by Walter Ellis
But nothing stood still. Eighteen months on, he was about to start his PhD at University College, Galway. His thesis, examining the relationship between Garibaldi and Pope Pius IX during the Risorgimento, meant learning Italian, and to this end, having acquired the basics in Dublin, he had taken a three-month lease on a spacious apartment next to the Tiber. The young man’s resilience both astonished and humbled O’Malley. How he had emerged sane and well from a life so steeped in misfortune was to him nothing short of a miracle – but one in which God apparently played no part.
O’Malley prayed regularly for Liam and his father, as well as for the soul of his departed sister, who had sacrificed her own life for the sake of her son. But their blighted lives, bound together in tragedy, had made him wonder about the nature of his calling. Had he truly given up everything in order to follow Jesus? He had not ministered to the poor or the sick. Worse, he had spoken out only in private against the Holy Father’s decision to address the growing paedophile scandal not as a mortal sin but as if it were a mere misdemeanour – an embarrassment to be swept beneath the carpet. The fact of the matter was that he had made no difference in the world, and that troubled him. He had risen in the Church as a favoured son, comfortably housed, respected by the media, a confidant of popes. It was undeniable that he had always worked hard. But that had been his pleasure. As a young priest, he had left Ireland as soon as he could. His doctoral thesis, written while a graduate student in Louvain, examined the legal code of the great Byzantine Emperor Justinian against that of his future Ottoman counterpart, Suleiman the Magnificent. The resulting paper, published in several languages, was acclaimed as a model of its kind and his reward was a five-year appointment as special advisor to the Papal Nuncio in Istanbul.
Success in this demanding role led to speculation in Rome that he would be offered a professorship at the city’s Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies. To his considerable annoyance, the job went instead to a member of the Society of Missionaries of Africa, the White Fathers. An intellectual with no pastoral experience, O’Malley was told he must spend four years as spiritual director of a retreat house in Milwaukee – a move likened by colleagues to the State Department in Washington selecting a high-flyer to be consul-general in Cardiff. Yet even this apparent setback turned out to his advantage. Those who expected him to chafe against his exile in the Midwest were surprised when his next publication, Between Heaven and Earth, turned out to be a celebration of inter-faith encounters with the Lakota Indians. The book, which reached number thirty-eight in the New York Times bestsellers’ list, did not go unnoticed in high places. Its author’s return to the mainstream followed within three months of its publication. He was appointed socius, or deputy head, of the sprawling Chicago Province, where he served for three incident-packed years before being posted to Rome as vice-rector of the Irish College.
The sun streamed in through the open window in the Borgo Santo Spirito. For a moment, O’Malley felt a chill of loneliness pass through him. Then it passed. There was a knock at the door – not as polite as he might have wished. It was Father Giovanni, his private secretary.
‘Your nephew, Father General,’ he said. ‘Could I point out to you that you have a busy schedule today?’
‘You have already done so, Giovanni.’
A scowl passed over the young priest’s face as he withdrew. Behind him stood the tall, languid figure of Liam Dempsey.
O’Malley stood up and threw open his arms. ‘Liam! Come in, come in. I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.’
Dempsey beamed as he advanced across the floor to his uncle. Their embrace was more than a greeting, it was a reconnection. O’Malley did his best to hide the awkwardness he felt. He stood back, his hands still on his nephew’s shoulders. ‘You look good,’ he said.
‘I feel good.’
The Jesuit smiled, perhaps a little ambiguously, and indicated an ancient leather armchair. ‘Take the weight off your feet,’ he said.
Dempsey sat down.
‘So what’s been happening?’
‘In Rome, you mean? Or back home?’
‘Let’s start with home. Did you ever get that money you were owed?’
Dempsey had recently sold the family farm. A Swedish home furnishings company had bought it, but the size of the final payment depended on the success of a planning application aimed at transforming the land into a retail park, complete with space for a thousand cars.
‘Yes,’ said Dempsey. ‘The cheque turned up in my bank three days ago.’
