Catholics

by Moore, Brian; Ellsberg, Robert;

  “I hope that won’t be the case.”

  “But you are the general’s plenipotentiary,” the abbot said. “If it is the case, then you have authority to act against me.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I don’t know why I’m asking,” the abbot said. “The letter made that quite clear. I must be a glutton for punishment.”

  “On the contrary, you seem to me a very reasonable man. And as an abbot, with episcopal powers, you realize better than I do the need for seniors in our order to act in concert and set an example.”

  “Now, now, hold on, hold your horses,” the abbot said, smiling. “I’ve had a terrible lot of sermons thrown at me these last weeks. I know what you’re going to say, and so on and so forth. But, right now, what I need to do is sit down and think about this letter from father general. I believe I will do that. We can talk in the morning. Will that be all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “We’ll not keep you here forever, don’t worry. Padraig will take you back to the mainland any time you want to go.”

  “Fine. No hurry.”

  The abbot picked up the poker from the grate and hammered on the flagstones. “Martin?”

  Below, a voice: “Yes, Father Abbot.”

  “Will you take our visitor to his quarters?”

  Turned to Kinsella, holding out his hand. “Sleep well, Father. And thank you for coming to Muck. I’ll be along to take you to breakfast in the morning. Would eight suit you?”

  “Fine.”

  “Martin?”

  “Yes, Father Abbot.” Brother Martin was now at the head of the stairwell.

  “Put a light on the west wall. Father Kinsella is not, like yourself, some class of a night cat.”

  Brother Martin laughed, as at an old joke. “This way, Father.”

  Stertorous, a noise like a man blowing on a fire to redden coals, why must they pick this overweight monk for the heart-hurting job of ascending and descending these winding turret stairs? Down, down, behind Brother Martin, gazing at the shiny tonsure on the back of his skull. Through the musty camphor smell of the sacristy, into the cloister walk, Brother Martin, by now wheezing in a frightening manner. At the west entrance an unoiled door opened with a scream of hinges and a monk, wearing a heavy frayed overcoat over his robe, his face half hidden by a full red beard, came out, beckoning. “Father Kinsella?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was a telephone call for you.”

  “This is Brother Kevin,” Brother Martin said.

  “’Twas a call from Dingle. The helicopter company. Did you want to ring them?”

  “Maybe I’d better.”

  “Go along then, Martin. I’ll take Father Kinsella back.” Gripping Kinsella’s arm. “Come in, come in.”

  And shut the screaming door. The room was like a bunker, a narrow window twelve feet long by two feet wide stretched along one wall, giving on a view of mountains and a cove where curraghs were drawn up on the strand. Papers, manila folders, a shortwave radio, and a telephone were jumbled on a long wooden table. The walls were lined with red and white buoys, lobster creels, fishing tackle of various sorts.

  “I admit it’s a shambles,” said the red-bearded monk and now Kinsella recognized the crackly, humorous voice he had spoken to from the pub and from Hern’s Hotel. “Will I get you Dingle?”

  “Yes. Western Helicopters. Dingle 402, I think.”

  “That’s right. Dan Gavin runs that outfit. I know him.” He cranked the handle. “Would you get us Dingle 402, Sheilagh? Thanks, Sheilagh.”

  He turned to look at Kinsella. “Do the priests in Rome not dress like priests anymore?”

  “Clerical dress is optional, except on special occasions.”

  “That’s a grand outfit you’re wearing. Dashing! You look like a soldier boy.”

  The phone rang. The red-bearded monk handed over the receiver. Kinsella’s pilot was on the line. “Yes, I called earlier, Father. We have a report that the island will be socked in around noon. Bad storm off the coast of Spain, coming up fast.”

  “By noon?”

  “Yes. Mightn’t even be able to get off by boat after that. Gale-force winds forecast for all of Kerry.”

  “I see.” Held the phone, stared at by the red-bearded monk as, furious, his mind raced through a scenario. “All right,” he said. “See if you can come in at nine, okay?”

  “Same spot?”

  “Right.”

