The Sacrifice

by William Kienzle

  To put that in practical terms, a nominating committee somewhere would put his name on the slate; supporters would quietly advance his cause (while he maintained a studied pious unawareness), and voila! He would be elected bishop of a significant diocese.

  He worried about the pressure that was building. It demonstrated once again that Gwen wanted this honor for him no less than she wanted it for herself.

  Somehow fate had put him in the middle. He might fumble with a final solution to this scenario. But should he falter, Gwen would not let him abandon the course.

  He had much to think about.

  He had much that needed to be planned.

  If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.

  But first, to bed.

  TWELVE

  In due course, George Wheatley was received into the Roman Catholic Church. This one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic body did not impose the indignity of rebaptizing him. But it did reordain him a deacon. He continued the process of study that would prepare him for the Roman priesthood.

  In Cardinal Mark Boyle, George found a prelate who was willing to sponsor him, incardinate him in the archdiocese, give him the faculties necessary to operate validly and licitly in the archdiocese, and, finally, pay him a salary. The eventual amount, should he be successful in his quest, was negotiable. That didn’t overjoy the ordained and celibate Roman priests. Since convert priests such as George were married, the practice was to pay them considerably more than priests who had no family to support.

  George selected Notre Dame University for study in the Roman teachings in the fields of Liturgy, history, and dogmatic, moral, and spiritual theology. Some of these studies paralleled Episcopal teaching. Some diverged violently—usually toward the conservative Anglican approach. But, of course, history is written by the winning side. And in coming over to the Romans, the convert priests were approaching, in effect, the winners.

  Through all of this, Nan was the most affected. More than Ron, more even than Alice, and surely more than Richard, Mrs. Wheatley suffered most because she internalized all the familial conflict. She supported both her husband and her children. Even though two of the three offspring stood poles apart from their father.

  By the present time, the date of Father’s Wheatley’s scheduled ordination, Alice had come to understand all that had transpired between today and that evening many months ago when her father had announced his decision.

  At first, against her better judgment, she had bargained with God. She would promise this or that sacrificial penance if only the Lord would make her father see the light. In time she realized that her objective would not be attained. God had heard her prayers, and the answer was no. God would not abrogate George’s free will.

  From that time on, she drifted away from her family. Mostly, she separated from her father. It was a deeply painful break. She could not forget and, try as she might, she couldn’t forgive.

  In the few moments that she held Sue’s hand, Alice relived in her memory the tragic fragmentation of her once united family. She kept trying to find some way of putting Humpty Dumpty together again, but she kept running into immovable walls.

  The last thing in the world she wanted was her father’s death. She fought against the belief that that was the only way out of the maze. Was there no other way? Was that the only path to eventual peace—the only resolution to the heartbreaking situation?

  No, it couldn’t be! And yet … and yet, it seemed so.

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that anymore. She was with someone who loved her unconditionally. She should have been able to find solace in Sue. But that was denied and part of the blame lay at her father’s doorstep.

  Making love with Sue brought a measure of peace. As was her habit, Alice drifted into a dreamless sleep.

  That left Sue wide awake to drift owl-eyed through the early morning hours trying not to move and thereby rouse Alice from her shallow slumber.

  Tonight, Sue had a surfeit of thoughts as she waited for sleep to take her, too. She was profoundly disturbed that Alice would think they should part. It had been the furthest thing from Sue’s mind.

  She was perfectly willing to have Alice as anything from a spouse to a significant other. She preferred a marriage. But she could understand Alice’s serious difficulties in that resolution what with both her bishop and her potential parishioners.

  So, all right, they would continue to be secret lovers, remaining in the closet.

  But then came Alice’s father … Father Wheatley … Roman Father Wheatley. The straw that broke Alice’s back.

  He would not ratify her relationship with Sue. Not that such ratification would have amounted to anything legally. But if anyone in the media were to ask him, he would tell the truth as he saw it. He already had made his mind known: He could find no biblical or scientific approval of such a relationship.

  It might, as Alice feared, be a final refutation. Her father, whose opinion was accepted as Gospel by a great number of people, would not approve—and, thus, would be on record as condemning his own daughter’s lifestyle.

  Sue scarcely could sit by and see her lover humiliated. Granted, the whole kit and kaboodle didn’t really mean that much to her; she could live with anything society would throw at her personally. But she was not determined to be a priest. Additionally, she felt that Alice was correct in expecting priests to be above sin—especially sins of the flesh.

  Something had to be done about Alice’s father. Something more effective than today’s debacle.

  Sue knew she had hours before sleep would come. She would use her time productively, pondering the problem: What could be done to stop Alice’s father from delivering the final blow—his ordination in the Roman Church—to his daughter?

  THIRTEEN

  Mr. and Mrs. Leon Harkins sat silently in the kitchen of their modest east-side duplex. They were finishing their traditional late Sunday afternoon dinner. They said nothing because there was little left to say.

  They had no children. Neither Leon nor Grace had any close family. The few still-living cousins were scattered outstate.

