Second Spring

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “If it comes to that, Father Peter, we will subpoena you and you will be able to repeat that charge on the record and under oath.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You should be, Father.” Vince smiled easily. “You should be. As I say, it is within our power to destroy this college. We would be reluctant to do so because it is reputed to have a fine academic record. We will do so, however, if necessary.”

  “I will not give them to you.”

  “I will also go into the Circuit Court of Cook County this afternoon and seek relief in the form of compelling you to release this transcript to us. Counselor Frye will tell you that we will certainly get that injunction. Our request for it, given Dr. O’Malley’s prominence in Chicago, will be front-page news. We are reluctant to do this, as I say, but you should not believe that we will not.”

  “Why Cook County?” Frye demanded.

  Vince spread his hands soothingly.

  “Master O’Malley is currently a resident in Cook County. Let me assure you that you will seek in vain for a change of venue.”

  “Can they do this, Andrew?” Father Peter asked, turning to the lawyer, as though it were his fault.

  “I’d say give him the fucking credits.”

  “Please, Counselor, there is a lady present as well as a priest.”

  This time my husband had to suppress a snicker.

  Father Peter drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. Then he pressed an intercom button.

  “Sister, will you make a copy of O’Malley’s transcript and bring it in here?”

  I knew she was a nun.

  Chuck and I were enjoying the show. We knew that Seano was all right. We knew they’d take him with open arms at either Loyola or St. Procopius. We knew that we’d win in court. So we played the spectator sport of watching Vincente di Paolo skewer these creeps.

  Uninvited, Vince sat in a chair opposite us.

  “You hate priests, don’t you, Mr. O’Malley?” Father Peter asked.

  “Dr. O’Malley, Father. Economics. University of Chicago.”

  Chuck never claims the title. However, it seemed the thing to do just now.

  “All right, Dr. O’Malley!”

  “I have been not ungenerous to this school, have I, Father Peter?”

  “I believe you have,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “You’ve handled these matters before by buying off the families and sending Father Maximus away for a few months. We are not the kind who can be bought off. Moreover, my brother is a priest and my second son is entering the seminary at Mundelein this autumn. We are here to protect the priesthood from sick pedophiles like Father Maximus and cowardly priests like you.”

  Father Peter turned purple, the exact color of my summer frock.

  Before he could explode, the nun banged into the office and threw the transcript sheets on his desk like they were a copy of Playboy someone had found in the dorm. One of the sheets slipped off the desk.

  “Take them!”

  Vince picked the sheet off the floor, added it to the pile, and gave me the stack of papers.

  “Does it seem complete, Rosemarie?”

  I studied the transcript carefully. He really did have a 4.0 average. The last sheet listed his various extracurricular activities, among which he was to edit the school newspaper in the fall and was the senior class president.

  “Everything in order, Rosemarie?”

  I was always Rosie to everyone else, except John Raven and Chuck. However, for the moment, Peg’s husband was willing to waive that rule.

  “It’s a record of which a parent would be very proud. If he didn’t go to Mass every day out here, Father Maximus would never have had a chance to grope him—in the sacristy after Mass.”

  “Well that’s it for today.” Vince gathered up his briefcase. “Oh, one more thing. I went into the Circuit Court of Cook County yesterday to file a motion in the name of Sean O’Malley for civil action against the school, you, Father Maximus, and your religious order. We have kept the suit a secret, but here are the papers and a demand for your records on Father Maximus. It’s the kind of petition which could easily be changed to a class action suit. We don’t want to ruin the school, though we will if necessary. We’re asking for monetary damages and for a letter signed by you, the provincial council, the present provincial, and the president of the order over in Rome, in which you will promise that Father Maximus never again is assigned to work with boys and young men. Incidentally, we have notified your provincial in Chicago of the suit.”

  He handed the suit and the papers to Frye.

  “You are hereby notified of our suit. I’m sure, Mr. Frye, that you will counsel settlement. You’ve bought people off before. Now you will have to buy us off and at a much higher price. Otherwise, I promise you on my mother’s grave, we will destroy the college.”

  Vince’s mother is still alive and a dear, sweet woman. His oath was part of the Outfit image he had created.

  I looked at my husband. His lips quivered.

  “We will fight it every inch of the way,” Father Peter promised.

  “Do that and it will make my day,” Vince renewed his promise. “We will make a lot more money and the result will be the same.”

  We rose from our seats and walked to the door.

  I was the first one out because my brave warriors honored and respected womenkind.

  I pushed back into the office and pointed my finger at Father Peter.

  “It’s people like you and Father Maximus that turn the priesthood into shit.”

  “I was wondering what you were going to say for the last word,” Chucky said, as we walked out of S’ter’s office. “While in general I disapprove of scatology in a woman, there are exceptions. This was one of them.” He embraced me. “You’re wonderful.”

  “Naturally.”

  Vince told us that the religious orders and the dioceses were following the advice of their litigators to play hardball with victims and families “because they are the enemy.”

  “The parents rarely have enough money to pay the bills for legal action. We were the wrong people to try to stonewall.”