  “Nine o’clock, then. Will do.”

  “Good night. And thank you.”

  Redbeard’s lips went wide in a grin. “So you’re leaving us in the morning, then?”

  Kinsella smiled, but did not answer.

  “Well, I suppose you’ll be wanting to get back to your quarters. I’ll show you the road. This way.”

  The door screamed. They went across the cloister and out at the west gate. Pre-darkness, a failing of light, dimmed the summer sky above them. The wind was strong, blowing the grasses flat along the edges of their muddy path. The red-bearded monk unlocked the guesthouse door. “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bugs bite,” he said, and cackled childishly.

  “Good night. Thank you.”

  “Don’t worry, there are no bugs at all. Not even bedbugs.”

  Kinsella locked himself in: he did not know why. Suddenly, he felt tense. The helicopter might be a mistake; it might have been wiser to remain passive, allowing the element of chance, the weather, to lay its onus on the abbot. Kinsella went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth, then shaved for the second time that day. He stripped and, putting on his one-piece sleeping suit, lay on the narrow bed. With a fanatic like Father Manus, or even that very tall old man, the master of novices, your opposition was in the open, and less dangerous. What did the abbot think? The one argument that seemed to have some effect on him was when he stared at the fire and said, “I didn’t think of myself as contradicting Rome. God forbid.” Obedience: in the end it was the only card. Tu es Petrus. And on this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

  The wind had set up a small rattle in the window frame. Below on the rocky bluff, constant as a ticking clock, the sound of waves, washing on shore. And then, startling as is any human sound in a wild place, Kinsella heard a voice, singing out a hymn.

  Faith of our fathers living still

  In spite of dungeon fire and sword.

  Oh, how our hearts beat high with joy

  Whene’er we hear that glorious word.

  Faith of our fathers, holy faith,

  We will be true to thee till death,

  We will be true to thee till death.

  When the verse ended, he jumped from his bed and ran to the window. No one. Grassy slopes leading to rock-strewn shore. Yet the voice had been close. And now, it began again.

  Our fathers chained in prisons dark

  Were still in heart and conscience free.

  Ran to the front door, unlocked it, and went out. The light on the west wall, requested by the abbot, shone down, casting its beam all along the path and the shore. Where was the singer?

  How sweet would be our children’s fate,

  If they, like them, could die for thee.

  Faith of our fathers, holy faith,

  We will be true to thee till death.

  We will be true to thee till death.

  Silence. He stared about him, wind whipping his light zycron sleeping suit, his hair blowing in thick curls about his face. What about the dungeons into which our fathers’ faith put so many poor souls? he wanted to shout. Sing along, you bastard, sing along, it will take more than songs and tricks. I have the power to order, to alter. He went back into the guesthouse and locked the door. Lay down, reviewing the conversations, the abbot’s remarks, the options. Toward midnight, he set his mind to wake at seven. He turned on his right side. Obedient, his mind admitted sleep.

  At midnight, the abbot left his parlor and went down the winding stairs. He was aware tha
t rules were being broken; certain monks were not in bed. He knew this, without evidence, but as surely as he knew most other details of life on Muck. In time of crisis such things were to be expected. But not permitted. As he went through the sacristy, putting out the lights behind him, he heard a noise in the church. He went in through the door at the south transept.

  There were no lights in the church, save a candle before the small shrine to the Virgin, and the red sanctuary lamp over the main altar. In the chancel Father Walter and Father Manus knelt side by side, in semidarkness, their arms outstretched in that painful posture of adoration that simulates the outstretched arms of the crucified Christ. Behind them, less spectacularly at prayer, were Brothers Sean, John, and Michael, and, sitting on a bench, two of the oldest monks, Father Benedict and Brother Paul. The abbot’s entrance was not noticed, although he made no effort to walk softly. A sign, he knew, that others were expected.

  “Father Walter,” the abbot said, in a loud voice.

  All eyes sideshot to south transept. All saw the abbot who saw all. Father Walter, lowering his praying arms, rose stiffly from his knees and marched to the rear of the church to confront his superior. Father Manus was at once joined in cruciform adoration by old Father Benedict.

