Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Chapter Nine



    Meanwhile, back in the rectory, Father McKeon was not having a good time.

    He sat, in his armchair in the living room, in the wake of two telephone calls, both of a disturbing nature, although the first, that which had interrupted his welcome home with Sister Teresa, had been much more disturbing than the second. Quite possibly the second would not have been disturbing at all, in fact, had it not arrived when he was already very much upset by the first. The first had presented a profoundly real problem, one of those nightmares the average good priest is likely to pray will never come his way in all the days of his priesthood, and the second was only trouble because it had grown out of one more erroneous presumption on the part of a parishioner well known as someone in need of quite regular correction by her pastor. The initial call was from far away, New York as it happened, and its successor was local, so local that its perpetrator was due through his door any moment.
   
    “Father, I feel that I must talk to you right away, while there’s still time to make a change. I’ve already spoken to Sister Teresa – it was so good of you to tell me when she was getting back – but I really don’t think she took me seriously and my conscience will give me no peace until you hear me out. It’s no bother to come over, as I was going to bring back the clean altar linens anyway. It’s providential that it was my turn this week.”
  
     “Certainly I’ll see you, Edna. Fortunately I’m quite free for the rest of the afternoon. But I can’t conclude immediately that I’ll think differently than Sister, especially as I don’t know what it is that you’re concerned about.”
   
    “As you’re going to be there, I’ll only say that it’s about your new teacher, the young man who was serving at the altar this morning. I’ve been told he’s had artist training and I want to talk to you about his presence among our young girls. I’m really very concerned and I’m sure there’s still time to replace him.”
   
    McKeon had skillfully muffled a sigh. “Well, I’d better hear you out then, Edna. You seem to have already given this a great deal of thought, while it’s never occurred to me that there was anything to worry about. But, as you say, we must have the clean linens back and that gives us a good opportunity for discussion.” He was a patient priest, and well aware that no small part of his job was pouring oil on waters roiled up by ignorance and silliness, throughout the parish generally, and Edna regularly gave him opportunity for such counsel. Moreover, as Paul was about to begin his duties as a teacher and was therefore an automatic target for uninformed judgement, the sooner loose talk was curbed the better. That was simple enough and he could actually look forward to the chat. Edna had her virtues, especially where altar cloths were concerned, and she usually went away better than when she came, which was what the cure of a parish was all about anyway.
  
     Or that was how it usually went. But this time her words seemed to nag him, because the first call had also concerned the morals of the flesh, and the real truth of that case had taken a terrible round out of him, not just because it involved a young relative but, even more significant as an enemy of peace of mind and the atmosphere required for clear thinking, it raised most disquietingly the question of grave imprudence on the part of some person or persons in the Roman hierarchy. He had been totally beaten down by Monsignor Hlady’s news, by the second part of it for some reason more so than the first, and that left him paying more attention to Edna Havincourt’s thinking than he usually did.
  
     He and Edna went back to the very beginning of his time at Saint Bridget’s, when after his very first Sunday mass he had spotted her studying him closely, with a rather steely look in her eye, as he was talking to a young mother amongst the line that were filing out of church and shaking his hand. The young mother was also a rather pretty woman and the conversation had gone on somewhat longer than usual because of the problems arranging a time for the baptism of her new baby. There was an uncertainty about the date when the grandparents, who lived down the island, would be able to come, with an additional complication of his having such and such a date for his first meeting with the bishop. Well, actually his first meeting since he had arrived in the diocese to assume a post. The first meeting had taken place some months earlier, when he had gone to speak to him about relocating. Hlady had actually had something to do with that inspiration’s fulfillment, as the ordinary of New York had initially been anything but pleased with the request for a transfer, and Hlady, God bless him, had also had great deal to do with the formation required for dealing with both pretty young mothers and older women who easily got their noses out of joint.
  