  “Bye, S’ter,” I said, as we walked out of the president’s suite.

  We high-fived one another as we left the administration building.

  “Will they settle?”

  “Sure they will. Eventually. Even that sleazebag lawyer of theirs will tell them that they will never win in Cook County. Lucky for us that the provincial office is in Chicago. That’s why the provincial is at the top of the list of defendants.”

  “Poor man.” I sighed.

  “He had to have made the decision to reassign Father Maximus to the college after the previous complaints … The Church has yet to learn the risks it takes when it reassigns a pedophile priest. Once the word gets around to tort lawyers that there is money to be made in this kind of litigation, the Church and its insurance companies will lose a lot of money.”

  “The lawyers will take such cases on contingency?” Chuck asked.

  “Sure, why not? The Church has brought it on itself.”

  In the car my baby was playing with Peg.

  “I fed her from the bottle and changed her diaper, but she said she didn’t want to go back to sleep till her mommy returned, didn’t you, Siobhan Marie?”

  I seized my child and held her close. She cooed contentedly. If April Rosemary were to be believed, the kid couldn’t at this age differentiate her mother from any other nice person.

  Still, my kid certainly knew who I was. Aunt Peg would never woo her away from me. As she grew up she would know that Aunt Peg was a very nice woman, but not Mommy.

  Right?

  Anyway, she went right to sleep. Peg drove us home.

  Seano was delighted with the outcome.

  “I can play basketball at Loyola,” he said, clutching his transcripts. “It will be great to be living at home again. I missed Chicago. I’ll get my MBA there too.”

&nbs
p; “It’s a shame that terrible man ruined your senior year in college,” I said.

  “I was getting a little bored,” he replied. “Chicago is a great place. Besides, there’s lots of cute girls at Loyola … Will we really drag those priests into court?”

  “If they don’t settle the suit pretty soon, we sure will.”

  “I’d like to testify at a trial against them.” So much for my worries.

  The summer was filled with bicentennial hype which offended both me and my husband. I kind of wanted to go to New York for the tall ships parade, but Chuck said it would be easier to watch it on television. Besides, I didn’t want to take our new child on a plane ride till she was a little older.

  He spent the summer reading Victorian novels and poetry and arguing with Moire Meg about them—when he wasn’t spoiling our new little brat rotten. He hardly touched his camera.

  We didn’t participate in the election campaigns. Both of us were tired of politics. We were able to contain our enthusiasm for Jimmy Carter when he was nominated, especially when he referred in his acceptance speech to “Eyetalians.”

  “Just the kind of man you need to get out the Catholic ethnic vote.”

  We both were furious when he chose Walter Mondale for vice president. Fritz was a nice man, but his wife was opposed on the record to Catholic schools. Patently the candidate either didn’t care about getting the Catholic vote or didn’t know anything about Catholics. He ran an incredibly inept campaign and blew a twentytwo-point lead during the run up to the election. He just barely squeaked by with less than a one percent margin—against the man who had pardoned Tricky Dicky.

  Jimmy had begun his four years at Mundelein, which he seemed to enjoy. “It’s nothing like it used to be,” John Raven told us. “They have cars. They drive into the city. They read newspapers and watch television. They have vacations the same time as other colleges do. It looks the same on the outside, but it’s a different place, thank God.”

  Seano was happy at Loyola. He had moved into an apartment near the school and was playing basketball. Moire Meg would be a senior at Trinity next year, right down the street, so “I can stay home and take care of poor Siobhan Marie.”

  April Rosemary, home from her honeymoon and living in an apartment downtown till Jamie finished his residency, was not getting good grades at the Art Institute but said she was learning a lot. She wanted desperately to be pregnant.

  Seano’s college was stonewalling. One of the Cardinal’s lawyers called Vince and first pleaded with him to drop the suit, then threatened him.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Vince said he told him. “The longer they mess around, the more money we’ll demand for a settlement.”

  “You’ll be doing grave harm to the Church, Vincent.”

  “Not as much as you’re doing.”

  Our priest revolutionaries were summoned to Washington the week after the election. The Delegate suggested that they fly to Rome to meet at the Congregation for the Making of Bishops. They wanted Chuck to come with them. I was in no mood for Rome. Besides, I didn’t want to drag our poor little daughter across the Atlantic Ocean.

  Chuck

  1976

  I consumed two dishes of chocolate gelato in a sidewalk café on the Conciliazione while I was waiting for the rebels, as Rosemarie and I called my brother and our two priest friends. We had supper the previous night with our friend Rae Adolfo from the birth control commission days. He knew we were in Rome and wanted to talk to us. He was still a smooth, handsome character out of a Fellini film. Apparently his assignment was to tell us what to say to the Cardinal the priests were going to meet the next day. I suspected he was working for Cardinal Benelli, who was Pope Paul’s chief of staff and allegedly the chairman of the special commission they had set up about Chicago. We chatted and gossiped and admired the Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Whatever he was supposed to tell us about the meeting was deeply implicit in the conversation.