  The abbot put his arm on Father Walter and drew him out into the night damp of the cloister walk.

  “So you are in on this?”

  “Have you good news for us, I hope, Tomás.”

  “I have no news. I asked you a question.”

  “Yes. I am the ringleader.”

  “You are not. Adding a lie to your sins will not help whatever foolish aim you have in mind.”

  “You know very well what I have in mind. It is what we all have in mind.”

  “Is it. Do you know my mind?”

  “Asking God’s help is not a sin.”

  “Breaking the rule of obedience is.”

  “Tomás, you are not going to be vexed with us, are you?”

  “I am very disappointed. I want you to go in there and tell those others to get off to their beds at once.”

  Father Walter’s face went happily into a smile. “Our prayers are answered, so!”

  “They are nothing of the sort. There is work to be done in the fields and in the abbey. The boats will have to be out to the pots and back by noon. The mackerel are running off Slea Head and I want nets out. We live by work, as I have said a hundred times. We are not a contemplative order.”

  “This is a case when only the power of prayer can help.”

  “You cannot run a monastic community like a holiday camp, Walter. People taking it into their heads to stay up all night without a by-your-leave or a with-your-leave. I asked everybody to behave as usual, while this visitor was in the house. I am disappointed in you, Walter.”

  “It was my fault, so it was, Father Abbot.”

  “I know who the ringleader is, there is not any sense in you pretending you are he. What you are is my deputy. If I cannot trust you to carry out an order, then where am I?”

  “I am sorry, Tomás. I will get them off to bed.”

  “I do not want to see them ten minutes from now. And I want no holy vigils in cells, do you hear? The holiest thing every man jack of you can do is turn out fit to work in the morning. Good night, now.”

  “Good night and God bless you,” Father Walter said.

  The abbot crossed the cloister to a bay where there was an ambry used for storing wood. He checked the lock, which Brother Kevin had reported as broken. It was broken. He heard them in the cloister walk behind him, but did not turn around until all was silence. Then he went back into the church.

  A dark church: the flickering oil flame of the sanctuary light over the altar, the gutter of one fat five-day candle beneath the small shrine to our Lady. The abbot genuflected, from habit, as he faced the chancel, then sat down heavily on one of the benches near our Lady’s shrine. Looked at the candle, beneath the shrine. Father Donald lit that. Every year, Father Donald’s old mother sent him a little money to buy things like warm gloves and mufflers. Every year, he spent it in candles lit, before our Lady’s shrine, in time of trouble. Candles as at Lourdes. “Lourdes is no longer in operation,” the abbot’s visitor had said tonight. Lourdes, that sad and dreadful place; the abbot thought of his own visit to Lourdes, remembering the thousands on thousands of banked candles in the grotto where the Virgin was supposed to have appeared to an illiterate French girl. With four other priests he had arrived on a pilgrimage excursion and, on the first morning, visited the shrine to see the myriad crutches and trusses hung on the grotto wall, the medical bureau with its certifications of “miraculous” cures, the tawdry religious supermarkets, crammed with rosaries and statuettes, the long lines of stretchers and wheelchairs on which lay the desperate and the ill, the stinking waters of the “miraculous” bathing pool. At noon, the abbot fled to his hotel room, where, pleading dysentery, he shut himself up, seeing no one, until it was time for the excursion train to leave. Two days in that room, trying not to think of what he had seen, trying to say his prayers.

