Nate walked back to the Columbus Hotel, aware that his presence in Rome was a matter of curiosity to others.
11
THE ORACLE OF GLOUCESTER
BEING A NORTH SHORE BOY, THE RIDE BROUGHT BACK A lot of memories as Cardinal O’Toole drove north from Boston through the towns of his youth—Salem, Marblehead, Beverly Farms, and finally Gloucester. He was on his way to see his old friend, confessor, and spiritual advisor, Jack McClendon.
O’Toole had stayed in the States after Cardinal Manning’s funeral. He was pretty shaken by the death, and he always felt safer at home.
When he allowed himself to think about it, he was even more shaken by the probability of a worldwide conspiracy to kill cardinals. Such a threat triggered some soul searching. A trip to Gloucester and a visit with his old friend and mentor was the best way he knew to find his bearings again.
Father Jack McClendon was in his mid-eighties, twenty years older than O’Toole. He had been a parish priest all of his adult life, except for a few years when he worked as a spiritual advisor at St. John’s Seminary in Boston. When O’Toole was a teenager, McClendon had been the assistant priest at O’Toole’s home parish, Immaculate Conception in Salem. Later, at St. John’s Seminary, he had been O’Toole’s spiritual director and advisor.
Whenever O’Toole needed some sense of grounding, he went back to see McClendon. Jack was the one person who could still speak to the cardinal as an equal. He probably knew Michael O’Toole better than anyone else on earth.
The drive out of Boston was refreshing. It brought him to a place of peace. The morning sun danced on the ocean water to his right. O’Toole stopped at Salem Willows, on the waterfront in Salem, to buy two chop suey sandwiches to take to McClendon’s house for lunch. That strange delicacy is unique to Salem. In his honest moments, Cardinal O’Toole would have to admit that chop suey sandwiches were an acquired taste. But they were one of McClendon’s favorite foods, and the sandwiches were part of their ritual whenever they met. They always had chop suey sandwiches for lunch and lobster at the Gloucester House for dinner.
Jack McClendon was a free man. He was too old to care what people thought about him, so he spoke his mind freely, but with charity. In his eighty-sixth year, his fidelity was not to an institution, but to the truth. He had learned not just from books, but from experience.
McClendon’s career in the Church had been one of humble service. He had almost always been in poor parishes, not rich ones. There he comforted the grieving, counseled the doubting, visited the sick, baptized the babies, and buried the dead. To McClendon, that was the work of the Church, not the publishing of documents and the jockeying for position that went on in Rome.
In nearly sixty years as a priest, he had developed a disdain for the pomposity and pretension of the Catholic Church. He had seen its hypocrisy and its cruelty close up. But he had also seen its generosity and kindness.
To McClendon, life was all about love. He figured we were just supposed to love the people that God, or fate, put in our path. He had no ambition for greater things. Ambition is the clerical sin. The opening lines of Psalm 131 applied to Jack:
O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty.
I have not sought after great things.
Most of the time, people didn’t call McClendon “Father.” He was content to be just Jack. To him it was much better to be a companion on the journey through life than the captain of the expedition.
O’Toole had no trouble finding McClendon’s house. All he had to do was get to Gloucester on the highway and then drive downhill to the waterfront and turn right. The McClendon family had occupied the same tiny row house on the waterfront for three generations. It sat directly across the street from the monument to the Gloucester fisherman. McClendon’s father had been a lobsterman.
Once, these waterfront houses had been occupied by the families of the fishermen. Their roofs had widow’s walks, so the wives could watch for their husbands’ return. Now, they were becoming chic because of their ocean views. Boston yuppies who wanted to get out of the city would probably now pay half a million dollars for one of these little homes.
The McClendon house not changed much in fifty years. The furniture was still in the same place it had been half a century before. There were still lace doilies on the arms of the overstuffed chairs, and a Sacred Heart of Jesus picture still hung on the wall in the living room.
Jack moved back to Gloucester after he retired and lived with his sister Donna and their chocolate Labrador, aptly named Chocolate. Twice a day, winter and summer, Jack walked Chocolate up and down the breakwater past the monument.
It took McClendon a little while to shuffle to the door when Cardinal O’Toole rang the bell. His step had slowed a lot—a mixture of old age and the early stages of congestive heart failure.
The two men embraced at the door. Jack said affectionately, “Sit down here, you asshole, and let me look at you.” The only person in the world who could get away with calling Cardinal Michael O’Toole an asshole was Jack. The cardinal grinned with delight, happy to be in the presence of a man who knew him completely and loved him unconditionally, despite his pomposity.
Jack was concerned about the cardinal. “How are you, Michael, you fathead?” Fathead was Jack’s affectionate name for everybody he liked. “This is terrible news about Manning. I know you must be worried.”
“I’m shattered,” said O’Toole. “It is even worse than what you read in the papers. This may be a pattern. Someone is killing cardinals, and we don’t know why. What is happening to the Church, Jack?”
