by John Ayang
“What was their interpretation of that?” Fr. McCarthy asked, genuinely curious.
“They had no interpretation for it,” Fr. Polanski replied. “I read my own interpretation into it. You see, what I came to learn about the Black man was that if you rub him the right way, he can be the best of friends, but if you rub him the wrong way, he is the worst of enemies because he reacts from the basis of his historical perception of the white man as an oppressor of his race. So, if your Black parishioners have reached out to you, accept their friendship. Who knows? They might be the harbingers of the healing and peace that you need.”
Fr. McCarthy sat for a while ruminating over his friend’s advice and his unconventional theology of the Black man. He didn’t know whether to believe him or dismiss his views as that of a self-flogging white man becoming too sympathetic to the Black man’s cause. But one thing was apparent: he was consoled and relieved from his previous angry frustration. He looked at his watch and stood up to call his exit.
“Feel like tennis, tomorrow evening?” Fr. Polanski asked as he escorted him to the door.
“No, I have an appointment with the Movimiento Familia Catolica group. Let’s do it some other time,” he declined. “I’ll call, though.”
As he drove back to St. Monica Church that evening, he wondered again whether he would ever put behind him the trauma of what he was going through. It seemed to be deepening as the days went by. Like Job, he felt like cursing the day he was outed in court, firmly convinced that he was functioning well when he didn’t know that he had been conceived via IVF. He thought whoever invented the saying that ‘what you don’t know cannot hurt you’, had hit the fact spot on. The evening was cool and breezy, typical of Spring nights, and since it wasn’t even 8 o’clock yet, he decided to stop by Jennifer’s apartment, hoping to leave a note if she was at work. And that was another bad idea.
Jennifer was home, in bed. Fr. McCarthy was surprised because it was unusual for Jennifer to be in bed before 8 p.m., unless she was working night shifts, during when she had to leave for work by 9 p.m., so then, and only then, would she go to bed at 6 p.m. for a two-hour nap. She came to the door after Fr. McCarthy had waited for almost a full minute since he heard her voice inside, acknowledging the doorbell. She was in her pajamas, practically dragging herself along.
“Come in,” she invited Fr. McCarthy in, sniffling.
“What’s the matter, Jenny?” he asked. “Are you alright?”
“Yes…I mean, no,” she replied, haltingly. “No, I’m not alright now. Yes, I will be when I’m fully rested.” She pointed Fr. McCarthy to a chair by her writing desk, then, noticing that he was still looking at her inquiringly, she added, “I lost a five-year-old girl this morning.”
Fr. McCarthy sat down. Under normal circumstances, he would have jokingly teased her about that by saying he didn’t know she’d had a baby, but watching Jennifer at that moment, he knew the circumstance was not normal. He just called out his sympathy.
“I am so sorry. Was she very sick?”
“She was, but she didn’t deserve to die that way,” she said with a tinge of anger in her voice. “She had acute leukemia and we were lucky to get a bone marrow donor who we thought was a match. The marrow transplant was successful, but for no apparent reason, her autoimmune system rejected the tissue. She died in my arms at 5:37 a.m. this morning. We battled for more than two hours to save her life. It’s unfair…It just seems so unfair. She was such a sweet angel, and we all loved her. It’s just not fair for children to die like that for no fault of theirs…It’s not fair!” Jennifer broke down and practically fell into Fr. McCarthy’s arms as he rose to hold and console her. She cried openly for several minutes before Fr. McCarthy could coax her back to some semblance of calmness. He implicitly agreed with her that it wasn’t fair. ‘But was life, in general, ever fair to anyone’? he thought.
“There, there,” he coaxed, rocking her from side to side. “Calm down, calm down. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t cry. You did all you could. You did everything there was to be done.”
“I know. And that’s why it isn’t fair,” Jennifer interjected, defiantly. “Why does God refuse to answer little children’s prayers? We prayed for her and with her; all the nurses in the unit, we prayed for God to spare her life. After she had the transplant, she kept expressing the hope that she would soon go home. She even said she would be a nurse when she would grow up. Why didn’t God answer her prayers?”
