Master of Ceremonies

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Master of Ceremonies Page 9

by Donald B. Cozzens


  Martin woke from his reverie, reached to turn off his desk lamp, rubbed the back of his neck, and sat back in his swivel chair. On cue, cold confusion and restless anxiety washed over him—as it always did when his mind turned to the archbishop’s driveway.

  16

  Margaret Comiskey picked up the phone on the second ring.

  “Aunt Margaret, it’s Mark. I’d like to stop over if you don’t mind. There’s something I’d like to talk to you about. It’s kind of important.”

  A half hour later, Mark Anderlee sat at his aunt’s kitchen table with a mug of hot tea in front of him.

  “Are you all right, Mark?” Comiskey asked, fully aware this wasn’t a casual visit with his favorite aunt.

  “Pretty much.” Mark sipped his tea, sure that what he was about to say would really upset his aunt. “I know you’ve worked forever at the Catholic Center.”

  Margaret nodded, “More than thirty years.”

  “And when I was staying here a few weeks ago you mentioned you had good friends there, especially Bishop Martin.”

  “Yes, and with a number of the other secretaries.”

  Anderlee hesitated. He wasn’t really sure why he had decided to tell his aunt about what Father Gunnison had done to him when he was at Camp Carroll. She should know, he had finally concluded, the kind of people she’s been working with, the kind of people she’d given her life to.

  Margaret got up from the table.

  “It’s a little chilly. I’ll be right back”

  A minute later she returned, buttoning the sweater Mark had sent her when his unit was stationed in Germany providing security for the Air Force base in Wiesbaden. She sipped her tea, as if its warmth and the sweater would steel her for what she was about to hear.

  “Do you remember when I spent a few summers at Camp Carroll?”

  She hesitated, “Hmm…the summers after your seventh and eighth grade, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Mark nodded. “Well, one of the priests who was at the camp a lot, well…” He paused. “One of the priests sexually abused me. He took me away for a weekend and did some stuff he never should have done.” Mark’s face was knotted in pain. Or was it shame?

  “Oh Mark,” is all Margaret could say at first. She had closed her eyes and Mark could sense the pain she felt. When she opened her eyes, they were teary. Then, “I am so terribly sorry.”

  “I know, Aunt Margaret. I knew you would be.”

  “All these years, Mark. You’ve carried this with you all these years.”

  “I just felt I couldn’t tell anyone, not my folks, not you. I was embarrassed. So I just tried to forget about it. And I pretty much did. But I thought about it a lot when you wrote to me about the priests who had abused kids, priests you knew from your work.”

  Margaret reached over and put her hand on Mark’s arm. “I’m so very sorry, my dear Mark.”

  Their tea went untouched.

  Mark sat silent for a moment. “The priest who messed with me isn’t really a priest anymore. He’s an archbishop. A retired archbishop. Wilfred Gunnison.”

  Margaret Comiskey looked like she might be sick. But she didn’t look surprised, more like she was thinking and trying to stay calm. Mark thought of an expression he couldn’t quite recall. It was as if the “penny dropped” or the “dime dropped,” something like that, for his Aunt Margaret. He could see that her mind was either racing or shutting down. Some kind of emotion was building in her, the relief of understanding, the numbness of shock, the rage of betrayal—maybe all of these. She couldn’t even look at him. She sat perfectly still. After a bit, he went on.

  “I was on a night patrol, like countless others. Nothing. Quiet. No incidents whatsoever. On that patrol, like out of nowhere, I knew I had to confront him. It’s the reason I decided to return to Baltimore when I got my twenty years in and could retire. I wanted to punish him, Aunt Margaret. I wanted to hurt him. I still do.”

  “Did you, Mark?” his Aunt Margaret said finally. “Did you confront him?”

  “Yes, I went to see him. I just barged in on him one morning. He was scared, really scared. He didn’t admit to anything, but he didn’t deny it either. He’s an old man now, but I keep wondering how many other boys he messed with.” Mark had thought he would feel angry telling his aunt what happened. But it wasn’t anger he was feeling. It was, inexplicably, guilt. He felt confused, not sure where the guilt was coming from. So, he just went on with his story—his slightly edited story. “He gave me a lot of money,” Mark said vaguely. “He said it was to help me get established now that I was out of the army. I could tell he was afraid I was going to go to the papers or sue him.”