“First, I want to know what is happening to you,” said Jack. “Are you taking care of yourself? Are you still happy there in Rome?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel the same way I used to about the Church. Where did all this vitriol come from? I always thought we were speaking for God and for good, but people seem to hate us today. They don’t just disagree with us; they hate us. What did we do to deserve this?” O’Toole leaned back in the rocker and looked at the ceiling.
There was a long silence. Jack had learned over the years to listen to people’s troubles. You don’t always have an answer. Often there isn’t really an answer, but it’s always good to listen.
“There is such animosity even among the cardinals,” O’Toole continued. “We don’t seem to be on the same page anymore. The Church does a lot of good around the world. We feed the poor. And yet people hate us.”
Jack took a deep breath. “Well, Mike, maybe what we lack is real love. Remember what St. Vincent de Paul said: ‘If you feed the poor and don’t do it out of love, they will hate you for it.’”
O’Toole looked at Jack’s wrinkled face. “You’re probably right, Jack. Maybe we are too impersonal, too institutional.”
The table clock across the little room chimed noon.
Jack spoke up when it finished. “Mike, remember when you were at seminary in Boston? You came to me and said that the archdiocese wanted to send you to Rome. Do you remember my reaction?”
“You were opposed to me going.”
“Not so much opposed as cautious. I told you that it would be seductive. All the history, the beauty, the power, the wealth, the titles, the sense of being at the center of it all. These things are seductive. You wind up serving strange gods instead of the real one. Remember the first commandment, Mike. ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange gods before me.’”
“I don’t know, Jack, that seems a little harsh,” protested O’Toole.
“No,” said Jack. “Those things seduce us into thinking we are something. But really, we are nothing. We are all passing away. Even St. Peter’s Basilica will one day fall down in ruins. That Vatican will be dust. St. Paul told us only three things last: faith, hope, and love.”
Jack patted O’Toole’s hand that was resting on the arm of the chair next to him and finished his thought. “The only lasting or important thing we can do is love. That is what it is about.�
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“What about truth?” said O’Toole. “Isn’t that lasting or important? Aren’t we supposed to preach truth? Aren’t we supposed to reveal to the world the truth of Christ and His Church?”
Jack could see that he had touched a nerve, so he backed off. “What is it you are trying to achieve, Mike, in evangelizing the world? What is your idea of success? If the whole world became Catholic tomorrow, what would it look like?”
“Well, there would be peace,” answered Michael, “because we would all be on the same page. We would all be playing by the same rules.”
“Really?” said Jack, pursing his lips for a second. “Do we have peace in the Church now? If we can’t have peace now with one billion Catholics, what makes you think we would have it if there were seven billion Catholics? Does peace come from having the same rule book? Is the peace you seek a peace born of love or a peace born of law? I think St. Paul said we live by a law of love.”
The cardinal was a little irritated by his old friend.
“I am a canon lawyer,” said O’Toole. “I believe in the law of the Church. I think everybody should obey the law of the Church, because it’s the law of Christ. Doesn’t St. Paul also say we should be obedient to higher authorities?”
Father McClendon replied gently. “True, Mike, but in the end, it is not about rules. It’s about relationships. People don’t sacrifice their lives as missionaries or martyrs, or even as parish priests, because of obedience to rules. They sacrifice because they fall in love. They fall in love with the people God has put in their path, not some theory about how human beings should behave. Our job is first of all to love people as they are, just as Jesus loved the woman taken in adultery or the tax collectors or the centurion. Remember what Luke’s gospel says, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’”
O’Toole was ready with his objection. “But Jesus did not approve of their behavior. He told them to go and sin no more. He called them to change.”
“True,” said Jack, “but first he loved them.
“How often does the Roman Curia discuss how they can show love to the world?” Jack asked. “It seems to me that we spend more effort reminding people of what is wrong with them than we do telling them that God loves them. We make the sacraments into rewards for good behavior rather than medicine for the soul.”
“But doesn’t St. Paul say we should only come to the Eucharist worthily?” objected Cardinal O’Toole.
“He was talking about people coming to communion drunk,” said Jack matter-of-factly. “The Church seems to think it is supposed to be the toll booth on the way to heaven.”
“But,” objected O’Toole, “are we supposed to forget about their sin?”
“Not forget, but forgive,” answered Jack. “The Church seems to be hung up on things that have nothing to do with Christ—things on which Jesus was absolutely silent.
“We tell gay people they are ‘intrinsically disordered’ when Jesus said absolutely nothing about them. All they want to do is love each other.
“We tell women that they are unworthy to serve the Church as priests when Jesus said no such thing. We make them feel bad not because of something they have done, but because of who they are.
“We tell married men that their participation in the vocation of marriage and the love of a woman excludes them from priesthood. Yet Jesus chose St. Peter, a married man, to be the first leader of the church.
“We tell people who get divorced and remarried that they are cut off from communion forever, no matter how tragic or abusive their supposedly valid marriage may have been.
“So many rules, so little love.”
They both sat there in silence for a while. Finally, after a couple of minutes, Jack turned to the cardinal and said, “Let’s eat that chop suey sandwich.”
