by J.F. Powers
HUMAN NATURE
The Church was irrelevant today, not concerned enough with the everyday problems of war, poverty, segregation, and so on, people said, but such talk was itself irrelevant, was really a criticism of human nature. Sell what you have and follow me, Our Lord had told the rich young man—who had then gone away sad. That was human nature for you, and it hadn’t changed. Let him take it who can, Our Lord had said of celibacy—and few could take it, then or now. “And that applies to heroic sacrifice of all kinds. Let’s face it.”
BRUEGEL THE ELDER
People, most people, lay and clerical, just weren’t up to much. Liturgists, of course, were trying to capitalize on that fact, introducing new forms of worship, reviving old ones, and so on, but an easy way would never be found to make gold out of lead. Otherwise the saints and martyrs would have lived as they had, and died, in vain. All this talk of community, communicating, and so on—it was just whistling in the dark. “Life’s not a cookout by Bruegel the Elder and people know it.”
TOO FAR?
Sure it was a time of crisis, upheaval, and so on, but a man could still do his job. The greatest job in the world, divinely instituted and so on, was that of the priest, and yet it was still a job—a marrying, burying, sacrificing job, plus whatever good could be done on the side. It was not a crusade. Turn it into one, as some guys were trying to do, and you asked too much of it, of yourself, and of ordinary people, invited nervous breakdowns all around. Trying to do too much was something the Church had always avoided, at least until recently. At the Council, the so-called conservatives—a persecuted minority group if ever there was one—had only been afraid of going too far too soon, of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. “And rightly so.”
FLYING SAUCERS
The Church couldn’t respond to all the demands of the moment or she’d go the way of those numerous sects that owed their brief existence to such demands. People had to realize that what they wanted might not be what they needed, and if they couldn’t—well, they couldn’t. Religion was a weak force today, owing to the decline of human intelligence. It was now easy to see how the Church, though she’d endure to the end, as promised by Our Lord, would become a mere remnant of herself. In the meantime, though, the priest had to get on with his job, such as it was. As for feeling thwarted and useless, he knew that feeling, but he also knew what it meant. It meant that he was in touch with reality, and that was something these days. Frequently reported, of course, like flying saucers, were parishes where priests and people were doing great things together. “But I’ve never seen one myself, if it’s any consolation to you guys,” Joe said, and paused.
Did the impressive silence mean that they were now seeing themselves and their situations in a new light, in the clear north light of reality? Bill, finally? Potter? Even Conklin? Joe hoped so, in all cases. On the whole, he was satisfied with the response. The bathwater bit hadn’t gone down very well (groans from Potter, “Oh, no!” from Conklin), and there had been other interruptions, but Joe had kept going, had boxed on, opening cuts, closing eyes, and everybody, including Conklin, looked better to him now.
He wanted Hennessy and Potter to come out again, and not just to visit Bill, and not just to discuss their problems with him (Joe), though that would be all right. He wanted them to come out whenever they felt like it, whenever they needed a lift, a little priestly fellowship. Actually, there might be more for them with him, and more for him with them, than with Bill—who, to tell the truth, wasn’t much fun. It could happen, first Hennessy and Potter coming, then coming with others, and these in turn with others. There would be nights, perhaps, when Bill wouldn’t leave his room. “Where’s Bill?” “Oh, he’s listening to FM.” Joe’s rectory could become a hangout for the younger clergy, a place where they’d always be sure of a drink, a cigar, and if he put a table in the living room, never used now, a cue. Pastors at first critical (“Stay the hell away from there!”) would sing his praises (“He sure straightened out that kid of mine”). Time marching on, Hennessy seldom seen, a bishop somewhere, first of the old crowd to make it, but the others still around, pastors now with curates of their own—tired, wiser men, the age gap narrowing between them and their old mentor, not so old, really, and in excellent health, eating and drinking less. A few missing, yes, the others, though, still coming out to Joe’s—in a crazy world, an asylum of sanity—for priestly fellowship, among them, perhaps, Father Conklin, old Conk, a pretty lonely guy for a while there, until he started coming out, shaved off his mustache, found his lost faith, the road back, second spring, and so on.
