After the votes were burned, everyone broke for dinner.
The conclavists piled onto three buses with curtain-drawn windows and made the five-minute drive across the Vatican to the Casa Santa Marta. There was little talking even to the staff. Inside the casa, the cardinals were like monks in an abbey, only there was no abbot.
For some reason, O’Toole felt absolutely exhausted when he arrived at the dining room.
In theory, the electors are prohibited from making any deals. But men are men, and a lot of politicking took place at mealtime.
There was no assigned seating. Dinner was served on a long buffet table, to keep staff to a minimum. The meals were bland. For men accustomed to the finest food in the world, the simple fare was an incentive to get down to business.
Mike O’Toole filled his plates with pasta and salad and made his way to a table in the far corner of the room, where three other cardinals were already seated. They were all English speakers from Australia, the Philippines, and Kenya, so he felt comfortable in their presence.
The conclavists tended to sort themselves out by language. Polyglot cardinals were at a distinct advantage. They had many more potential dinner partners. Americans were often at a distinct disadvantage, because they were linguistically challenged. Americans were derisively known as the silent cardinals because of their lack of language skills.
Actually, language was only recently a problem in papal conclaves. Before the 1970s, pretty much everybody spoke Italian.
Just beyond the table where Mike O’Toole sat down, two cardinals were seated at a smaller table, locked in what seemed to be an intense debate.
The Mexican, Alejandro Mendoza, leaned forward over his plate of pasta, knife in his right hand and fork in his left. He glared across the table at a more reserved and quieter Frenchman, Cardinal Jean Louis Amiot, the Archbishop of Paris. Mendoza was visibly angry.
“The problem is Vatican II,” he said, practically shouting at Amiot in Italian.
“Nonsense,” returned Amiot. “The problem is that the reform started at Vatican II was never finished.”
“You idiot liberals,” seethed Mendoza. “The last legitimate pope was Pius XII, and the last valid council was Vatican I. All the rest is apostasy.”
“Are you saying that three thousand bishops of the Roman Catholic Church were in heresy at Vatican II?” challenged Amiot, half-amused and half-shocked.
“I’m saying that they betrayed the Church and sold out to the corruption of our age. You liberals destroyed the Church,” said Mendoza, pointing his knife menacingly at Amiot and practically spitting.
The Archbishop of Paris was not accustomed to being accused of being a liberal. Back home, Parisians thought of him as a conservative. Amiot’s usually timid openness to modern French culture passed for modernity in this dining room full of reactionaries.
The argument between Mendoza and Amiot was beginning to attract the attention of the other cardinal electors. It was getting loud.
“You idiot reformers. You ruined everything. Before that fat man, John XXIII, sat his ass on the Throne of Peter, the Church was just fine. The seminaries were full. The nuns were obedient. Women knew their place. There was no talk of divorce. It was illegal in most Catholic countries, which does not include France.” Mendoza was landing as many rhetorical blows as he could.
“And all this nonsense talk about religious liberty—that’s the fault of you French and your revolution. We never should have adopted that stupid declaration of religious liberty. Dignitatis Humanae indeed. How can we say that people should be free to choose their own religion? People should only be free to choose the truth. The truth, I tell you!” Mendoza was red faced. It seemed he had delivered this diatribe before.
Energized by the attack, Amiot was not backing down.
“You Latins. What would you like? Another inquisition?” he shouted back. “You want to go back in time to your childhood. You want the Church to go back to 1955 and your beloved Pius XII. Well, you can’t!
“It doesn’t matter if you get every priest in the world to wear a cassock, you can’t take the Church back to 1955. We don’t live there anymore. Even if we had not changed, the world has changed. People won’t listen to our arrogant breast-beating about the ‘truth.’”
Mendoza countered, “If we were confident of our faith again, we could get people to listen to us. Your friends sold us out to the world. You whine about wanting to be relevant to the age. Relevant? You pushed relevancy so far, we became irrelevant!”