     On that particular Sunday morning McKeon had not yet learned Edna’s name, but he charitably assumed that her concern, or her sense of it being legitimate to be concerned, quite honestly stemmed from the reputation of his predecessor. McKeon himself had not heard that the former priest had caused scandal because of a female or two, but of course the lady with the baleful look might simply be conditioned in her critical views because of the shame and spiritual oppression of the former pastor, an alcoholic. Some parishioners cared neither one way nor the other about the virtues of their priest, others were profoundly sensitive. Obviously it could be said in the older woman’s credit that she was one of the concerned ones and he would get to know her at the earliest opportunity. But he also thought that the young woman’s approach to him was quite blameless. Her enthusiasm and warmth seemed entirely from a genuine gratitude for having a priest with integrity. Without any specific reference to the man who had gone before him, McKeon had preached on stewardship of the Faith and the profound responsibility of all the baptized, laity as well as priest and religious, simply as the logical platform from which to launch immediately the campaign for building a Catholic school in Blackfish Bay, which had been his first reason for moving to this part of the world anyway. The young mother, with two pre-schoolers at her side as well as the infant in her arms, had responded with the kind of enthusiasm he had hoped he would get for the idea of a school. She had also told him that she was really sorry that her husband had not been there to hear him, because he had looked forward so much to meeting him, but he was a millwright at the sawmill and had been called in for some emergency repairs, and this had probably clobbered his mass attendance for the day.
  
     These facts had naturally given him mixed feelings about the older woman’s stare, as while he was undoubtedly and unknown and untried quantity, and therefore not above criticism, especially given the recent history of the parish, the young mother and her integrity should have been well known to her. It always took two to tango as well as to fight and the young woman had not seemed the type to be vulnerable to a miscreant clergyman. She had in fact struck him as a very happy entrance to finding the real health in Saint Bridget’s.

    Thus the complications of Edna Havincourt had been revealed from day one. He had not had to waste any wholehearted enthusiasm in misguided praise of her frequent presence at daily mass, and he knew she would not be one of the older women to whom any sensible parish priest automatically deferred for counsel. But neither had he written her off as nothing but trouble, not simply because he was sensitive to his duties in simple charity and forbearance – the ‘little ones’ were of a vast variety of weaknesses – but because he had a basic confidence in his own understanding of the Faith and he enjoyed the opportunity to refer to whatever points of doctrine were applicable to a given problem, real or imagined. In her case, most of the problems would no doubt be imaginary, but then the state of mind that produced such a habit was in itself a very real problem, with nothing imaginary about it, and it was his duty to cure it, or at least hold it in check, as best he could, and he was ready to start at the earliest opportunity, if only because he had no intention of spending the rest of his time in Blackfish Bay being scowled at every time he talked to a young woman who was other than crippled or in hospital. It was no less an authority than canon law, was it not, that said that the priest was obligated to do whatever it took to maintain his ‘mental edge’?
   
    This expression of principle had not sprung from his own wit, but in fact from that of Father Salomon Hlady, as he then was in McKeon’s days in the seminary, professor of two subjects: pastoral theology, in which one learned a good deal about the problems caused by pious parish ladies; and ascetical and mystical theology, in which one learned – it was hoped – a good deal about the most interesting things that could happen to a soul taking on the spiritual life. But it was a principle of this mental edge, along with many others, that he had well retained from the classes in which he had sat happily under the guidance and vast and lively erudition, nicely coupled with a modest but genuine experience of the spiritual life, of Father Salomon, late of the Holy Office, late of the Hungarian cavalry, late of the primary faith of Abraham, a man with the oddest tale of conversion to Catholicism one could ever hope to hear. McKeon had always been a positive man as well as a positive priest, and thus automatically grateful for all the good done to him by family, friends, and professional influences, but in so many of his clutch moments it was Hlady’s wisdom he recalled and felt most operative in his daily challenges now and throughout his priesthood. And this had come not simply from Hlady’s classes, but from his masses, his ordinary conversations, and in McKeon’s case especially, his spiritual direction. Over few things in his life had he been so anxious as in waiting for Hlady’s agreement to take him on in that capacity, and the joy that followed his acceptance was something he had never wanted to forget.
  