“So what’s the answer?” said Potter. “Watch the Twins?”
“Those bores,” said Conklin.
Hennessy reproved them with a look, and spoke with his future authority. “What’s the answer, Father?”
Eying Father Otto’s glass on the coffee table, Joe said, “A few monks saved civilization once. Could be the answer again. Principle’s sound. You’d have to work out the details. Wouldn’t have to be monks. Could happen right here.” Joe reached for Father Otto’s glass, the last of the wine, and swirled it clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, denying himself before downing it. “Wanna see how Father is,” he said then. “Be right back.” At the door, as he was about to leave them, he turned and said, “How can we make sanctity as attractive as sex? Answer I got was ‘Just have to keep trying.’ Not much of an answer. Nobody remembers it—just the question. Guess it’s the answer to all these questions. Be right back.”
Father Otto’s eyes opened when Joe approached the bed. “Get you anything, Father?” Joe asked.
“All right.”
“Aspirin?”
“All right.”
Joe administered aspirin and water to Father Otto, flipped his pillow, eased him down. “Want your shoes off?”
“Is the party over?”
“Not yet.”
“Then why is everybody leaving?” said Father Otto, his eyes closing.
“Not yet,” Joe said patiently, but when he returned to the study he saw that he was wrong.
Hennessy—he was the only one there—said, “How is he?”
“All right,” Joe said.
Led by voices to a window on the street side, gazing down, he saw Bill, Potter, and Conklin talking to a young woman—older than they were, though—in a convertible.
“Conklin had to leave,” Hennessy said.
Joe came away from the window. “So I see.”
“Want to thank you, Father.”
“It was Bill’s party.”
“All the same.” Hennessy seemed to know what it was like to be a pastor. “Oh, and I should thank the housekeeper.”
“Good idea.” Joe saw Hennessy, who’d go far, off to the kitchen, and returned to the window. Below, the young woman moved over on the seat and the mustache took the wheel. Potter and Bill then fell all over themselves saying good-bye, making it look hard to do. And the convertible drove away. Then, to Joe’s surprise—he had meant to say something about coming out again, soon—Hennessy appeared below, having, it seemed, left the rectory by the back door. Without a word or sign to Potter and Bill, who stood together, Hennessy got into the driver’s seat of the black sedan at the curb. Potter and Bill then parted, rather solemnly, Joe thought, and Potter got into the back seat of the black sedan. It drove away. And a few moments later Bill entered the study.
“Who was that?” Joe asked.
“His mistress.”
Joe stared at Bill. “Say that again.”
Bill said it again.
“That what he calls her? How d’ya know that?”
“He told us.”
“He did, huh?” Joe was thinking if he had a mistress he wouldn’t tell everybody.
“He’s honest about it, Father. You have to give him credit for that.”
“I do, huh?”
Father Otto came in, looking much the same.
“You missed your bus,” Joe said, and then to Bill, “Why don
’t they get married?”
“Complications.”
“Like what?”
“She’s already married.”
Joe sniffed. “Great.”
“Her husband won’t give her a divorce. He’s still a Catholic.”
“Say that again.”
Bill said it again.
Joe turned away. “And you wanna get back to your monastery—right?”
“How?” said Father Otto.
“I’ll drive you.”
“Eighty miles?” said Bill. “Can’t he stay overnight?”
“He wants to get back to his monastery. I need the air. Well, what d’ya say, Father?”
“All right,” said Father Otto.
FAREWELL
IN JULY, about a month before he was to retire, the Bishop of Ostergothenburg (Minnesota), through a clerical error, received a letter from the Chancery, his own office, asking the clergy of the diocese to contribute—pastors twenty dollars, assistants ten dollars—toward buying him a car.
