by J.F. Powers
“That’s right.”
Father Urban was pleased with the change in Johnny. In defense of the curate’s past—St Monica’s was his first assignment—it could be said that he’d been following his pastor’s example, by shirking his obligations, and that of a great many saints, by haunting the church. Father Urban, however, by the power of his example, and, of course, by God’s grace, had caused Johnny to question not the lives of the saints but his own life as a parish priest. If Johnny didn’t say that Father Urban had done this, Johnny’s actions did. Johnny only said he’d been suffering greatly from aridity in his spiritual life—“For months now, I’ve been lost in the desert, the Sahara, I think”—and perhaps the change in him would have come about anyway, in time. Johnny, a big, strong young fellow whose father owned a creamery, had good stuff in him. It just hadn’t been coming out.
Casual conversation in the upper room told Father Urban more perhaps than Johnny meant to tell him, more perhaps than Johnny knew. It became pretty clear to Father Urban that Johnny, in his last two years in seminary, had fallen into the clutches of Manichees on the faculty. Unlike them, he had been bold. In fact, he had got so far out of line in his final year—giving up smoking and so on—that he’d come within an ace of not being ordained. For about three years, you might say, Johnny had been in a coma. Johnny had been all right before. In high school, he had been voted all-state in hockey.
Father Urban had learned this from Dave, the crippled janitor, who said that Johnny’s bodychecking had been something to see and hear, and that Johnny’s slapshot, not easy to demonstrate with a pushbroom, had been absolutely professional—that good. It was Dave’s opinion that Johnny might have made the grade as a pro if he’d put his mind to it, and Dave’s regret that he hadn’t.
“How about it?” inquired Father Urban. Johnny, somewhat surprised by Father Urban’s interest in hockey, said it wasn’t only his ability to mix it up but his lack of foot that had caused his coach, a Canadian, to use him as a defenseman. “I never could’ve made it in the big time.”
This checked perfectly with Father Urban’s estimate of Johnny’s character. Hockey was one sport Father Urban hadn’t played in his youth—there just wasn’t the ice for it in Illinois—but he’d often thought, as he watched NHL games, that, had he played hockey, he would have been used at wing or center. That was the difference between Johnny and him. No, Johnny was no Father Urban, and never would be, but he was doing better now than he’d ever done before as a priest. Father Urban, both amused and gratified to hear himself being imitated on the telephone, couldn’t have asked for a better assistant. If Phil wanted to know what had happened to the boy in his absence, Father Urban would tell him the truth, in which there might be something for Phil himself: “Hell, I don’t know, Phil. Maybe he decided to join the human race.”
Father Urban was familiar with the classic view of the parish as a natural unit of society, second in importance only to the family, but he had seldom found this view held by clergy and laity in the same parish. If the pastor tried to get his people to think of themselves not as Jaycees or trade unionists, not as Republicans or Democrats, but primarily as parishioners, the chances were they’d resist him, and Father Urban didn’t really blame them. Such a thesis made small appeal to any-body who’d arrived at a greater, or clearer, station in life than that commonly designated by the term parishioner—and who hadn’t? If, on the other hand, the people tried to raise the status of parishioners, the chances were their pastor would resist them—and wisely—for wherever you found people trying to make a lot of their parishionership, you’d find agitators at work. Invariably they were the products of higher Catholic education, or converts, whose real object was to assume unto themselves all but the strictly sacerdotal activity and to see that this was in accord with their understanding of it and the latest word from Rome. They’d had a field day under Pius XII.
Who now looked to the parish in the old way? A few foreign-language groups in cities and on the land—a few people cut off from society. Oh yes, Father Urban kept hearing about ideal parishes (for some reason, he’d never been asked to work one) where the entire congregation chanted from missals and where everything was “liturgical” down to the blessing of foodstuff and the churching of women. Much time and trouble went into training ordinary people to perform in church. The more Father Urban heard of these ideal parishes, the more they smacked of Oberammergau to him. Somewhere in between, between that and what St Monica’s had been like when Phil was there, would be found the ideal parish, Father Urban believed. The most successful parishes were those where more was going on than met the eye, where, behind the scenes, a gifted pastor or assistant pulled the strings. God, it seemed, ran those parishes, which was as it should be. Wherever parishionership became a full-time occupation, whether it consisted in liturgical practices or selling chances on a new car, the wrong people took over. At St Monica’s, though, parishioners had been left too much to themselves.