  “He would be afraid of that,” Margaret said coolly. “He would be very afraid of that. He’s got a big dinner planned to celebrate his fiftieth ordination anniversary and wouldn’t want anything to spoil that.”

  “I know,” Mark said. “I’ve read about it. In fact I know a lot about Gunnison. I know things like his confirmation schedule. I’ve actually been to two of his confirmations. I don’t know what you’d think of this, but I’ve tried to scare the you-know-what out of him. I hit him with a laser dot as he was leaving the church both times. I wanted him to live scared, like something really bad was going to happen to him.”

  Margaret seemed not to hear what Mark had just said. Suddenly she seemed even more distant, more distracted.

  “Aunt Margaret, what are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking, Mark, of what a fool I’ve been. What a terrible fool.”

  Monsignor Aidan Kempe felt his irritation mounting. The flight attendants kept addressing him as “sir.” He was traveling, as he always traveled, in a black suit and Roman collar. At least one of the attendants must have had a Catholic background. Where was the respect and deference due to Catholic clergy? As the wheels lifted off the runway of the Newark Airport, Kempe bent down to the leather carry-on bag under the seat in front of him and withdrew his breviary. He would pray vespers as the early evening sky faded into a soft purple—his favorite time of the day—before meeting the merciless darkness that awaited as they climbed above New England and Nova Scotia. Then, after his meal and a single glass of wine, he would say the rosary, a prayer that always eased his anxieties.

  An hour later Kempe inserted his ear plugs and placed the band of his eye screen over his head. He had a full day ahead of him. If he could get some sleep, it would make a huge difference. But he was not blessed with sleep this night. Kempe knew when the battle was lost, so he removed the eye screen and pictured his meeting with M and imagined how it might unfold. The conversation would be oblique, indirect, and names would never be mentioned. What might go unsaid could be as significant as what was said, perhaps more significant. He reminded himself not to ask M why he had been passed over for auxiliary bishop of Baltimore. Both he and Bryn Martin had been on the short list. That he knew from very good authority. M, he finally admitted to himself, had let him down.

  The flight attendant approached, ready to ask if he might want something to drink, but catching the sour expression on Kempe’s face moved on without a word toward the business class galley.

  Kempe’s irritation with the flight crew shifted now to M. Being passed over in favor of Bryn Martin still stung. God damn it, he was older than Martin, far more experienced and, God knows, far more loyal to the church. And now his meeting with M was to take place in the Borghese Gardens—like he was some low-level Vatican spy connecting with his undercover controller. Why hadn’t M invited him to dinner in one of his favorite restaurants? Was he wary of being seen in public with him? If he hadn’t wanted to be seen with him, he could have invited him to his apartment near the Spanish Steps for a private dinner.

  Think, man, think, he said to himself. You have always been loyal to the Brotherhood, always discreet, always generous.

  Maybe the gifts of money he had sent to M from the purple purse for his birthday, his ordination anniversary, his anniversary of episcopal ordina
tion, for Christmas were not as generous as he had thought. How could he know for sure? If the sixty thousand dollars he had forwarded to M over the years were not sufficient signs of his loyalty and support…was this small change to the leader of the Brotherhood? He repressed a sudden impulse to curse. Never before had he doubted his ability to play the ecclesiastical power game with the best of them. This sudden self-doubt was but a temptation, he told himself, and like all temptations, it must be repressed, it must be buried—like his occasional desires for the company of young, attractive priests.

  Kempe was startled back into the moment as the plane, still climbing to its cruising altitude, encountered a bit of turbulence. M must never suspect his disappointment that he was granted only the briefest of meetings with the Brotherhood’s Vatican protector, and in the Borghese Gardens of all places.