‘Was it what you were expecting?’
‘Absolutely.’ Dempsey told him the amount, which made O’Malley draw in his breath.
‘Sounds like you’ll not be needing a student loan, then. But sure who could begrudge you it after all you’ve been through? What else?’
There was news of a cousin from Athenry who was getting married in the autumn. O’Malley remembered the young fellow as a gawky teenager with a gap-toothed smile. He hadn’t seen him in years. Another cousin, a computer technician, whose daughter had just received her First Communion, was about to be made redundant following a decision by his American employers to transfer production back to Seattle.
The priest registered his sympathy. He knew all about the ravages that had resulted from the recession that began in 2008. First the property market had collapsed, taking the construction industry with it, and then the banks had gone belly-up. It was hard to believe the extent of the greed, incompetence and fraud that had masqueraded as the Celtic Tiger. The recovery, aided – hindered, some said – by the EU, still had a long way to go. But he was heartened when Dempsey announced he had paid off his cousin’s car loan. That had been generous of him. ‘So what about the place itself?’ he asked. ‘Galway, I mean. It’s been a while.’
His nephew blew out his cheeks. ‘You’d hardly recognize it. Bearna’s virtually gone now. It’s become a suburb. There’s estates and apartment blocks that reach almost to the water’s edge, even if half of them are still waiting for buyers or tenants. Did you know the city population is expected to hit a hundred thousand in the next five years, a quarter of them either foreign-born or else descended from immigrants? De Valera wouldn’t know what to make of it – and he was from Puerto Rico.’
O’Malley smiled. He hadn’t been back to Galway in years.
Dempsey glanced out the window in the direction of St Peter’s. ‘You remember the talk there was when the old riverside mosque opened? Well, you should see the new place, complete with minaret. It’s part of an Islamic study centre – one of the largest in Ireland. It’s hard to take it in. When I started school, you were a foreigner if you came from anywhere east of Castlebar. Now there’s women in Merchants Road wearing burkhas, and halal butchers in all the main shopping centres. Some of the kids even speak Irish. I read somewhere that Muhammad’s now the ninthmost common boy’s name in the country.’
‘Changed times,’ O’Malley said. He had listened as patiently as he could, realizing to his shame that he had completely lost touch with his birthplace and that, so far as his family was concerned, the only one he felt close to these days was Liam. His own parents were long dead. Their house had been bought by a Lithuanian plumber and his wife. His sole remaining sibling, Eamonn, was in San Diego, married to a woman from Panama.
‘But how are you, Liam?’ he interjected, surprising himself with the peremptory tone of his voice. ‘In yourself, I mean. Tell me the truth. Don’t hold back because of’ – he ran his hands down the length of his cassock, symbol of his priestly separation from the world – ‘because of this!’
Dempsey sat back in the armchair, only his eyes registering the tension that these days was part and parcel of his life. ‘I’m grand, Uncle Declan. You can stop worrying about me. Life’s looking up. Rome is great. I’ve got this terrific apartment across the river and my Italian is coming on a treat. I’m even seeing someone – a girl, I mean. Someone I met at the Irish College bash.’
�
�Is that a fact? And who would that be – if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Her name’s Maya – Maya Studer … the daughter of Colonel Otto Studer. You’d know him, I’d imagine.’
‘The Commandant of the Swiss Guard? But that’s extraordinary.’ O’Malley looked quizzically at his nephew. ‘It’s not serious, though – is it?’
‘Not yet,’ said Dempsey. ‘A bit too early to say. But we’re having lunch today, so you never know.’
‘You never cease to surprise me. But I’m happy for you … truly.’
Dempsey nodded. He was fond of his uncle, but wary of the tradition he represented. ‘That’s enough about me, though,’ he said. ‘The real question is, who’s going to win the big election?’
O’Malley leaned back in his chair, relieved to be back on home turf. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it turns out not everyone in the Church is as relaxed about the Muslim issue as the citizens of Galway. There are even those – and I’m talking about people at the very summit of Church government – who think that the next pope’s first priority should be the instigation of open conflict with Islam.’
