Chapter Ten

    But remembering Paul only reminded the now beleaguered pastor of a third concern, the possibility of Iris McCallum being upset at losing two of her best students. No one had yet informed him of the happy outcome of that predicament, so he was left with the burden of the unknown. Again Hlady came to mind, with his advice on the day-to-day grind of the priesthood against its flocks. The wise pastor should prepare to lose every battle except the battle of the prie dieu and his absorption into the wounds of Christ; one had to remember that while God knew everything, the priest should presume that he would never be adequately advised by his parishioners, on any subject. He must press for accuracy and fullness, of course, as the search for the whole truth in all questions was part of his job description, but he should never expect that fullness will easily come forth. If the Trinity was a mystery, then life, especially life in a parish, must remain a mystery. “There is nothing so foolish as a priest who thinks he can manage a parish as if it were a grocery store. A man or a family can own a business, but only God owns a parish. Do not waste time being disappointed at the failures on the balance sheet, and I’m not speaking principally of the financial one. Use your time to look for the smallest manifestations of holiness. It is only holiness that makes a parish commendable in the eyes of God. Nothing else carries anywhere near the weight, no matter how much an apparent sense of order might please a bishop or get you nominated for a monsignor. Holiness never comes out of ordinary human order, even though an orderly life in itself is most desirable, and a disorderly life is a form of insanity.”
  
     Holiness. Perfection. Sanctity. The unusual powers of God in unusual souls, even if such powers were hidden to most. These were constant themes with the old Hungarian, just as his devotion to Mary had been so matter of fact. And every year, when the time was right, he would tell his class about his experience of these things when he had paid a visit to the home of Philippe Gagnon, in the Canadian province of Quebec, because, as he said, such a household was proof of the point of their course. The greatest events of the spiritual life could happen to the laity, and it was the priest-in-training’s job to be ready for it as best he could. “This is why Tanqueray is such an excellent manual. Not the same as the Carmelites, definitely, nor Francis de Sales and so forth, and as we will see later on, and some of his passages are to be argued with, but Tanqueray you have to know as well as you can, and to scorn these things, as many priests do, is to deny the power of Almighty God.”

    And now the Almighty, through the providence of the good sisters, had brought one of Philippe’s grandchildren to his very parish. Of course there were no guarantees that Paul was possessed of the same spiritual abilities, any more than all Jesuits were the equivalent of Ignatius Loyola, Xavier, Canisius and so on. And in fact Hlady had referred briefly to certain diminutions of the graces within Philippe’s own offspring, of which Philippe himself had given some indication. Free will was free will; special graces were not automatically available to every member of a family, just as they were not to be presumed in every member of a religious order.
  
     Had Paul already caused so much disturbance because there was an element of the extraordinary in him, or was he inclined to mischief? Or did trouble simply follow him because he had so much talent and yet was also too young to have settled into himself? Well, he had seemed ordered enough so far, and thus had the right to be presumed innocent until he was clearly in the wrong. That’s all there was to it.
   
    Thus far had McKeon’s mind probed the problem of Paul Cameron, and he was just about ready to take up his breviary and catch up on noon prayer when the door bell rang.
  
     “Ah, Edna. And the altar linen, impeccably white as always. The radiance must be seen all the way into Heaven.” McKeon meant this compliment sincerely, but he also noticed that the bulk of the cloths over her arm was not quite the usual. She had been anxious to make her point, and there was just enough laundry to give her an excuse to come over.
  
     “Yes,” she said. “As they should be, as a symbol of purity.”

    McKeon took the linens, then indicated the chair where his callers always sat if they were singular, and took the cloth to the dining room table. “I’ll take these to the sacristy later, as we must get down to business. I have to go out again fairly soon. I’m sorry I didn’t make coffee for you, but I don’t think we’d have time to enjoy it.” He intended to finish his interrupted chat with his just returned principal, and also ask her if she would take over the organ on Sunday if Iris bailed out. This she actually had done in an earlier year, over an issue McKeon could no longer recall, so he knew it was possible. Sister Teresa’s skills were not profound, and she was never anxious to perform in public, but she was capable and willing if needed.
   