     It was a key item in the concept of the ‘first fervours’ that the priest was always being advised to remember.
  
     And McKeon was particularly good at first fervours. It was quality of his soul that had been noted by his new bishop-to-be, when McKeon had first approached him about moving to the Island diocese and it had been noted by his new confreres. Father Michael Joseph had by then worn the collar for almost a decade-and-a-half, and as fifteen years later has often been spoken of as the time for assessing the quality of a man’s education, his new friends among the clergy were often curious about his formation. His warmth, his directness, his humour, his capacity for genuine listening and being able to open people up to reveal their essential selves automatically provoked questioning, and McKeon never wasted an opportunity to refer to his grateful memories of Hlady.
  
     This was not merely for the pleasures of anecdote, which are always pleasant and useful when they relate the qualities of a good man or an educational experience, but for the sake of a deeper purpose, that of making references to the spiritual life, which is rarely in superabundance in parish priests. For even in his days in the archdiocese of New York, where he had also been a very useful young man, he had never wasted an opportunity to insist on the substance of Hlady’s stock-in-trade, the search for and acceptance of what the contemplatives called ‘aridity’, the heart of the doctrine of Saint Teresa’s Third Mansion, and for Hlady, the basic blessing of the Divine on anyone, priest, religious, or otherwise, who had a genuine interest in the spiritual life.
   
    “Forget your visions, your consolations, your privileged overhearing of the conversations of the Trinity and the Blessed Virgin Mary. These are all very nice, if they happen to a sane soul, but they happen if they happen in spite of you. And it is most important that you do not pray for them, because the Devil is full of opportunities for answering such requests in his own way. But the Devil cannot give you aridity. Discouragement, yes. Abuse, of course. Madness, if you let him. But not aridity. As odd as it may seem to eager and optimistic young men, aridity can only come from God. I am not talking about accidie, which comes from your intellectual ambitions and too much study of texts rather than trees and other divinely created items of nature. Or perhaps it even comes because you neglected to have a beer or a glass of wine and a good talk or walk with a friend who knows you, both in your weaknesses as well as your strengths. But I am speaking of aridity, the blessing of the initial stages of the real spiritual life, the introduction to the desert Our Lord Jesus Christ dwelt in for forty whole days. In its more significant stages it is even perhaps a taste of the Cross, and therefore even better for you, especially when you live in a culture which provides so little opportunity for martyrdom. Well, martyrdom of the ordinary sort. In the culture you have grown up in, and will be working in, unless you decide to go to Africa or some such place, there is always a danger of rotting away, day by day, as a victim of the passion for progress and activity for its own sake .But you won’t be raised to the altars of the Church for this result, you’ll only be scolded by God for not taking matters into your own hands and making a difference. That’s your job as a priest. Remember, all other things being equal, you young men do get the best general education society has to offer, if you apply yourself to it. As the most integral of formations, Scholasticism has no rivals. Only fools think they are wiser than Aristotle, and whenever you feel browbeaten by one or another aspect of modern science, look up his ‘Physics’ and reflect on the comparative inability of modern man, including modern scientific man, to read it. You should be able to read it after your time here, and thus you will always be able to find God in the nearest rose bush, or for that matter, storm drain. You might think only his loftier stuff, like his ‘de Anima’ or the ‘Metaphysics’ would do this for you, but if you take a good look at his ‘Physics’ you will see how well grounded he was, what a foundation he had built up for his mind simply thorough observation of, and reflection upon, what God has made. Probably he was much more of a mystic than so many like to give him credit for, in order to be able to concentrate like that. Plato was so easily carried away by error and irrelevance. Yes, I think Aristotle the mystic would make a very good research project. Which brings us back to aridity. Now, Mackenzie, exactly what does Saint Teresa say about aridity, and how would you compare her comments on aridity with Ignatius’ use of desolation?”
  