‘You’re kidding me. And who do they imagine is going to take that on?’
‘I wish I knew. Whoever fills the bill. There’s no shortage of bigots in the Sacred College.’
‘I suppose. But what would they be looking for?’
‘For starters, a halt to immigration; the ruthless repatriation of “illegals”; a rejection of Muslim schools; the banning of the hijab and headscarves; basically, an end to any notion of equality or parity of esteem. Whatever it takes to underline that Europe is a Christian continent.’
‘Right. Well, I’m sorry to hear it, but not surprised.’
‘What do you mean?’
Dempsey ran a hand through his hair. ‘Face it, Uncle, after football and the economy, immigration, especially Muslim immigration, is the single-biggest talking point in Europe. There’s whole swathes of our major cities that have been taken over by new arrivals from North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. We’ve had protests and counter-protests. And the legislation designed to protect us from terrorism has turned Europe into an armed camp. Not that it’s made us any safer. Only the other day there was that bomb at the Lateran Palace. Yesterday there was the business in Bologna. Muslims may feel the suspects were hard done by, but most Italians, I can tell you, are on the side of the judge.’
O’Malley shrugged. ‘Understandable, I suppose. It’d be hard not to sympathize with a man who’s been shot at just for trying to do his job.’
‘Exactly. But there’s a lot of hate out there – on both sides. The average European, having more or less given up on God, now finds himself facing growing demands from Islamists and Imams who seem to want to build a mosque in every high street and generally put the clock back four hundred years. If that’s progress, give me Karl Marx every time. The way I look at it, the history of Europe over that same period has been characterized, as much as anything, by our gradual giving up of religious obligation. No offence, but we’ve grown up. When I went to Sunday school, I couldn’t wait to get out. I’d be bored rigid. But for young Muslims, decades into the twenty-first century, Islam is everything. It’s what they live for. It’s what defines them.’
Now the priest raised a critical eyebrow. ‘You should be careful what you say, Liam. They’re not all suicide bombers. Most of them are good people, working hard to provide for their families. As to their devotion, maybe it’s the nature of the beast.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Well, you only have to contrast the clarity of the Qu’ran – inextricably linked to lifestyle and conquest – with the ad-hoc nature of Christian belief.’
Dempsey was immediately on his guard. He had no time for either side in this particular debate. The way he saw it, the two faiths were opposite sides of the same counterfeit coin. But there was an argumentative side to his nature and he couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a point. ‘What are you telling me? That the Qu’ran hasn’t changed for fifteen hundred years? You must be kidding.’
‘I’m serious,’ O’Malley replied, raising his voice against the noise of a Vespa scooter drifting up from the street below. ‘At least, not since the earliest times. Tradition has it that it was revealed to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel – Jibra’il in Arabic – who required him, over a period of twenty-two years, to learn it sura by sura, verse by verse, and to teach it to others by the same method.’
‘And I thought remembering my Catechism was hard.’
O’Malley ignored the crack. ‘Matter of fact, the word Qu’ran means “recital”. Only after Mohammad’s death in 632 were scribes recruited to take it down verbatim from the Prophet’s close companion and disciple, Zaid bin Thabit, who, like his master, had committed it to memory. Some years later, at the time of the third Caliph, Uthman bin Affan, war interrupted the process and different versions started to appear. When peace was restored, Uthman had all copies recalled and burned, to be replaced by a new, authorized version – essentially the one we have today.’
‘Not like the Bible, then,’ Dempsey said. ‘In scriptural terms, isn’t that a horse designed by a committee?’
O’Malley checked to see that the door to his office was shut. ‘If you mean it’s like a camel, they both came out of the desert and they’ve both been around a long time. But it’s a mess, no question about that. It wasn’t until the second century that St Irenaeus, a French bishop born in Anatolia, gathered the oral tradition and existing texts into a single construct.’