Everyone in the room put down their forks and focused on the dueling Mexican and Frenchman. It was a show worth watching.
“You French are a bunch of airheads. Tell me, why is it that every French priest has written a book on spirituality and nobody in France goes to church? Why should anybody bother to listen to your relevant Church?” Mendoza’s tone was openly mocking. “You have nothing to say to the world, and the world does not care to have an echo of itself.”
Amiot stood up and threw down his napkin as if challenging Mendoza.
“Mon Dieu, apologize!” said the Frenchman, more in a hiss than a shout.
“You Latins, with your Opus Dei and your Soldados de Cristo, you won’t be content until you bring back the auto-da-fé, the rack, and the thumbscrew! You want the burning of heretics? Maybe we should burn a few liberal nuns and moral theologians, just like we did Bruno! Is that what you want? Another bonfire in Campo de Fiori?”
Everybody in the room was openmouthed by now. They would not have been the least bit surprised if either cardinal had pulled a pistol out of his cassock. These tensions simmer beneath the surface of every Church gathering, but they seldom come out so dramatically.
Amiot was not done. “The problem with Vatican II was that we didn’t go far enough. People today are not children. They read books. They know science. They have thoughts. We can’t just pat them on the head and tell them what to think and what to do.
“People today engage with other religions and cultures. We have more practicing Muslims in France than Catholics. Your fifteenth-century world is gone forever, Alejandro. There is no going back. Women work today. They are educated. They don’t need men telling them what to do. They don’t need marriage to survive.
“You talk about France and change, what about your precious Mexico? The Mexicans invented birth control, and they certainly have embraced it. Mexico City legalized gay marriage long before we French made it legal. Change has already come to Mexico, and you don’t see it. We lose ten thousand Catholics a day to evangelical churches in Latin America, and your Soldados do nothing but cultivate rich widows. So, where was your witness to the Catholic faith? Merde.”
O’Toole felt dizzy as he listened.
“Let me tell you something, Alejandro. Sure we made some mistakes at Vatican II. But the Church does not exist in a hermetically sealed bubble. We have to change, and we always have, even though we don’t admit it.
“Once we condemned Galileo. Then, four hundred years later, we said we were sorry. Believe it or not, sometimes the Church is just wrong. We’ve changed on a lot of things. Once we practiced capital punishment; now we oppose it. Once we participated in the slave trade in the Americas; now we condemn it. Once we said usury was a mortal sin; now we have priests who are bankers. Once we turned Jews over to the torturers; now we call them elder brothers. We were wrong. We had to change.” Amiot was waving his arms now, practically swinging at Mendoza.
“But you conservatives are so convinced that you are always right. Your certitude makes you cruel. Maybe it is your certainty that you possess the absolute truth that makes you so cruel.”
Then the Archbishop of Paris got personal. “You conservatives are a bunch of frauds. Look at your order, the Soldados—so conservative! You condemn everyone else as a sinner. But you were started by a pedophile philanderer and a thief. How many children did your founder sire? How many boys did he take to his bed? Remove the beam from your own eye before you try to pluck
the splinter from your neighbor’s eye.”
Amiot was intoxicated with his fury. There was no restraining him now, though he would regret his outburst in the morning.
He continued. “You condemn homosexuals—’intrinsically disordered,’ you call them. But your order is absolutely full of …” Amiot stammered for a moment. “How do they say it in English? Closet queens.” He was actually spitting his words out.
“You are toujours gai. You make the Church stink with hypocrisy. Clean out your own house before you point fingers at mine!”
Mendoza looked stunned at this onslaught. Amiot pressed his advantage. “What do you have to say to the modern world? Women back to your kitchen! Gays back to your closet! Nuns back to your cloister! Muslims back to Arabia! Blacks back to Africa! Protestants, off with your heads!”
Everyone was breathless. One thing about the French that you have to admire—they have a way with words, no matter what language they are speaking.
It was all too much for Mendoza. He grabbed the water glass on the table in front of him and tossed its contents into Amiot’s face.