Fr. McCarthy swallowed hard and scrambled mentally for some consoling response, but coming up with none, he decided to remain silent. He had learned in his pastoral theology class years back that sometimes silent witnessing to suffering may heal faster than risking a bland answer that hurts even more because it’s just the usual cheap cliché. He continued holding her tight and rocking her gently from side to side for another minute. Then he started to let her go, but Jennifer grabbed him and pleaded with him to hold her a little longer.
“I am sorry to put you on the spot,” she said, seemingly calm. “I guess such questions have no answers. I know, too, she wasn’t my child but I had no idea how much I had bonded with her until she breathed her last and went limp in my arms. I was her primary nurse, you know.”
“Yeah, I can understand why it weighs so much on your spirit,” Fr. McCarthy said with deep sympathy. “But take consolation in the fact that you did all that was within your power to do for her. She is at rest and she is at peace…”
“Say that again,” Jennifer started in his arm and looked at his face as he repeated the sentence.
“She is at rest, she is at peace,” she repeated it herself, pensively, then added, “That makes sense. She had suffered for a long time. You are right, Cousin. May she rest in peace.”
“Amen,” Fr. McCarthy responded, for want of any other sensible thing to say.
“Let’s sit down, Cousin. But hold me for a few more minutes till my distressed spirit finds peace too,” Jennifer said as she led Fr. McCarthy to the sofa. They sat down and she snuggled against him very tightly so much that he could feel all the soft curves of her torso. “Did you have supper?”
No,” he replied.
“Hold me a little longer,” she pleaded, snuggling deeper into him. “I have some food I could warm up. You’d like it.” She snuggled and wriggled. Fr. McCarthy could feel her nipples hardening against his side, but she had her arms around him so tightly that he would have to practically push her to tear himself away. He had no time to figure out the best way to disentangle himself because Jennifer started kissing him on the cheek, first furtively, then, boldly. He vacillated between gently pushing her away and cooperating. He would have done the former, but Jennifer’s body was so seductively soft and deliciously warm, and the pleasure current coursing through their bodies was so overpowering that he lost all willpower to resist. He rather felt himself sweetly responding by kissing her back. Soon their lips locked and their bodies entwined each other on the sofa as they sank together, once more, into the abyss of forbidden pleasure.
As Fr. McCarthy drove back to St. Monica Church that evening, he knew that he had reached the point when he must make a critical decision. He looked at his watch and it was almost 9:45 p.m. Although he hadn’t been to spiritual direction in more than six months, he decided to do so first thing in the morning after Mass. Then instead of driving straight back to his parish, he made a detour and knocked on the rectory door of St. Leo Church. He knew that his confessor, an old Vietnamese priest in residence, was not in the habit of going to bed early. So, he decided to catch him for a quick confession since he needed to say Mass in the morning. As usual, the old priest did not show the slightest surprise or curiosity at Fr. McCarthy’s confessing to sacrilegious fornication. He just casually ‘fatigued’ him with three Our Father s, three Hail Mary s, and three Glory to the Fathers, and went back to watching his basketball game on TV. Fr. McCarthy was almost amused at the old m
an’s perfunctory style. Yet he believed in the juridical efficacy, ex opera operantis, of the sacrament.
Just as it happened after their first shared sexual experience in Venice, Fr. McCarthy did not feel guilty. On the contrary, he felt healed and peaceful interiorly after the intense orgasm he experienced with Jennifer. He could see on Jennifer’s face that she, too, was experiencing the same wholeness of spirit as they ate their supper. She was back to her usual exuberant and chatty self. Fr. McCarthy accepted, inwardly, that he went to confession only to fulfill the juridical requirement to be in a state of grace to celebrate Mass, and kept wondering whether such imperfect contrition, in fact, the lack of it, which he experienced, had nullified the sacrament. He became somewhat conflicted, and absent-mindedly drove over a flower bed in his driveway as he wheeled his vehicle toward his garage. Was he, in fact, losing it? For one, he knew that his second fall had caused any residual willpower he had for resisting Jennifer to vaporize. Secondly, the curious phenomenon of guiltless euphoria he always had after intercourse with her was anomalous. He thought such anomaly could only spell one thing, and he resolved to act accordingly, resolutely convinced that it was the right course for him to follow.