     Mackenzie, from Rhode Island, had sat two rows to the right of McKeon, and was not a great reader at a depth beyond Time and Life. The class prepared itself, to some extent, to be entertained. Their amusement carried a rider, for Hlady was known for pursuing a question right through the class until he got a satisfactory answer, and none of them had any way of knowing who would be his next target . . . .
  
     Ah, pleasant memories, especially for someone who did read as deeply as he possibly could, and therefore got along with the Hungarian. It was always a good meditation to recall that part of the seminary, and it was even more helpful to get a letter, or chat with him on the phone. Not even the sting of Hlady’s news could take away that grace. But the sting was not going away either, especially as it dealt with the same area of burden, man’s ever looming capacity for erring in the flesh. And it was especially painful as it dealt with a relative, his own great nephew, grandson of his mother’s sister.
  
     Hlady had asked how things were going, was he looking forward to another year in his triumph of a parish school, how were the sisters, and so on? But these pleasantries had been brief, and the older priest had allowed no time for leisurely footnotes, nor had he said more than a few brief words about his own summer. “I might as well stop shilly-shallying and come straight to the point, Michael. I’m mightily concerned about young Terrence. They tell me he’s coming back for his second year and I don’t like it, and I’m worried that no one is going to take my dislikes seriously. They haven’t actually caught him yet with anybody they’re wary of but that doesn’t put me off a bit. We had some very clever homosexuals in the army, which is possibly where they should be. Read your Teddy Lawrence. Terrence is the exceptionally cunning sort, with his baby face and his ‘devotions ‘to this and that. He’s got a number of his teachers quite fooled, I think, although I also have to suspect that there are more than one who are quite content to look the other way, especially with all this tra-la-la over development of the liturgy. We must have clergy to keep the buildings going, to serve the faithful, etcetera. Vocations aren’t that easy to come by and so on. But none of that matters in the long run simply because poison apples sooner or later ruin the barrel. I think I even dreamt about Terrence becoming a bishop, and in my waking hours I’m afraid I can’t believe it’s not possible, especially with the Vatican behaving like it is.”
  
     “What?”
  
     “I’ve known for a while that Rome told the bishops to stop ordaining homosexual ordinandi, although no one has explained to me how it was happening in the first place. But why in hell won’t they make the edict public? Are they stupid enough to think all the bishops have either the desire or the ability to police the question all by themselves? Don’t they know the history of the Church? The history of human nature? Some poor parent or pastor with doubts about little Johnny’s intentions thinks ‘oh, well, the bishop must know what he’s doing, and maybe once Johnny’s ordained the sacrament will take all his bad habits away.’ So they say nothing, like a poor bunch of sheep wondering why the shepherd is having lunch with the wolf. For Christ’s sake, all those heretics of the Sixteenth century were priests once! And think of all the Arian bishops in Eusebius’ time! Or all those turncoats under Henry the Eighth. Sacraments require the will. They’re not magic. There’ll be hell to pay. You’ll see. But that will be their responsibility. Our responsibility is to deal with our own back yard, of which you and I in this case have a commanding view.”
   
    There had been a long silence. This was not entirely surprising information to Father McKeon, even though he had not seen his great nephew for a few years. But it was still painful, as he knew what Hlady meant about the cunning and the pretensions of piety. Terrence’s Christmas card had in fact struck him as just a little indicative of a problem. Was he himself guilty of hoping that the sacrament of ordination would take the illness away? Mother of God, what an insult to the moral theology section of the Summa. Habit was habit, thinking was thinking, sin was sin.
   
    “Father Michael?”
   