    “Ah, purity. Yes.” McKeon returned to his own chair. “A very good point, and something we can never have too much of, if it is the real article. But we must guard, Edna, against putting elements into people’s minds that are not actually there. And, as Chesterton said, chastity must be charitable. And, to be genuine, it must have a certain warmth.” Edna Havincourt was small and slight in her construction, and easily chilling in more ways than one. “From what I’ve seen of Paul so far, he is as warm as he is good, and as good as he is warm and talented. I think that far from being a danger to the children, that he is a great asset to the school, and a danger neither to the girls nor the boys.” The phone call from New York had brutally reminded him that the problem of perverse teachers squinted north as well as south.
  
     “Oh, dear. I never thought of that.” She looked even more horrified.
  
     “It’s not as common as what you’re concerned about, at least in this part of the world, but it is a factor for those in charge of the education of the young. And I can assure you that suspicions of either failing is usually passed on. Are you aware that Paul has already taught for some weeks in a Catholic school in Vancouver, and that no such concerns over his behaviour then was even hinted to us? Sister Principal there would definitely have mentioned it to Sister Teresa if there had been a problem. The only complaint, as a matter of fact, was that her school was not to have him for themselves. It was the school he had attended for all his time in Vancouver, and they’re very proud of him. They brought him in to take the place of a sister who had to have a very serious operation, and it was in those weeks that Paul decided he really did want to try his hand at teaching. As soon as his own religious sister found that out she was on to Sister Teresa because of course she knew we were losing Sister Barabara.”
   
    This argument from authority carried some weight, McKeon could see, but Edna was a bull dog, and rarely surrendered easily. She thought for a moment. “Well, that’s something, of course, although I’ve never met the other principal. But you have to remember, Father, that if he was only at that school for a few weeks, he could hide his attitude. But he’ll be here for the whole year, and that would be too long to maintain his disguise.”
  
     “Edna, I doubt very much if Paul Cameron is wearing a disguise, as you put it. People can, of course, operate under false pretenses. I’m not denying your right to be cautious, and as a priest, I above all people have to remember the follies and weaknesses of human nature, in everyone. I didn’t ask for such a position, but it does come with the job. Otherwise I’m unfit to be either confessor or preacher. And in fact I can in all confidence tell you that I have recently been advised of just such a problem arising, in the most sensitive area possible, in a location thousands of miles from here. We all belong to the mystical body of Christ, which makes us part of each other in ways most surprising to the ordinary mind. Perhaps your concern arises from that situation, for which, I might say, I would urge you to pray very hard, offering your communion day after day for a solution. That would be a most worthy undertaking, very dear to the Sacred Heart, and a very real confirmation of the general correctness of your anxieties. But Paul, I am sure, is not an example of these kinds of problems. I can assure you, for one thing, that he comes from a most exemplary family, unusually strong in the Faith. I have met his parents, who drove him over here at the beginning of the week, as he has no car of his own, and I have every confidence that they themselves would never have delivered a bad package to us. And, if you would care to read them, I actually have a couple of Paul’s grandfather’s books in my personal library. Certain sections of them are a little too lofty for me, your priest, I must admit, because they deal with the ultimate dispositions of the spiritual life, but they do exist as evidence as to the quality of Paul’s background, so you’re welcome to look at them if you wish. I’ll get one or two of them for you right now, if you like.”

    Being a man of the cloth, McKeon hated bullies so thoroughly that he made it a point of his profession to examine his own conscience regularly on that very question, because it was not only frighteningly easy for a priest to be a bully, it was even more frighteningly easy to get away with it. Nonetheless, he had come with good reason to admit a technique for dealing with troublesome parishioners that Hlady had insisted was not only entirely legitimate as a means of self-protection, but even spiritually necessary as a means for disciplining the sluggish intellects that were so much more likely to be the rule rather than the exception.
  