The Bishop was unhappy about the letter. Why set a goal that might not be attained? Why be so explicit about the nature of the proposed farewell gift? Wouldn’t men driving old clunks be put off? Why not just say “gift,” or “suitable gift”? And, since he’d still be there, living upstairs in the brownstone mansion that was also the Chancery office, why say farewell? Arguing with the letter in this fashion, and wondering about the response to it, and hearing nothing, the Bishop spent his last days on the throne in a state of apprehension.
The day before he retired—he’d still heard nothing—he gave the girl in the office his set of keys to the aging black Cadillac that belonged to the diocese and was what he’d driven when he drove, which had been seldom.
The day after he retired (he’d still heard nothing), he went out and bought himself a car, a Mercedes—a gray one, as there wasn’t a black one in stock. When his successor, Bishop Gau, saw it, he said, “Bishop, we were giving you a car. The clergy. I sent out a letter. I was just waiting until I heard from everybody.”
“You should live so long,” said the Bishop, embarrassed, certain that the response had been disappointing, if only because of the tone of the letter.
But when presented with what Bishop Gau smilingly called “the loot,” which included a check from him for a hundred dollars and one from his chum Father Rapp for fifty dollars, the Bishop reckoned that it was only a few hundred less than it might have been ideally, and that the clergy—they were a good bunch, by and large—did appreciate him.
In the following days, weeks, months—he was still at it in October—he wrote and thanked the contributors but returned their contributions, saying the money could be put to better use. Quite a job, writing a hundred and sixty-eight letters by hand, personalizing each without showing partiality and without repeating himself, except in promising to remember each man at the altar, asking to be so remembered himself, and signing his name, “=John Dullinger,” or, in a few instances, simply, “=John.”
Early in October, when all the contributors had been taken care of (except Bishop Gau and Father Rapp) and the weather was still fine, he got out the Mercedes and drove forty-six miles to see a church under construction, the last of many he’d laid cornerstones for—his administration, so rich in achievements, will be remembered not least for its churches (Ostergothenburg Times). He was home safely, before dark, very pleased with the car’s performance. He took two more trips. He was planning another—in October, with the trees a riot of color, the diocese was at its best. But then it rained and froze hard, and was winter.
At that point his retirement really began.
He still said the eight o’clock Mass at what was now the ex-cathedral (the new one was inconvenient), had breakfast at the rectory there, and lunch at home—prepared by the cleaning woman, though, since his housekeeper had retired. But between the time he got back in the morning and the time he left for his evening meal at the Hotel Webb, there was now a bad eight-hour period that hadn’t been there before. He read, tried to watch TV, or just sat, sometimes wishing he had an absorbing hobby or a scholarly mind. (But how many bishops did, nowadays?) If a car drove into the parking lot below, he went to the window to see who it was (too often only Bishop Gau or Father Rapp), then returned to his chair, to Who’s Who in the Midwest, which interested him more than Who’s Who in America (he was in both), or to the Times, or the diocesan paper, which he read these days with more care and less satisfaction: there was a difference between reading and being the news.
Still, he didn’t exactly envy Bishop Gau, with things as they were in the country and the Church, and becoming more so every day, though the diocese was still in pretty good shape, still heavily rural and Catholic. Bishop Gau was better suited to the times, more tolerant of the chumps coming out of the seminary, and of the older, suddenly unstable men, than the Bishop had been—running into one of them dressed in civvies, he’d say, “What’s the matter, Father? Drunk, or ashamed of the priesthood?”
He could easily get carried away, which was bad even when the cause was good, and for this weakness he’d sometimes paid. Carried away, he’d written checks for a couple of hard-up dioceses behind the Iron Curtain whose bishops he’d met in Rome and liked, entertaining them and others at the Grand, where he always stayed, and then, returning home, had been humiliated by his pussyfooting consultors—thereafter all such checks had to be countersigned by the Auxiliary (as he was then). Bishop Gau, who had risen swiftly, helped by the Bishop at first, by himself and Rome later, understood finance, both high and low, better than the Bishop ever had. Bishop Gau and Father Rapp were now driving fast new Fords, identical silver ones, and the aging black Cadillac had vanished, presumably in a three-for-two deal. Bishop Gau handled such matters very well. Most matters, in fact. But he hadn’t handled the Bishop’s farewell gift very well.