    “I’m here, Salamon. Here and sad, but thankful that you took the time to phone me. If you’re right, then our Terrence is one dirty little weasel looking for a free ride, with every confidence that the Church is in such great need of priests that She will protect his nasty habits. Do any bishops actually get to Heaven?” And then he had laughed, for like everyone else who had studied A and M with Hlady he had been vehemently informed about John of the Cross’ views on the chances of the salvation of a third of the ‘holy ones’. At the time, he’d had no idea he would ever have to apply such strictures to one of his own kin. How consoling, that the Holy Spirit also groaned with the pain of life within one’ soul. And shitty little Terrance could become a bishop! He was a bright little bugger. Good at paper work, good at Latin, good at finance. And ambitious enough to fake his way through every hurdle. “Yes, your Grace, no, your Eminence.” And then even, God help us: “Remarkably prudent, your Holiness.” And when such a mindset got into power it naturally expedited similar mind sets. How else had the monasteries of the Middle Ages become corrupt? The committees that created bishops: was it impossible for the homosexual inclinations to have power there? Not bloody likely, as the British said. Just how did some of these bastards – Saint Paul’s words, not mine – get into power?
   
    “Michael McKeon!”
  
     “Yes, Father Hlady.” They had met in the hall, with both of them on going in directions having nothing to do with A and M.
  
     “I was thinking about you and your fondness for reading. Have you come across Brodrick’s ‘Life of Peter Canisius’?”
   
    “Canisius I’ve heard of, but not Brodrick? Is it good, or are you this morning issuing cautions against inferior intellects?” Hlady, among his many virtues, loved students who could banter with him with the intelligence that comes only from reading well.
  
     “Not a caution at all. Excellent stuff. Read him when it first came out, and loved it then. But I’ve had reason to remember him very fondly. I’ve had a letter from the Holy Office. Actually about something not too far from Cologne, where Saint Peter went to school, in spite of being Dutch. You would love the spirit, I’m sure. It’s in the library. Sheed and Ward published it here in New York, actually, just a few years ago. You were asking some questions the other day about Luther and the rest of them. You would appreciate Brodrick’s views. And the book has a great presentation of the essentials of Trent, not the least of which were the odds against putting the Council into action in the first place. You’ll see the point of real theologians, too . . . .” Ah, good memories, and a reminder of how lucky he had felt to have such a teacher. One had to pay back, of course, by taking the bad news with the good. Being a priest was like being a general. And, for that matter, a relative.
  
     So he had thanked Hlady, asked a few questions about the church in New York and old classmates and then settled down to ponder his great-nephew. To write, to phone, to wait and pray? It had been a very dark few minutes. Perhaps not the aridity that Hlady used to speak of so often, but miserable enough. No, not aridity. Aridity was best known for coming around without any previous negative preparation. It was most likely to hit when everything seemed fine. That was one of the marks of mysticism, even in the early stages. Little bolts of psychological death for no apparent reason, out of a clear and sunny sky, challenging the power of the naked will, making a man find out what prayer really was. No doubt Hlady would have gone through a spell of it before he called. That was one of the things that had been so obvious about the old Hungarian. He groaned along with them, like the Holy Spirit, urging them in his bones even more than in his words to adopt a spiritual life.
  
     “At the very least, I can guarantee you this. Once aridity becomes a habit, you will never take the natural good for granted again, let alone even the most ordinary grace. And the perils of clerical ambition should be no longer a problem. The lowliest parish priest, with aridity in his prayer life, is much better off than any cardinal can ever hope to be without it. Possibly no one should dare to ask God for the fullness of the graces of the mystical life. If He wants you to have them, you will find this out. But I personally think it is quite in order to desire for the grace to be on all fours with Teresa’s first three mansions. This is a great protection, and makes you impervious to envy or hero worship of the great figures of the world . . . .”
  
     Bad news notwithstanding, it was wonderful to talk with his old teacher and spiritual director, but they were both too busy to dawdle, and they had to hang up until next time. And then his phone had rung again, and at the other end sat one of the lesser ones, attacking his principal’s judgement and suggesting that his needed to get rid of the young man whose company he had been enjoying so much. Ah well, perhaps this bit of strangeness would take his mind off Terrence, or perhaps even offer him some insight. Was Paul actually as cunning as his great- nephew, or was there something in Edna’s mind that was a clue to the women in Terrence’s life? No one could act in a homosexual fashion without choice, but what influenced such behaviour?

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