     “What did Saint Isidore the Plowman insist upon?” Hlady would demand. “That all spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection! If you don’t read, if your people don’t read, what do you, what do they, have to reflect on? Nothing, indeed, except your own, and their own, miserable experiences. Our lives mean nothing unless they are seen in the reflection of other lives, for God beholds us as a family, in a common experience, for better or for worse, from one end of the earth to the other. The more you understand the African, the more you understand yourself. But you can’t go to Africa right now. The archbishop will not let you. So read, for Christ’s sake! And let your parishioners know that if they want you to take them seriously they must also read, to the best of their ability. . . .”
  
     Isidore had been talking about spiritual reading, of course, and so, fundamentally, had been Hlday, but in either case the message was also aimed at the mental dullness of those who refused to open a book and thought themselves the better for it. In any parish there were infinite sources for delusion over questions of morals and spirituality. So in this area, he allowed himself to be something of a bully, and if his parishioners had learned to be shy of his library skills, certain of his fellow priests, in two dioceses, had learned to be even more wary. McKeon did not pretend to have read everything, but he was good at making it plain that, as there was nothing new under the sun, there was no problem that was not addressed somewhere by some good book, and it was a real man’s responsibility to go hunting for the required text. There were, of course, books which only compounded problems, and it was not a good idea to give much credit to these, no matter how much they stirred the assorted passions, but to read well was to live well.
  
     But Edna was not one of the few who had in the eight years of his pastorate learned this principle and he knew how to use this against her undisciplined imagination. “Oh, no thank you, Father. I’ll leave the study of such things to my priest. I do read a little, you know, but not above my abilities. Isn’t that what we have a priest for? And the parish, Father, is very proud of what a good reader you are. Perhaps Father Richards would not have turned to drink so badly if he had been such a good reader as you. But this writer you mention is the young man’s grandfather?”
   
    “Yes.”
   
    “Yes. Well, famous to those who read such things. Not well known to the general public, because he writes at the highest possible level that a mere human can function, up there with the angels and Our Lord and His Blessed Mother themselves, so it’s not the sort of thing your average soul is eager to take on. Even with all my seminary training I know I can’t pretend that I comprehend it all – one would have to be a fully mature contemplative to do that – but I like to wander into the books once in a while and I’m most interested in having a member of the family in my regular, even professional company. Perhaps I’ll learn a thing or two myself, and get a little closer to wisdom, having Paul around.”
  
     For the first time during this visit, Edna Havincourt gave off the impression of being genuinely startled. It was genuinely understood about the parish that Father Michael had a working grasp on the Hereafter that was a cut above a lot of priests, but the matter-of-fact conviction with which he referred to the ultimate authority of Paul’s grandfather was something even beyond that. Now she began to feel a little guilty over her eagerness to be zealous on behalf of the young females of the parish school. Nonetheless, her quiver had not run out of arrows. She fell back on the last defense, of all good Catholics, against novelty and theological surprises.
   
    “But is the Holy Father aware of these writings? Has he approved?”
Into McKeon’s mind came the image of Joe Louis, whom, once, he had seen box in Madison Square Gardens. How many times had the Brown Bomber looked through the sweat and haze and lights of the ring just at that moment when he was about to deliver the knock-out blow, knowing what was going to happen when his mighty fist landed, perhaps even wondering, in all modesty, why the other guy had bothered to come. Later, just to participate in the realities of life, he had listened to the fight between the hitherto invincible king of Detroit and canny old Jersey Joe Walcott, and thought along the lines of analogy that even great theologians could be sometimes bested by complicated footwork and an amazing ability to stay out of harm’s way, but he could never forget the eternal image of Louis’ skill at its prime, and sometimes he allowed himself to wonder what it would be like to watch Jesus in the ring. His old archbishop, after all, had been no slouch as a boxer when he was a lad.
Well, the Lord was now in this ring, the almost square of the rectory living room, and Edna the curious had invited Him there. Aha, McKeon reflected, perhaps I’m a bit of a contemplative after all, feeling so much grace for the moment.
  
     “The Popes have been well aware of Paul’s grandfather since Pius XI, and there has never been any criticism of his books from them that that I have heard of. Besides, Philippe regularly writes directly to the Holy Father, sometimes to encourage or console, sometimes to point out the problems in this country or elsewhere in the Church. The shadows of all good contemplatives fall upon the Holy See, of course, but I don’t suppose all of them write to the Pope or his associates.”
   