Dempsey could see what was coming. ‘Except that not all of his fellow scholars agreed …’
‘Too right, they didn’t. The “final” version turned out to be anything but and the process of selection continues to this day. There’s any number of books – the Gospel of Barnabas is a case in point – whose claim for inclusion in the Bible is not without foundation. Barnabas, you may recall, spent several years as right-hand man to St Paul during his missions to Asia Minor. He’s mentioned in Luke’s Gospel ahead of the Apostle. Well, according to Barnabas, not only was Judas crucified in Christ’s place, allowing Jesus to go straight to heaven, but a greater prophet, named in some translations as God’s Messenger, in others as Muhammad, would eventually emerge and bring the true faith to a waiting world.’
Dempsey sat up and stretched his shoulders. ‘So what do you think?’
O’Malley’s face gave nothing away. ‘There’s a verse in St John’s Gospel that speaks of a mysterious someone who in the future will hear the “spirit of truth” and speak what he has heard, showing us the shape of things to come. The Church has generally preferred to withhold comment on this – which is why you won’t hear it quoted from the pulpit.’
‘What’s the Muslim view?’
‘Oh, they’re all for Barnabas. No surprise there.’
‘But not the Vatican?’
‘Hardly. To Catholic theologians Barnabas offers a rope to hang fools and knaves. Never forget, Liam, the Catholic Church and Islam regard each other as inhabiting essentially the same universe. Each accuses the other of serious doctrinal error, but this doesn’t mean they don’t see aspects of the truth in each other’s beliefs. They’re like sibling rivals – they’re connected.’
‘Which brings us back to Muhammad. How do you rate him? If I remember rightly, Pope Benedict seemed to think he was steeped in violence.’
‘Oh he was, he was – even if that wasn’t quite the message His Holiness was trying to get across. But then so were many of the popes, some of whom wore armour and commanded their armies from the front. Urban II gave us the crusades. Julius II was almost welded to his warhorse. Gregory XVI suppressed insurrections in the papal states with unbelievable cruelty well into the 1840s. So if you’re talking Us and Them, it’s good to remember sometimes who “we” are and where we came from.’
‘But what about all those stories dad used to read me from the Bible when I was a kid? The miracles, the Virgin birth, the emp
ty tomb? Were half of them made up? Is there any truth to any of it?’
O’Malley could sense the mischief in his nephew’s voice. He ran a finger round the inside of his Roman collar as if trying to free himself from its constraints. ‘Truth? T.S. Eliot was right when he said, “Oh do not ask, ‘What is it?’” We like to believe that faith is supported by scholarship and scholarship by faith. But the “facts” of almost any case can be disassembled and reconstructed to fit whatever seems most important to us at the time. In the end, we believe whatever makes us feel most comfortable.’
‘Which means that you believe Christ rose again on the third day and ascended into heaven …’
‘… “And sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.” Yes, Liam, I believe that. How could I not?’
Looking at his uncle, dressed in his cassock, with a silver cross around his neck, Dempsey wondered what his father would have made of all the questioning that fuelled theology at the higher level. Theirs was a house in which the Sacred Heart of Jesus glowed in the dark from its position on top of the mantlepiece. The first thing you saw when you walked in the front door was the Child of Prague – a statue of the infant Jesus, wearing a crown and golden robes. Not divine? Not risen from the dead? Dad would be spinning in his grave just at the thought of it.
A knock at the door interrupted his musings. It was Father Giovanni, holding a clipboard. ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten, Father General,’ he said, ‘but you have a busy schedule of appointments today, including lunch with the Spanish Provincial General and a three o’clock with the dean.’ He tapped the clipboard. ‘And I’ve got at least twenty letters here awaiting your signature.’
O’Malley toyed with a paper knife. ‘Okay, Giovanni, I’ll be five minutes.’
The priest withdrew reluctantly, giving Dempsey a dirty look.
‘Don’t mind Father Giovanni,’ O’Malley said, replacing the paper knife. ‘He’s the sort of young man, increasingly common in the order, who thinks the suffix SJ should be followed by MBA.’