The Bishop had been compelled, in the circumstances, to invest in an expensive car for which he had little use and then to take another loss by returning the contributions, the loot. That word, as he interpreted it, had left him no choice. But many who’d had their contributions returned to them would mention that awesome little fact, and that was where the Bishop had them, those two, Bishop Gau and Father Rapp, for he still had their checks. He often wondered what they must be thinking, and enjoyed the prospect of their hearing of his philanthropy from other contributors—a growing number. That was about all the Bishop had going for him these days.
His evening meal at the Hotel Webb had become more important to him these days, not that his appetite had increased. No, he just liked it at the Webb, where he’d always liked it, more: the good food there and the lighting (not dim), the tables and chairs (no booths), the background music, and, in December, the tasteful decorations and the big tree—a real one, green (un-whitewashed) and grown in the diocese. When people, other diners, paused at his table to pay their respects—they still did—he appreciated it more than he had in the past, and he wasn’t so wary of those in the selling line, or of the clergy. And when told how sorry people were that he was retired he was happy to hear it, even when it reflected on his successor, as it sometimes did, at which times he praised his successor, or acted as if he hadn’t heard.
That was how he acted one evening early in December when Monsignor Holstein—once rector of the Cathedral, Vicar-General of the diocese, and the Bishop’s right-hand man, now only pastor of St John Nepomuk’s, New Pilsen—said, “Wie geht’s? You’re sorely missed these days, John.”
The Bishop invited Monsignor Holstein to sit down, which he did, in his white socks, saying, “Like old times, John.”
Again the Bishop acted as if he hadn’t heard, for, while agreeing it was like old times—the two of them together again at the Webb at the corner table, where they’d so often gone into the problems of the diocese and planned the campaigns—he was also regretting his later treatment of Monsignor Holstein, who had taken it so well at the time and recently had contributed his full pastor’s sha
re toward the farewell gift. Not vindictive, a good man in his way, Monsignor Holstein, but an idealist. Life had certainly been less difficult for the Bishop and others, including, unfortunately, the humanists at the normal school and the management of the Orpheum, after the man left town. Never content to leave well enough alone, always after the Bishop to do something—always something—Monsignor Holstein might have risen even higher, or stayed where he was, but for that weakness. And it came out again that evening at the Webb, with the cigars, when he spoke of this woman, a Mrs Nagel, in the country who thought she’d seen an apparition of Our Lady in a tree on several likely occasions. Always something, yes.
Oh, the Bishop agreed that it would take something sensational to get people thinking along more spiritual lines these days, and that this could be it, and, if so, that it would be a great thing for the diocese. But this woman’s pastor, a reliable man, and this woman’s husband, also reliable, a school-bus driver—they weren’t too sympathetic, the Bishop understood, and that, while not unheard of in such cases (“Those closest to the scene are often the last to believe, John”), settled it for the Bishop. “See the Auxiliary,” he said—he still thought of Bishop Gau as the Auxiliary—and let it stand.
“Saw him this afternoon, John.”
Yes, the Bishop from his window had watched Monsignor Holstein arrive at the Chancery that afternoon. “What’d he say?”
“Can’t give credence to this woman. Too many fakes.”
Yes, but if the Bishop were to visit this woman mightn’t he give credence to her? Monsignor Holstein seemed to think not. A slap in the face, wasn’t it? Yes, but wasn’t that what being retired was? So far, there had been—and, yes, there would be—fewer Christmas cards for him this year. It was the office that mattered, and nowhere more than in the Church—which otherwise would be just another institution and the gates of Hell would prevail against it. “The Auxiliary’s right.”