“I am no queen,” shrieked Mendoza in an octave that seemed to undercut his point.
Mendoza pointed his finger at the drenched Amiot and said, “We will see where this conclave takes us tomorrow. I predict your day is finished.”
With the rigid pride of a bullfighter, Mendoza straightened himself up and made for the door. His movement was impeded, however. During the debate with Amiot, the Mexican cardinal’s sash had entangled itself in the arm of his chair. Unaware that he was tethered to the chair, Mendoza pulled it along behind him as he tried to make an indignant exit. The chair bumped along for a couple of steps, until it wedged itself under the lip of one of the dining room tables. The other cardinals began to giggle at the sight of the trailing chair. Mendoza fell to the carpet.
The pratfall broke the spell of the argument. The dining room erupted in spontaneous laughter. The Cardinal Archbishop of Rio De Janeiro laughed so hard he almost choked on his tiramisu.
Cardinal Amiot stepped forward to help Mendoza up, but the bullfighter in the fallen cardinal asserted itself. He was too proud to accept assistance from his opponent. He took a swing at the Frenchman instead. Once back on his feet, Mendoza extricated his sash from the arm of the offending chair and made a rapid exit.
Dinner was over.
O’Toole felt like he was in a bar back in Southie. His first thought was “I have to tell Jack.” He went straight up to McClendon’s room on the top floor of the casa, where the confessors and support staff were lodged. Mike knew he could find a drink there. Jack had doubtless smuggled a bottle of vodka into the casa.
“Jack,” he said when the old man opened the door, “you’ll never believe what just happened at dinner. It was a real fight: Amiot from Paris and Mendoza, the Soldado. They really went at it. It was almost like being in a schoolyard.” O’Toole looked around. “You have a drink here?” he asked.
“In the bathroom,” said Jack. “There is ice in the trash bag. You won’t believe how hard it was to find ice in this place.”
O’Toole poured himself a vodka and came back into Jack’s bedroom. They each took a seat in the armchairs near the window.
O’Toole was emotionally exhausted.
“I don’t know, Jack. The wheels seem to be coming off the Church. Two cardinals practically got into a fistfight over the direction we are taking. You know, the usual stuff. Mendoza wants to roll back Vatican II. Amiot thinks Mendoza is a fraud and a hypocrite. It seems like we’re heading for a schism rather than a renewal.”
Jack could see that his friend and protégé was really hurting. “Mike, maybe the schism already exists. We haven’t agreed for years now. Maybe it has to come out in the open.”
“Well, I can’t see how two cardinals practically duking it out in the dining room helps anything.”
“A false agreement doesn’t help anything either,” said Jack. “It is only a façade of unity, not real communion.”
O’Toole leaned toward his old friend and confessor. “Can we treat this like a confession?” he asked.
“It’s under the seal,” answered Jack, making the sign of the cross in blessing. “That’s why I’m here.”
For a moment he felt just like little Mike O’Toole, the idealistic college kid going to friendly old Father McClendon for confession during his summer vacation.
“Father, I think I have been a fraud and hypocrite, just like Amiot accused Mendoza. I have been ambitious. Many times I have remained silent for the sake of my career. It was my pride. I wanted to hold high office, but I did nothing once I got a red hat. I just took care of myself.”
Jack wanted to be soothing to his old friend. “Did you do what you thought was right?”
“No, that’s just it. I did what I knew was wrong sometimes. I did only what I thought I needed to do to advance in the Church.”
“What for?” asked Jack.
“Nothing, just to climb up the tree.” Cardinal O’Toole chuckled to himself. “One of the missionary bishops told me they have a saying: ‘The higher the monkey climbs, the more ass he shows.’”
They both laughed.
“Do you think your ass is showing?” asked McClendon.
“Sometimes,” said O’Toole. “None of this stuff has anything to do with preaching the gospel. Look at me. I’m investigating cardinals who might be killing cardinals. That bright boy from Charlestown, Nate Condon, gave us a report that would curl your hair. We have cardinals who are pedophiles. We have cardinals who launder money for the mob. We have cardinals who get assassinated because they oppose the Soldados de Cristo.” He paused and took a sip of his vodka.