  It was not the first time. There had been moments before, sometimes hours, even days, where, back on Muck or in some church on the mainland, that bad time had come on him, that time when, staring at the altar, he knew the hell of the metaphysicians: the hell of those deprived of God. When it came on him, he could not pray, prayers seemed false or without any meaning at all. Then his trembling began, that fear and trembling that was a sort of purgatory presaging the true hell to come, the hell of no feeling, that null, that void. A man wearing the habit of a religious, sitting in a building, staring at a table called an altar on which there is a box called a tabernacle and inside the tabernacle there is a chalice with a lid called a ciborium, and inside the ciborium are twelve round wafers of unleavened bread made by the sisters of Knock Convent, Knock, Co. Mayo. That is all that is there. That is all that is in the tabernacle in this building, which is said to be the house of God. And the man who sits facing the tabernacle is a man with the apt title of prelatus nullius, nobody’s prelate, belonging to nobody. Not God’s abbot, although sometimes he tries to say the words; “Our Father who art in heaven,” but there is no Father in heaven, his name is not hallowed by these words, his kingdom will not come to he who sits and stares at the tabernacle; who, when he tries to pray, enters null; who, when in it, must remain, from day to day, weeks becoming months, and, sometimes, as after Lourdes, a year.

  Lourdes was the worst time: it was not the first and it would not be the last. If he prayed. So the abbot avoided prayer. One could pretend to a preference for private devotions. One’s Mass could be said alone. He no longer read his daily office. As for public prayers, in a community like this there were always others, greedy to lead. Sometimes, one had to say a grace. One said the words, but did not pray. If one did not risk invoking God, one did not risk one’s peace of mind. He was needed here. He did his work. He did his best. But did not pray. He had not prayed now for, well, he did not want to think. A long time, yes. Some years.

  Tonight, he sat in the church, as a man sits in an empty waiting room. After some minutes, footsteps sounded in the nave. The abbot did not turn around. He, whom he expected, had come.

  Father Matthew, six feet five inches tall, the biggest man on Muck, marched up the center aisle of the church with a tread like an armored knight. Master of novices with no novices to master, an authoritarian figure denied the command he might have graced, in Kilcoole, long ago, he and the abbot had been seminary classmates, and rivals for the Latin prize. At that time, the world was at war, and Winston Churchill had to deal with a stubborn, righteous, very tall, young French general, who led the Free French Forces under the banner of the Cross of Lorraine. Then, as now, physically and in temperament, Father Matthew resembled General de Gaulle. And then, as now, the abbot knew what Churchill meant when he said “the cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.” Unyielding in his scruples, militant in his devotions, Father Matthew,
even in his age, was no man to cross. Now, his hoar-white hair and beard making him a ghost in the near-darkness, he marched toward the altar, his lips moving in muttered devotions.

  “Father Matthew!”

  Father Matthew stopped, as though brought up short by an invisible fence. His great head probed the shadows. “Ah, Father Abbot. And where are the others?”

  “What others?”

  “The vigil.”

  “What vigil?”

  “It is a vigil of devotion in honor of our Lady, offered up for the purpose of preserving the Latin Mass on Mount Coom and here on Muck.”

  “The other monks are in bed. I sent them to bed.”

  “And why did you do that, Father Abbot?”

  “Because I am in charge here.”

  Father Matthew sighed, audibly.

  “Father Matthew, it is some years now since I have taken it upon myself to rebuke you. The last thing in the world I want is to reopen our disagreements of former days. There is work to be done tomorrow. You will please go to your bed.”

  “I have made a solemn promise to our Lady to hold a vigil in her honor this night.”

  “When you were ordained as an Albanesian monk, you made a solemn promise to God to obey your superiors. Go to bed.”

  Father Matthew stood immobile, tall as a round stone tower. “May I ask, then, Father Abbot, what is your decision about Mount Coom?”

  From, his bench, the abbot looked up coldly at the figure in the aisle. “I am informed by Rome that the Mass is now merely symbolic. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “That is heresy, pure and simple!”

  “Why is it heresy, Father Matthew?”

  “Because the Mass is the daily miracle of the Catholic faith. The Mass, in which bread and wine are changed by the priest into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Without that, what is the church?”

  “Then our belief in Jesus Christ and his church depends on a belief in miracles. Is that it, Matthew?”

  “Of course that is it! St. Augustine said, ‘I should not be a Christian but for the miracles.’ And Pascal said, ‘Had it not been for the miracles, there would have been no sin in not believing in Jesus Christ.’ Without a miracle, Christ did not rise from his tomb and ascend into heaven. And without that, there would be no Christian Church!”