  They had a dog and a cat that had declared a truce and coexisted by ignoring each other. Perhaps they were imitating their master and mistress. The cat—Puss, of course—was a tabby; the dog, Lucky, was a Jack Russell mix. The cat identified with Grace, the dog with Leon.

  All of them, dog, cat, and humans, finished eating almost simultaneously. Leon forked down the last of his apple pie, pushed back from the table, and walked somewhat unsteadily into the living room.

  Grace watched him leave, then rose to clear the table and wash the dishes. Not for the first time, she thought that if there was anything to reincarnation, she would choose to come back as a man, a man who would eat large dinners prepared by the little woman, unbuckle his belt, collapse into a comfortable chair, and belch lustily. The woman could do the dishes.

  Playing the man’s role was exactly what Leon was doing.

  Utilizing the remote, which he did so well, he clicked on the television. Surfing, he hit upon a PGA tournament. Golf was pleasant if one didn’t have to walk all over creation chasing a little white ball. It was perfect in the living room after a large dinner. Stretched out in comfort in his recliner, he found the game soporific.

  He was snoozing when Grace entered the room and took in the all-too-familiar scene. She picked up her knitting. The needles clicked, adding length to an eternal scarf. TV golf was good for this, too.

  Puss jumped onto Grace’s lap and burrowed a shelter for herself under the knitting. Lucky was content to lie on the carpet and rest his head on Leon’s slippers.

  The game marched on. From time to time, Grace, whose fingers had memorized the pattern, glanced at the TV. Sometimes the screen displayed nothing but blue sky; viewers had to make an act of faith that somewhere up there a golf ball was in flight.

  Grace kept a clean, near immaculate home. When she married, some forty years
ago, she was excited at the prospect of having children, lots of them and soon. She would be a good mother and an even better grandma. She would dish out strict discipline, but with an abundance of affection. The phrase “tough love” had not yet been coined when she made her resolution.

  But fate was to deal her a different hand.

  Leon had just retired from the Ford Rouge plant. He welcomed retirement, though he had no specific plans—at least no ambitious plans such as adding on to the house, or doing freelance repair work. He was good at that. But he wanted to leave all that physically demanding stuff behind.

  Down deep he knew what would occupy most of his spare time. He would devote countless hours to his gun collection. His basement housed a veritable arsenal.

  High on his small list of things to do was to volunteer at his parish of choice, St. Mary’s, in Eastpointe. The Harkinses did not live within the boundaries of St. Mary’s. But St. Mary’s was the sort of parish that most suited Leon. Grace went along for the ride; to her a parish was a parish.

  Switching parishes was easily accomplished nowadays. Before the loathesome Vatican Council, attending a parish outside one’s own church boundaries entailed a lot of red tape. One had to have a credible reason to switch parishes, as well as a note from the home pastor giving permission to switch allegiance.

  Today, the average pastor is happy when a Catholic joins his parish, whether that Catholic lives within the boundaries or elsewhere. To hell with the red tape!

  As far as Leon was concerned, St. Mary’s Eastpointe was not the perfect parish one could have found routinely before the Council. Now, as he occasionally grumbled to his wife, all hell was breaking loose. In this range of bad choices, St. Mary’s was somewhat more than merely acceptable.

  But while he pledged allegiance to St. Mary’s and was active there, he kept a weather eye on some of the more deviant of the maverick parishes. Chief among these, in his view, was the venerable St. Joe’s downtown.

  Leon could find parishes—too many!—most of them in the inner city, that played fast and loose with Liturgy that was marginal at best. Some as bad, and, amazingly, even worse than St. Joe’s.

  But no one, no parish could compete with the admixture of Liturgy and the pastor that constituted St. Joe’s.

  Who are they trying to fool? Leon would snort from time to time. More often than not the rhetorical question would be addressed to no one but himself.

  Once upon a time the Harkinses had belonged to St. Joe’s parish. They didn’t live within the parish’s boundaries because at that time St. Joe’s had no territorial boundaries. It had been designated a national parish. Specifically, a German national parish, open to anyone of German descent. Frank was German on his mother’s side. Grace was German and Polish.

  They continued to be conscientiously active in the parish until the neighborhood changed. The primary change was in color. Frank knew—or thought he knew—what that augured. It was time to pull up stakes.

  The Harkinses moved to Center Line, a northeastern Detroit suburb. Unfortunately, Frank found no Center Line parish suitable for his patronage. He tried the neighboring suburb of East Detroit. Just what the Vicar of Christ ordered. So “right” was East Detroit that it eventually changed its name from East Detroit to Eastpointe. It wanted no part of predominantly African-American Detroit.

  But Leon could not get old St. Joe’s out of his system. Even after Vatican II, things were not so bad. Although Leon did have his doubts when Father Koesler was sent there. Koesler had a reputation for being liberal. Of course, in the aftermath of the Council, many of the younger to middle-aged clergy had such a reputation.

  But Koesler had withstood inspection. His congregation ran mainly from middle-aged to elderly. They wanted a prayerful, reverent Liturgy. And, largely, that was what they got.

  Then came the unfamiliar clergyman from the Southwest. Born in the Deep South, his ministry was to the poor and black. He worked his way west to Dallas—and from Dallas to Detroit.