Crepi and Salazar came to his mind as he continued. “I knew years ago that Crepi was a scoundrel. I let him go on stealing. I suspected Salazar was on the take from the drug cartels, and I knew that he had a love for young boys. I never did anything, though. I just let the rot spread. And what about me? All I did was keep the whole engine going. I worshiped the Church, not God.”
“Silence in the face of evil is a sin,” said Jack, affirming O’Toole’s confession. “Sometimes our sins of omission are more damaging than our sins of commission.”
O’Toole nodded. After a pause he resumed his confession.
“Look, Jack, I’ve sent a lot of money to African bishops. I know full well that the only reason the African bishops go along with celibacy is because they need money from Rome. I know, and they know, that few of their priests are actually celibate. They have wives and mistresses on the side. But we all just go along, pretending.”
“Not everyone,” interjected Jack.
“Well, no, not everyone, but practically everyone,” answered Mike. “The whole thing is like a giant mutual fraud. We pretend to believe what we are saying. They pretend to accept our preaching. We know they don’t pay much attention to us, and they know that we don’t really care, so long as they keep up appearances. The Church just keeps on going. Nobody is really listening to us on things like birth control. Look at the Italians. They have the lowest birth rate in the world.
“We don’t really believe what we are saying ourselves. They go along with us, because they just like being in church on Sunday morning. It gives them a feeling of belonging. They like singing, I guess.”
“I guess,” said Jack. “Or maybe they don’t have anywhere else to go for spiritual nourishment.”
There was a long pause. O’Toole took another sip of vodka. Confession is easier with a vodka, he thought. Then he continued.
“Why didn’t I say the obvious, years ago? When I was in the parish back home, I talked to a woman who had six kids and an alcoholic husband. They had no food in the fridge. I told her to go home to her husband and be obedient to the bastard. ‘It’s your duty,’ I told her. She couldn’t use birth control, because we said so. Sex was supposed to be total self-giving, we told her. What nonsense! There was no self-giving in that alcoholic husband of he
rs, only taking. A few weeks later I prayed over her in the morgue.” O’Toole covered his face with his hands. Jack reached forward and put his hand on Mike’s shoulder.
“I sent a few women back to their alcoholic husbands,” continued the cardinal. “I loaded them up with guilt. I should have told them to pack up the car and get the hell out.
“Even in confession I toed the company line, even when it destroyed people. You know that gay boy I did the funeral for back in Charlestown? You remember that, Jack?”
Jack nodded sadly.
“He was a good kid. But let me tell you something else. I did the funeral, not because I was a good priest, but because I felt guilty. I felt guilty, because I was hiding my own secrets. I knew that boy was gay, because I had seen him out at a bar in Boston. I was there in the bar. I don’t really know why I was there. I was out with some friends for the evening, and out of curiosity we went to this bar. That’s where I saw him. I don’t know if he saw me or not. At least that kid was honest about himself. I was the fraud, Jack. I was the fraud.”
“You weren’t a fraud,” said Jack. “You are just an ordinary human being.”
“I don’t even know what my sexuality is,” said O’Toole. “Sad to be sixty-five years old and not even know what your sexuality is.”
There were tears running down Mike O’Toole’s face. He seemed like a teenager again—vulnerable, teachable. There was silence for a long time as both men realized that this was the most honest moment of a fifty-year friendship.
Jack broke the silence. “We did what we were told. We trusted the ones who told us. That does not excuse us, but it helps explain us.”
Then Jack added, “We were obedient sons to Holy Mother the Church. We always want to support our mother, even when we know she is wrong. She’s your mother, after all. You never want to admit that she drinks or fools around, so you paper over the problems and put a good face on the family. But in the long run, it would be better if you admitted that mom was a drunk and got her help.”
Strange Gods Page 33