Houston, Texas
Thursday, January 24, 2013
FR. BRADY CALLAHAN finished reading Fr. McCarthy’s petition letter and looked up, heaving a sigh of defeat. For almost two weeks, he had tried to dissuade Fr. McCarthy from his decision. He had asked him to discuss his decision with his spiritual director, which he did. He had consulted with Bishop Montano and the Cardinal. The latter had asked Fr. Polanski to try and dissuade Fr. McCarthy from taking the drastic decision he was about to take, all to no avail.
Fr. Callahan sighed again, folded the letter and put it back in the envelope.
“Well, I will mail it for you first thing this afternoon,” he said, unconvincingly. “It should be there in a few days’ time.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Fr. McCarthy replied, casually. “I already sent it Tuesday morning of last week by currier service. It is probably in discussion this week.”
Fr. Callahan looked at Fr. McCarthy with incredulity and said, “You meant business, didn’t you?”
“I need to move on, Father,” Fr. McCarthy replied. “That is your copy, for the records.”
He stood up and Fr. Callahan, not knowing what else to do or say, stood up too, and escorted him to the door. He was still bereft of words as he shook Fr. McCarthy’s hand, nodding quietly as though he understood why the former took the decision he took.
“Pray for me, Father. I need all the prayers I can get now, but I think I am heading in the right direction” Fr. McCarthy said as he turned to go. He stepped into the hallway walking briskly toward the elevator.
“I will pray for you,” Fr. Callahan, finally finding his voice, called after him, feebly.
Cardinal Felice presided over the brief meeting in the conference room, after Fr. McCarthy left Fr. Callahan’s office and was gone from the Chancery. They had been in dialogue with him for more than a week, trying to prevail on him to change his mind, but to no avail. With the information from Fr. Callahan that Fr. McCarthy had already dispatched his petition by currier to the Holy See, everyone knew the die was cast. So, the meeting was not going to be about Fr. McCarthy as such, but about what message the Cardinal would send to all the parishes, and how that was going to be viewed. They surmised that conservatives would breathe relief, liberals would rile in protest, and moderates would remain ambivalently calm.
The job of the Chancery was to have an official statement for the faithful before the press fed them with dubious and wild versions of the issue.
“Good morning everyone,” the Cardinal began, somberly. “I guess it’s no longer news that Fr. Cletus Nicholas McCarthy has petitioned the Holy See for his own laicization. We had spoken with him about this for almost two weeks, and he had also been in intense discussion with his spiritual director. As it stands now, he has concluded that to be returned to the lay state of life would be good for him. It may, perhaps, be good for the Church, too, but I do not know. Only God knows. If we had prevailed on him to stay on in the priesthood, perhaps, with time, everyone would get over the fact of his IVF birth and life would go on. I do not know, however, whether he himself would be able to get over it and move on. Having believed, because of Church teaching, that IVF as a technology for human reproduction is intrinsically evil, and having convincingly taught the same for many years, to the extent of sanctioning members of his Church who used it to conceive, only to, suddenly, be proved beyond reasonable doubt that he himself was born by the same process, is enough to destroy a person psychologically.”
“Gosh! Akin to being caught in your own trap,” Bishop Montano interjected, almost under his breath.
“Yes, Marmon,” the Cardinal confirmed. “It is easy to sort things out when you contradict yourself about an object outside of yourself. It’s a different ball game, altogether, when you yourself are the walking contradiction, in person. That’s the situation that Fr. McCarthy finds himself, and it is not a very enviable situation either.”
“A sign of contradiction,” Bishop Mario Montano chipped in again, looking sagacious. “Very Christological. I wish he had considered things along those lines.”