  His thoughts drifted to Gunnison and his mood mirrored the empty darkness outside the window to his left. Kempe had read somewhere that depression was but anger spread thin. Well, he was angry indeed with Wilfred Gunnison. There was the allegation from the career army man, this Anderlee fellow, and the hundred thousand dollar “gift” to keep him quiet. That made him angry. Then there was the laser dot after the confirmation at St. Bernardine’s that turned Gunnison into a bag of nerves. That made him angry. His immediate suspicion that Anderlee was behind the laser dots. That made him angry. The real possibility that the media would expose Gunnison’s past mistakes. The damn jubilee dinner. What if the man who threatened Gunnison was crazy enough to want to kill him? What if the next laser dot, at the Jubilee Mass or at the dinner, was a silent precursor to an assassin’s bullet? Might Gunnison’s membership in the Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple be revealed and the Brotherhood’s mission endangered?

  “Good evening, Reverend,” a stewardess said, handing him a menu for the in-flight dinner. I’m not a “reverend,” you idiot. I’m a Catholic priest. Kempe didn’t return her smile. Another flight attendant pushing a wine cart offered him a choice of a red or white. He chose the red.

  “Visiting the Vatican?” the attendant asked.

  No, he wanted to say, I’m being called to the Vatican so the pope can appoint me chaplain to Italy’s Communist Party. “Yes. Yes, I guess I am visiting the Vatican,” Kempe responded vaguely and with barely a hint of a smile. Yes, he was visiting the Vatican, but not as a tourist. Monsignor Aidan Kempe, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the heart and soul of the Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple, was on a mission to save the supreme center of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

  The wine soothed him a bit. Kempe tried to pray, but was still too agitated. He put his head back and closed his eyes as a familiar sense of displacement settled over him. Like Christ, he was not of this world. He was indeed a stranger to this world of indulgence and self-idolatry. The church, the church alone, was his world and his home. In this home he had found order and clarity, the beauty of ritual and chant and angelic polyphony. In this home alone he found truth and moral certainty.

  Now this household of the Savior was under attack. The list of enemies was long—secularism, materialism, relativism, rationalism, liberalism. Perhaps the most lethal enemy was within the church itself—the dissident theologians, bishops, priests, and know-it-all laity calling for renewal and reform.

  17

  Nora. It’s Bryn. Can you arrange a meeting with Ian—for the three of us?” Nora noted her brother’s directness. There was no “How are you?” or “We haven’t talked for a while.”

  “As soon as possible,” Bryn added quickly.

  At five the next afternoon, Bishop Bryn Martin, dressed in an open-necked shirt, a dark gray sport coat, and black slacks, sat down with his sister in her office at Johns Hopkins University, waiting for Ian Landers to join them. Nora left the door ajar so Ian wouldn’t have to knock. It was the first time Bryn had been in Nora’s office, but before he could let its ambience settle over him, Ian rapped twice and pushed the door fully open. Bryn stood and the two shook hands warmly. Bryn liked Ian—he liked him very much and wondered if he might be interested in his sister. He assumed so. And he assumed Nora was interested as well.

  Nora offered Bryn coffee from a ceramic pot resting on a thermal mat. She poured Ian and herself cups of tea. Smiling at Ian, Bryn said, “I’m glad we had the chance to meet at your mother’s dinner party. She’s quite a woman.”

  They had seated themselves at a small round table nestled into a corner of Nora’s office. Bryn felt he was in a scholar’s study more than the cramped, messy faculty offices he associated with professors from his years of graduate study. Two walls were covered with books from floor to ceiling. A deep red and green oriental rug added warmth to the room. In the opposite corner, on the window side of the office, a healthy ficus tree made his sister’s work space rather charming. She had their mother’s taste, he thought.

  This was Bryn’s meeting, and he wouldn’t waste anyone’s time. “Thanks for meeting with me at such short notice.” He paused, then added, “You’re both professionals, but I need to say this anyway. What I’m about to tell you needs to stay in this room.”

  Nora and Ian nodded their understanding. “Of course,” Ian said speaking for himself and Nora.