They moved to the kitchen table and unwrapped the sloppy sandwiches. The noodles spilled out of the soaked white bread onto the paper. Jack made coffee and got out some plates. They said a little prayer of thanks and then concentrated on eating, in a sort of informal communion.
When the sandwiches were almost gone, Mike started talking again.
“I always thought the bishops spoke for Christ. I always thought it would be the finest thing in the world to be a bishop. But today people don’t see us as shepherds. It seems like half the people in the Church are hostile to us. Why?”
Jack looked at Mike as he shuffled around the kitchen cleaning up.
“Don’t you read the newspapers, Mike? Don’t you remember what happened here in Boston? Remember all the children who were molested by priests? Remember all the bishops who just turned a blind eye? Were they shepherds of the flock or were they wolves? Maybe that is why people are so angry.”
O’Toole was stung. “Oh, Jack,” he moaned. “That seems so unfair. The bishops were just trying to protect the Church.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” answered Jack. “They were trying to protect the Church, not the people.”
“That’s not what I meant,” protested O’Toole.
“You’re a bishop, Mike, a teacher of the Church. Why is it that the bishops pay more attention to Church documents than we do to the lived experiences of people? I was a parish priest for more than fifty years. I heard confessions, and I talked to people endlessly. They were all struggling. Why can’t we first be close to them in their struggles before we wag our fingers at them?
“What do all our reams of documents have to say to their struggles?
“We have no encouragement to offer to the battered wife who finally picks herself up and leaves her alcoholic husband and finds a man who will respect her.
“We have nothing to say to the gay man who finally stops torturing himself about his sexuality and falls in love.
“We have nothing to say to a mother of five children who has diabetes and might die from another pregnancy. Is she wrong when she gets on the pill to save her life so her children will have a mother?
“What do we say to a gay couple that rescues a child from abuse in foster care by adopting it? Do we say thank you for that act of love?
“We have nothing to say to all these people except criticism. All we ever say is ‘Obey the rules. Tough it out.’”
O’Toole was irritated. “But we do care. We say we are sorry, but we can’t ignore the truth, the truth of the faith.”
“Is it the truth, or is it just our own point of view?” asked Jack.
“How come we are expected to put our faith in documents written by men who have never shared our struggles, but we are told to pay no attention to our own experiences?”
“Oh, Jack. You’re reducing everything to subjective nonsense.”
“No, Mike. I’m taking seriously the evidence of my eyes and ears.
“Mike, you are a good man. I know your heart. You care about people. Do you remember when you were at St. Catherine’s in Charlestown? You buried a young man who was gay. He committed suicide because he had been molested by a priest when he was fourteen or fifteen. Who was the sinner? The young man?
“You knew that the Church had sinned against him. But his so-called pastor would not bury the poor boy or even comfort the family, because from his perspective the ‘truth’ required him to condemn both homosexuality and suicide.” Jack made air quotes with his fingers.
“But you buried the poor guy and went to the man’s house to comfort the family. That is the Mike O’Toole I know, a man with a big heart.”
For the second time in a week, O’Toole was reminded of that event from his long-ago past. It was something he felt good about, even though he had disobeyed his pastor and broken the rules of the Church at that time.
“Funny, Bill Tracy reminded me of that young man last week when I called him for help investigating these deaths. He put me in touch with Brendan Condon’s son to help us out. Remember him?” asked O’Toole.
“Poor Brendan,” said Jack. “Sure, I remember him. He was a Boston fireman. He left the Church over that incident. You know fire
men stick together.”
“Yes,” said O’Toole, “certainly more than bishops and priests.”
Jack squeezed the cardinal’s hand. “There are millions of Brendans out there, Mike. They leave us because of our hardness of heart. How could we get to this place?”
O’Toole felt like he should object, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. The two friends sat looking at each other across the kitchen table, lost for a while in memories. The break in the conversation seemed like a good time to move to the living room. When they were settled in the armchairs again, the conversation started back up.
“How do we get it back?” asked Jack.
“Get what back?” said the cardinal.
“Our heart,” said the priest. “When will we stop looking over our shoulders at the past and realize there never was a perfect time in the history of the Church or the world? Jesus said that His kingdom is not of this world.
“That Vatican you work in is a fortress, Mike. Fortresses are meant to keep people out, not to engage them.
“People have a lot to offer us despite their sinfulness, you know,” continued Jack. “The Sistine Chapel is covered with sublime paintings about the mystery of God and man, which were done by a gay man who lived his life of love in secret and in shame. Bernini intended that colonnade surrounding St. Peter’s Square to be a symbol of the arms of a mother embracing the people of the world, not vise grips squeezing them.”
“Oh, Jack. Come down off your high horse. It’s not like that. There are good men working over there, just like in the parishes. We really do have people’s interests at heart, but we have to preach the truth.”
“I know there are good men over there,” said Jack. “But you bishops can’t even agree among yourselves. How can the world see your truth, if you can’t agree on it?
“Remember the bishop from Australia a few years back who said he would ordain married men, because he had no priests to serve his enormous diocese? Rome removed him. They would rather have celibacy than the Eucharist.
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