    The verb ‘write’ stimulated Edna to a degree that McKeon wondered if he had ever seen in her before. She sat bolt upright in her chair. It now occurred to her that if Paul heard about her complaints, and her suggestion that he should lose his job before it began, that he might write himself to this illustrious grandsire and that thus the Pope would hear about it! Rarely had she felt her sense of rectitude to be on such shaky ground. It is written that we shall be judged as we have judged, and Edna Havincourt felt for a good long moment that she who had so righteously condemned the young painter for putting nakedness on canvas had now herself been somewhat stripped. And in front of her pastor! In fact by her pastor! Or was it by this Philippe what’s-his-name? She could not bring herself to think that it might have been God who had thus exposed her. She spent some moments wondering if she should just say that she was sorry and go home.

    But she was, after all, Edna the Correct, chairwoman of the altar guild, a life-long member of the Catholic Woman’s League, and a regular at daily mass. She had a position to maintain. “That’s all very well, but I don’t see what a layman has to say to the Holy Father. He has the cardinals and the bishops to advise him. And I’ve never heard of him.”
  
     For rather a long time Edna Havincourt had struck her pastor as the sort of devout soul who took the freedom of the modern attitude toward daily communion rather more liberally than was perhaps prudent, and given the local legends regarding her tongue – sharp enough to clip a hedge, as the Irish say – he had often wondered if he were at fault in not calling her on it. In Saint Ignatius’ time, according to the Exercises, even a nun with her habits of speech would have been barred from such a status as a daily communicant. Probably once a month would be her limit, until the requisite changes took place. But the grace to ration her had never presented itself, nor had she ever shown any real indication of asking for advice about the spiritual life.
  
     Once again the image of Joe Louis came back, and now he knew why. “I doubt that anyone who is not deadly serious about the spiritual life, the life of perfection, has ever heard of Philippe Gagnon, or even if they have, by some accident or another, his name is quite likely to pass right out of his or her head. He or she would have no good reason to hold on to it.” Being a priest of those times, he had known many occasions of coming down like a ton of bricks in the confessional, feeling himself backed up by the grace of the Holy Ghost no matter how strong the objections on the other side of the wall, but there seemed to be all of this and something else in his soul now.
  
     Edna Havincourt was not an especially clever woman, and he knew that she rarely understood a lot of things, but in this given moment in the history of her salvation, she grasped his meaning, and the manner of her ‘religious’ habits returned with a vengeance.
  
     “Father McKeon! I am surprised at you! I am very serious about perfection. That is why I attend daily mass. That is why . . . .”
  
     He had suddenly lost all desire to be accommodating, to pour oil on troubled waters. A spade was a spade. “Edna, I admire your constancy and good will, in that respect. But I have to tell you, it is time to tell you, that no literate person can take up the life of perfection without study, without reading the right books, and in a convent you would probably have to get permission from your director even to get started on the right books. I know what you read, or rather, what you don’t read. I cannot judge you, of course. But I can make certain provisional conclusions, for the sake of the health of this parish and Saint Bridget’s School, and therefore I am allowed to speculate that in this area, the spiritual life, - and also, while we are about it, in the life of the art of painting - you are not really in the mind of the Church and I must correct you. I am, as your pastor, correcting you now, in private, and I sincerely hope I do not have to correct you in public, from the pulpit. But I will most certainly do that, if I have to. You have called Sister Orlando’s judgement into question, you have done the same to my judgement, and you seem prepared to blacken the character of a young man, highly recommended to us by qualified authorities, before you have even met him. That can be calumny, and calumny is a mortal sin. Would you like me to refuse you communion, not only at daily mass, but also on Sunday? I have to advise you that I have pondered this question in your case for some time, because you seem to have no doubt in your own mind that you have a right to say whatever comes into your head, especially where the conduct of others is concerned. You often use your tongue in anything but a charitable way. That is common enough in many people, but it has no place in someone who takes the Body of Christ on a daily basis. You seem to think that frequent communion makes a spiritual life, but you have forgotten, if indeed you ever learned, that the power of the sacrament is not magical. It requires the proper disposition, otherwise you take it to your own spiritual disadvantage. When I first came, and began to realize the problem of your habits of speech, I charitably tried to think that you took communion as a correction. As we know, the Eucharist takes away venial sin. But in this case I cannot take that view. Blackening a character is not venial sin. It is much more serious than that. Have you actually said to anyone else that you believe that Paul Cameron’s morals are a danger to the girls of our school, his students?”
   