  “There is,” Bryn paused briefly, “a rather bizarre drama unfolding at the Catholic Center that I’m afraid might mushroom into something serious. Nora, I need your perspective as a psychologist and, Ian, I need to know what you think about it as a church historian. It’s a delicate matter concerning our retired archbishop, Wilfred Gunnison. Someone has been harassing him. At the conclusion of his last two confirmations, as he processed out of church, a laser dot hit him square in the chest. If these dots had been bullets, our retired archbishop would be dead.”

  Nora and Ian listened intently.

  “Gunnison claims he has no idea who could be behind the two laser hits. I’m afraid I…we…Archbishop Cullen and I…don’t believe he is telling the truth. Before he was named a bishop, there were rumors of accusations of sexual abuse made against Gunnison. Nothing ever came of them, but I am wondering if one of his alleged victims might be responsible.”

  It crossed Bryn’s mind to confide to his sister and Ian that Gunnison had come on to him when he was a young priest. He had thought of telling Nora a number of times in the past about Gunnison groping him. He decided now was not the time.

  “And,” Bryn continued, “there’s a small number of priests, a half dozen or so, who meet regularly with the archbishop.” He looked directly at Ian. “I’ve heard they refer to themselves as the Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple.”

  Ian sat up in his chair.

  “At your mother’s dinner party, didn’t you mention that you had come across a Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple that was associated with the Fideli d’ Amore?”

  “Yes I did,” Landers answered, giving his full attention to Bryn.

  Bryn went on, “Our chancellor, Aidan Kempe, is apparently a member of this brotherhood. And they have gone out of their way to keep their association secret. I can’t tell you why, but I suspect Gunnison and Kempe are connected with some influential players inside the Curia.”

  Landers raised his eyebrows as if in sudden awareness.

  “This means something to you. You’re seeing some connection here.” Bryn said.

  “It might mean something, but go on. It’s best I hear the rest of this.”

  “There’s only one more piece to add, really,” Bryn said. “Wilfred Gunnison is going to celebrate his fiftieth ordination anniversary in less than two weeks—the Saturday before Ash Wednesday—with a Mass at the Basilica and a fundraising dinner at a harbor front hotel for major contributors, close friends, and family. If someone wants to embarrass or hurt the archbishop, that would be a choice opportunity.”

  “Do you think there’s anything to the rumors?” Nora asked.

  “Yes,” Bryn said crisply, “I do. If there were allegations against Gunnison, they weren’t followed up on. If there were
formal allegations, Aidan Kempe or some other chancery pal of Gunnison’s saw to it that they were covered up. We know that that kind of thing happened a lot—especially before the Boston abuse scandals broke in 2002. But, yes, I think there was something to the rumors.”

  “It happened a lot,” Ian said echoing Bryn, “from the ninth century on. And all for the ‘good of the church.’ Once the church came to see herself as a perfect society—a divinely-protected, perfect society—she feared clerical scandal more than the plague. And the church has never been leery of doing whatever is necessary to bury her scandals.”

  “There hasn’t been anything in the media about the laser,” Nora said, “unless I’ve missed it.”

  “No there hasn’t,” Bryn confirmed. “We have a statement ready in the event it’s picked up. But so far, so good.”

  “Your archbishop must be one terrified man,” Nora said. “Even though he claims not to have a clue, I suspect he has a pretty good idea who’s behind this. Maybe a victim riled by the anniversary celebration. The stress he is under has to be enormous. This jubilee is his last hurrah, the capstone of a brilliant career. Any public figure, especially a high-ranking clergyman with a long, distinguished career at risk, is going to be coping with extraordinary pressure. The shame alone can be crippling. A man of his age is at risk for all kinds of trouble.”

  “And, if Gunnison did abuse minors, he’s been living with this fear of exposure for fifty years as a priest and bishop,” Bryn added.

  “Don’t be too sure.” Nora responded. “Sexual predators have an uncanny ability to rationalize or repress their seductions. Gunnison may have been a fairly peaceful man until these recent confirmations. What you can be sure of is that the archbishop is a man at risk.”

  She poured Ian and herself more tea. “Can I get you more coffee, Bryn?”

  He shook his head.

 

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