre-Theresian name of Dora Riccardo. She arranged for his interview with Pat Lennon at
Oakland Monthly
.

He landed the job—the only one of those he’d applied for that he really wanted.

And, as frosting on the cake, Dora Riccardo worked in the same office.

God was good.

Four

The year was 1960. It was the beginning of a decade of awakening, revolt, mistrust, divisiveness, assassinations, and Vietnam, among many other interesting and provocative events.

It was the year Dora Riccardo was born in Hamtramck. Her father was Italian, her mother Polish.

Hamtramck is a largely Polish enclave completely surrounded by the city of Detroit. Catholicism might just as well have been the state religion. The family belonged to Our Lady Queen of Apostles, known colloquially as Q of A, largely to distinguish it from the many other parishes dedicated to “Our Lady.”

Dora’s environment ensured that she thought of herself as Polish, that she dismissed her paternal Mediterranean ancestry, and that she was much closer to her mother than to her father. The father tried to close this gap by lavishing presents on her. It worked to a degree; he ingratiated himself with both wife and daughter. As Dora passed from childhood to pubescence, she grew increasingly convinced that she could get anything she wished if she just played her cards winningly.

It might have been different had her parents achieved what they desired. When they had married, the priest asked them ritually if they would accept all the children God would send them. Enthusiastically they consented. But despite every effort and the assistance of the medical technology of their time, Dora proved to be their only child.

She did well in Q of A’s parish school, particularly in religion courses. The nuns—Theresians—who taught her decided that they detected a religious vocation in little Dora. Tacitly, Dora agreed. In fact, at that time, Dora wanted nothing but to become a nun. The thought of being a priest never occurred to her because—well, because she was a female. She knew of few girls who wanted the priesthood. As far as Dora and the Theresians were concerned, such girls did not know their place.

At her earliest opportunity she was off to the convent. The vocation drain was just beginning, although the Theresians, unrelenting in their inflexibility, were affected to a much lesser degree than most other orders. However, since warm bodies were needed to replenish the thinning teaching ranks, training was telescoped. Instead of academic degrees, Dora was equipped with little more than the glorious package of poverty, chastity, and obedience—vows she had taken in order to enter the Community of Theresians.

Having made her profession, Dora, at the tender age of eighteen, was shipped off to teach at St. Ursula’s school.

Somehow the Theresians had managed to keep a full complement of nuns in this school. St. Ursula’s was among the very few parochial schools at that time still completely staffed by nuns. Even so, at one time the assistant priest—with no training or certification—was sent to teach religion in the high school.

Father Casserly’s contribution to this program—emphasizing love, forgiveness, and joy in religion—nearly undermined the party line that was expected to be taught at St. Ursula’s.

Later, Father Anderson took up where Father Casserly had left off. The upshot was that toward the end of Anderson’s tenure his instruction of religion was discontinued. The assistant priest’s contribution to the education of the children of St. Ursula’s was supplanted by that of the pastor, the. fearsome Father Angelico.

That’s what Sister Perpetua walked into. And that’s when the trouble began.

Many teaching orders of nuns routinely inserted their new members into classrooms as quickly as possible, leaving it up to many years of summer school to gain graduate degrees. Sister Perpetua was not alone in being turned loose to teach with very little training.

It was hectic trying to stay ahead of the textbooks and at the same time enforce necessary discipline on the kids. It was demanding. But when the occasional undemanding moment occurred, Sister Perpetua was conscious that something was wrong.