  The out-of-towner did not come with a ready-made reputation. But he quickly began to build one.

  Leon made it a habit to attend Mass at St. Joe’s almost every week. He also attended Mass at St. Mary’s in Eastpointe—just to make sure he had attended a valid Mass. Leon was definitely a belt-and-suspenders type.

  It did not take the new priest long to recruit neighborhood residents who had not been “churched” for many years. Young business-people who now gave up extra sleep on Sundays to attend a Liturgy that involved them.

  And those kids with their drums and guitars, jazzing up what should have been a respectful few minutes with God.

  As for the greeting of peace—-well! It grew to be out of hand—just completely out of hand. Everybody—except Leon—milling about, talking loudly, hugging instead of merely shaking hands.

  What had old St. Joe’s done to deserve these desecrations? It had housed a black man in a white man’s color.

  Oh, he was black all right. Father Tully was black. Leon knew all about that. If he hadn’t learned it on the streets of Detroit, he surely was exposed to the culture in all his years of working side by side with blacks, and, more to the point, blacks who were trying to pass. With their do-rags and their lotions and creams. Oh yes, as much as Father Tully tried to pass himself off as a white man, Leon could tell: This was a black man. Oddly, the term mulatto never crossed his mind.

  From time to time, Leon thought something really ought to be done about the disgrace that went on there week after week.

  But what?

  He began his crusade by writing letters to the priest who headed the Downtown Vicariate.

  At first he received personalized responses from the Vicariate office. Letters from a Sister Somebody … one of the few women religious left. His only contact was by mail; he hadn’t a clue as to what she looked like.

  Her handwriting was tiny but extremely legible. He guessed she was elderly; that would explain the small script. Saving paper, saving money. Older nuns would have had such habits—and probably still did.

  Her letters attempted to address his complaints. She explained—again and again—that St. Joseph’s Liturgy was well within the rubrics. There were—yes, there really were—limitations on what was permitted in today’s Church. But due to questions regarding the Masses at St. Joe’s—particularly the folk Masses—the parish had been monitored—several times—and all was kosher (“liturgically correct” were her exact words).

  She suggested that he try another parish, perhaps one in the suburbs. It certainly wasn’t that the sort of Mass he was comfortable with wasn’t being offered in many Detroit-area churches. They were out there and since he felt so strongly about it he certainly was free to join just about any parish he wished.

  She wrote some seven consecutive responses to his objections. She searched for different ways of saying the same thing. Finally, she had to conclude that Leon Harkins was not going to be satisfied until St. Joseph’s Liturgies conformed to the hyperorthodox standards set by Rome. She also knew that as long as Father Tully was pastor, St. Joe’s would be faithful to the minimum standards set by the Vatican.

  So the response to Leon’s complaints to the Vicariate office metamorphosed into nothing more than a series of form letters. Leon was disgusted.

  There was a hiatus during which Leon seethed. Nonetheless he continued to attend Mass at St. Joe’s. Not often; he couldn’t stand the racket and what he considered the offhand approach to this core sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church

  Like an itchy scab, St. Joe’s Liturgy was a magnet that lured him back time and time again to survey and assess the damage.

  Of course not all the Masses were of the folk variety. On Sundays at least one Liturgy was offered in a staid fashion—occasionally even both Liturgies fell within a decent parameter. Still, enough liberties were taken—by Leon’s lights—in the Saturday Mass to satisfy the casual, less finicky Catholic.

  Leon began writing to Father Tully. He mentioned
his correspondence on the Vicariate level—hoping that such a record would demonstrate the dedication and resolve of the writer.

  History repeated itself. At first, Father Tully replied in a sympathetic, understanding way. Encouraged by Tully’s responsiveness, Leon fully expected things to change. But nothing did. If anything, there was even more noise and commotion than before … if that was possible.

  It surely seemed a lost cause. Leon could think of no other course than appealing to the head honcho himself, the Cardinal Archbishop.

  Contacting the Vatican would only be a waste of postage. Even Leon realized the Pope had many concerns far more pressing than how a Mass was being offered in an insignificant parish in the heart of Detroit. If anyone asked the Pope about the state of the Church in this core city parish, he would respond with a wrinkled brow and the word, “Where?”

  But it stood to reason that a bishop—for that was what Mark Boyle was beneath the red silken robes, a bishop—would be both informed and concerned over what was going on in one of his parishes. He was the shepherd, and one of his sheep, in the form of a single parish, was lost.

  Not only that, but the archbishop could, with a single sweep of his pen, rid St. Joseph’s of that fraudulent priest. No one need know that the priest was black masquerading as white. Leon would not be vindictive. He just wanted that priest out and the parish to return to its proper state of orthodoxy.

  Trying to make contact with the Cardinal did not prove effective. Age had sapped the elderly prelate of any inclination to enter this combat zone. He passed Leon’s letter along to his secretary, who, in turn, sent it on to the Office for Christian Worship.

  That left the matter back at square one.

  The official for Liturgy sent Leon a covering letter along with numerous small pamphlets spelling out orthodoxy in the varieties of worship available in this post-Vatican II Church.