“He talked about it with me,” Fr. Callahan said. “He said his spiritual director had offered him that angle, but his take of that was that it is easier said than done. Moreover, he dismissed that line of thinking by saying it was not becoming of him, a mere human, to contest for that title with the Lord.”
“A typical Father-McCarthy response,” the Cardinal said, with mild exasperation. “However, we need to preempt the press by getting a statement out to the parishes. Marmon, if you could handle that I would be most grateful. Just let the faithful know that due to the situation of things, Fr. McCarthy has decided to ask Rome to be returned to the lay state of life. That’s all.”
“It will be done, Your Eminence,” Bishop Montano said, looking at Sister Ellis who nodded consent and took down some notes.
Houston, Texas
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
FR. MCCARTHY HAD just finished reading through the drafts of his prepared homily and his statement of farewell to the parish for the weekend, when his cell phone rang. It was Fr. Charles Polanski. He hesitated before answering, since he suspected the reason why he called.
“Why did you go and do that for, you shelfish, shelf-centered coward?” Fr. Polanski shouted from the other end, catching Fr. McCarthy off guard with his bellicose tone and diction. “Yes, you heard me, Nick. You are one helluva shelfish coward.”
“Hold on! Hold it, Charlie! I don’t know what is going on over there but, you sound hurt,” Fr. McCarthy said.
“The hell, you know what’s goin’ on. And ya’ll know am ‘urt.”
“Charlie! Charlie, you are slurring your words,” Fr. McCarthy said, genuinely concerned. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“What the ‘ell d’ya’ll care if am a’right?” Fr. Polanski continued, practically ranting and slurring. “Ya’ll wanna know if am a’right? Yeah, am a’right. Ish yu that’s not a’right. Yu perfidiash coward.”
Fr. McCarthy had had enough to conclude that that was not a conversation he wanted to have on the phone. Fr. Polanski was in very bad shape, and he couldn’t recall any time recently when he heard him sound like that. He knew he had been drinking and was drunk. He also suspected the reason why he hit the bottle. There was nothing else he could do just then than to drive out to wrestle his friend and mentor out of the bottle before he drank himself to damage point. He arrived at the rectory at precisely 4:50 p.m. When Fr. Polanski refused to answer the doorbell, he went around to the back and entered through the garage door, which was always open. Fr. Polanski was conked out on the couch, a bottle of vodka in one hand and a glass in the other.
“Ger’ rout of me
‘ouse, I don’t register ex-priestsh in ma parish,” He slurred the words, trying unsuccessfully to lift himself from the couch and get up. “I won’t accept you in ma parish. I don wan no ex-priestsh as me p’rishioner.”
“How long have you been drinking, Charlie?” Fr. McCarthy asked, moving in to help his friend up. Fr. Polanski tried to shun his help and, still holding his bottle and glass aloft, tried to use his bottom as the only fulcrum for catapulting himself into a standing position and kept falling back into the couch. “Here, let me help you. You can’t get up if you don’t drop the bottle and glass and use your hands for leverage.”
“Don’t ‘elp me,” Fr. Polanski said, trying futilely to resist as Fr. McCarthy wrested the vodka bottle and glass from his hands. “I don need yar’elp, I say,” he yelled feebly and ineffectually. “You went and resigned ya priestshood without ma permission.”
“Sorry about that, Charlie,” Fr. McCarthy replied, trying to humor his drunk friend. “I didn’t know I needed your permission. But I had to move on. And, by the way, I told you I was going to do it.”
“And I told ‘ou, ‘No,’ givit tam,” Fr. Polanski was now in a standing position but was a bit unsteady on his feet as he rocked back and forth. “Yo see, tam ‘eals a lot. Always givit tam when sonthing happens, and it will ‘eal.” His eyes were glazed and bids of perspiration dotted his forehead and rolled down his temples in rivulets.
Fr. McCarthy looked hard at his friend and knew he had quaffed a huge quantity of vodka. He was drunk in a way he hadn’t seen him drunk before. He went and put down the vodka bottle and glass on the decanter and went back to coax Fr. Polanski to a chair.