  “The Pope is not well.” He sighed. “Not well at all. Another year or two, who knows?”

  “And then?”

  “It will be very difficult. The new Pope will be pulled in both directions, those who support the Council and those who oppose it.”

  “Don’t they know that the laity and the clergy have already made up their minds?” Edward asked.

  “They believe that they can still control what happens. They are wrong, certo, but they have no idea of what’s happening. They live in their own little world.”

  “Ah.”

  “You have nothing to fear tomorrow. The Cardinal President of the Congregation for the Making of Bishops is of course on your side. He has relatives in a place near Chicago called River Forest … You know it?”

  “Somewhat,” I said.

  River Forest was a wonderful place. However, not a few of the Outfit folks live there. Was this Cardinal “connected”?

  “They tell him even worse stories. He merely wants to review the documents with you to be able to say that he has done so.”

  “Fair enough,” Packy said. “What are our chances?”

  “Everyone knows there must be a change in Chicago. Even the Pope. However, he remembers when enemies forced him out of his position on Papa Pacelli’s staff and sent him into exile.”

  “Milano is exile?” Packy said.

  “It is if your life has been in Rome.”

  “So our chances,” I said, “are about what they were at the time of the birth control commission. All the work has been done. The Pope will have all the material he needs. He will stew over it for a while and do nothing.”

  Adolfo sighed heavily.

  “Not quite the same, Carlo. In those days all the people who were whispering in his ear were against us. Now they are all on our side. You must not be impatient. It will take time. You remember what Pope John said of the man he knew would be his successor. He called him il mio Amleto.”

  “My Hamlet,” John Raven translated unnecessarily.

  I pounded the table—I really did.

  “Listen to me, Rae, and listen closely. And tell what I said to your friend Benelli. Either they get that psychopath out of Chicago now or there will be a major scandal. The Chicago media have a hint of the situation, and more than a hint. There’s material for the federal government to look into if they are of such mind. You can keep this sort of thing secret just so long in the United States.”

  There was silence around the table. Adolfo looked at the three priests.

  “You agree?”

  “The media are afraid of a negative reaction from the Catholic laity,” Packy said, “but less so than they used to be. Chuck is right.”

  “There’s always the possibility,” Edward, who had been silent through most of the meal, added, “that someone who worked for him would go to the police.”

  “Would you do that, Father?” Adolfo asked. “I do not say that it would be wrong if you did …”

  “I don’t think I could do it, Monsignor. Perhaps I am too much of a priest.”

  I pounded the table again.

  “He knows that I think he should.”

  Rae nodded solemnly.

  “Then I might say to those who will make the case that it is altogether possible that a layman or even a priest from the Cardinal’s staff might reveal the problem to the civil authorities.”

  No one denied it.

  “Very well. It is true that we have no sense over here of how government and church relate to one another in the United States. I am not sure that those who will make the case or the Pope himself will understand.”

  “In the big cities, where most of the Catholics live,” I explained, “the civil authorities, who are generally Catholic themselves, have felt that they should let the Church take care of its own problems. They too are afraid of offending the Catholic laity whose votes they need for reelection. That’s changing as sexual abuse becomes a national issue, especially if the abuser is a clergyman.”

  Adolfo raised his hands
in a gesture of helplessness.

  “If it has become an issue in America, soon it will be here too.”

  “In the Vatican?”

  “I meant in Italy … I’m sure that it happens here too, though not very often. Not all of us who work over there are saints.”

  I let it go at that.

  We were staying at the Columbus Hotel on the Conciliazione, which used to be the headquarters of the Knights of Malta. Nice enough place and right down the street from the Congregation for the Making of Bishops. The rooms were all right. I’m sure they had been remodeled once or twice since the eighteenth century. It was not the kind of Rome into which my beloved wife would have booked me. Nor would she approve of my sharing it with Edward in her absence. I had perhaps enhanced it somewhat in the description I had given her when I called the night before.

  “Do you have the room to yourself?” she demanded.

  Nothing was too good for Chucky Ducky.

  “Uh, no …”

  “Father Ed?”

  Silence.

  “Well, you won’t pick up any little Italian bitch.”

  “Roman … They’re the most beautiful women in Italy. Maybe in the world.”

  “Hmf …”

  After our dinner with Adolfo I called her from the lobby of the hotel. Edward didn’t ask why. Maybe he respected my privacy or maybe he was too tired to wonder.

  “I want to know how my youngest daughter is surviving her father’s absence.”

  “She hasn’t even noticed.”

  “Has her mother noticed?”

  “Maybe a little bit … What happened at dinner?”

  I summarized the evening.

  “Same old stuff, huh?”

  “Probably. You protect psychopathic cardinals for the good of the Church, just like you protect pedophile priests for the good of the Church.”

  “Chucky, you sound angry.”

  “I’m more lonely than anything else.”

  Husband asks for tender sympathy.

  “You’ve only been away two nights!”

  Husband does not get tender sympathy.

  “I miss you.”

  Husband makes renewed plea for sympathy.

  Silence while wife reevaluates.