    Like all genuinely good and kindly men, Father Michael could be awesome when aroused in the name of truth, and he was awesome now. She had no intention of giving up easily, because for all of her life she had thrived on agitation and an undisciplined imagination, with no real love for the deep silences of a truly efficient communicant, but she knew from the years of his pastorate that McKeon was a man of his word, totally capable of staring her down in the communion line and sending her away empty handed. She felt very grateful that she could honestly say that she had mentioned her fears only to Sister Teresa and himself. She was, however, happy to say it rather haughtily. “I have mentioned it to no one else. You must credit me, Father, with some sense of prudence.”
   
    “I’m very glad to be able to do so, Edna. I have to say it’s to your credit, as you have felt strongly about this issue, that you have acted so quickly, and only with Sister and myself. The mind can certainly drive us to amazing lengths and it is always good fortune to be able to keep it under control. And, as I said before, no one cannot pretend that these problems do not exist, and I ask you to keep precisely the one I have become aware of in your prayers. But you need not pray in this area for our new teacher, of that I am convinced.” In reaction to her claim to prudence, he was moved to think of a retaliation, a bit of mischief, suggesting that if she had any further doubts she should take them to where they most intimately applied, to the household of Mrs. Sarah Blakeley. Edna Havincourt was something of a snob as well as a busy body, and while she might feel entitled to harass the clergy and religious with her assumed concerns, real or imagined, in the name of seeming pious or morally outraged, she was not likely to try to advise one of the town’s leading chatelaines that she had been so imprudent as to let the devil into her own house.
   
    The thought passed, to be replaced by a better one: why was she so charged up at the thought of an artist painting the nude body? Perhaps they could have an investigative and hopefully healing chat about it at some future date; for now he had to see Sister Teresa about the music politics and a plan for the Sunday mass.
  
     And then he had a further thought, because having said what he had about her qualifications for receiving daily communion, and realizing from bringing the question out for her to think about that he might just have a chance to improve her a little, he should not let pass the opportunity to make the ultimate point in the matter.
  
     “In fact,” he went on, “As I am in quite good conscience about thinking that you have heard your pastor, I would like to say that I think you might proceed with daily communion, that I will not deny it to you. But you must think of yourself as having been in error, as far as we know at this time, and you must also think, under the general aspect of any and all men being entitled to the honour of a good name until proven otherwise, that Paul Cameron is the grandson of a man who, for many years, has been so far advanced in the spiritual life that he is not only in permanent union with the Trinity and the Virgin Mary, but that he is even visibly, tangibly, audibly, transformed into Our Lord Himself so that men or women, or children, might see the depth of his soul and the degree of his union with the divine.”
  
     For the moment, Edna Havincourt’s eyes opened wider than McKeon had ever seen them, and she looked, almost, like a child. The credulity, he knew, might not last for long, but it was a golden moment, and McKeon remembered the mood of the class when Hlady annually told the story of his journey to St. Jean de la Riviere.
  
     “Do not doubt me, Edna. I have had this from one of the holiest priests, one of the most mystical priests, I ever knew. My professor in the seminary, and my spiritual director. I want you to think about this when you go to communion. I want you to think about it in great detail, like a devout soul entering into the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. It will do you good. I know it will. And offer up your communion for me, for I have possibly never made as much good as I should from my acquaintance with such information. The spiritual life is so fragile in those who do not live in the walls of the cloister. Thank you for hearing me out. And now I must go over to the school. Yet another problem has come up which I have to resolve with Sister Teresa.”