Father Urban wanted to set up a serious program—talks by himself and others (if others worth hearing could be found), classes in the papal encyclicals, the Great Catholic Books, and so on—but there just wasn’t the time for it, and perhaps more than time would’ve been lacking at St Monica’s for such a program.
So Father Urban played it safe and engaged the people on their own ground. He gave card parties for “seniors.” He put on barn or square dancing (as they preferred to call it) for “young marrieds.” He tried a rock-and-roll dance for “teens”—once. No trouble, no, but he found he didn’t care for it when he saw what it was like. Sleigh rides and skating parties, these presided over by Johnny, were better. For the children of the parish, and their mothers, there were all-cartoon programs in the best movie house in town. For Men’s Club, he sent away for films of Notre Dame football games, and these were studied at smoker sessions. For Altar and Rosary Society, nothing special, but there was always the possibility that he’d pop in and say a few words. The school nuns were not forgotten. He gave them the use of his (Phil’s) car, permission to shop at supermarkets, and occasionally he threw the boss a ten-dollar bill—“Buy yourself some cigars, Sister.” They all loved him. And he addressed the Home and School Association, the local equivalent of the P.T.A., something Phil had never thought, or cared, to do, and a number of fathers and mothers told him that he’d given them new hope.
Father Urban’s object in all this was simply to pump a little life into the parish, without being pretentious about it. He discouraged the notion that church-sponsored recreation is necessarily a means to sanctification—an error into which gambling parishes were forever falling. He said he hoped to see more people at the communion rail oftener, but he also said that nobody should feel that this was expected because of his or her perfect attendance at social affairs. He had to watch it, though, in and out of the parish. The Cathedral curates (Monsignor Renton called them Cox and Box) wangled an invitation to the Saturday-morning theater parties for the children of their parish, and then urged that short subjects of a religious nature be dropped into the all-cartoon programs. Father Urban rejected the proposal, saying it wouldn’t be fair to the kids or to the exhibitor, a Jew, who was already taking a loss on the deal.
Just as parish life quickened under Father Urban’s touch, so did life in the town. At noontime luncheons, at wedding breakfasts, at funeral parlors, wherever and whenever people gathered, in joy or sorrow, there was Father Urban. At least he’d put in an appearance. “Look at the clock!” Off he’d go, and be late at the next stop. “And the worst of it is, I can’t stay!” “OHHHH!” So he’d relent and say a few words. And then off to the hospital, to the county jail, or back to the rectory for a little talk with an erring soul, who might or might not show up. Yes, there were disappointments, a few anyway, for Father Urban was working with people, after all. Very few disappointments, actually. Yes, he received an anonymous letter with the curt message, “Drop Dead,” and, yes, a woman was offended when he laughed at the idea o
f serving coffee—cappuccino, she said—after the last Mass on Sunday, and, yes, alas, he heard that Cox and Box, doubtless smarting from their setback at his hands, were referring to the current regime at St Monica’s as one of bread and circuses.
“Wait’ll Lent starts,” he said one evening to parishioners thronging about him after a card party. “All this’ll have to stop.”
“Will you still be here, Father?”
“No, I’m afraid not, Charlie.”
“OHHHH!”
“That’ll be the hardest part about Lent for a lot of us,” said a woman—and that woman was Sylvia Bean.
In the past weeks, Father Urban had occasionally caught sight of Sylvia in the congregation at Mass on Sundays and at card parties, but he had stayed away from her, thinking he was avoiding trouble. In his first week at St Monica’s he’d called at her house in the course of census-taking, and she’d begged him to book the Shrapnel Brothers, the editor and the publisher of the Drover, into the parish. (They put on Lincoln-Douglas style debates, one brother getting to take the “conservative” position and the other having to take the “liberal” position, this determined by the toss of a coin, and the audience was left to judge the winner.) Sylvia Bean had offered to underwrite the cost of bringing the act to the parish. No, thanks, Father Urban had said after first asking what the Shrapnels charged for a performance, which in a professional way interested him, but Sylvia had persisted, and finally he’d said, “Over my dead body, Mrs Bean.” After that, she’d made him feel as she had when he dined with her and Ray in the Greenwich Village Room—that she was finished with him. Evidently he’d been wrong. That’ll be the hardest part about Lent for a lot of us. This, considering the source, was perhaps the strongest testimonial to the kind of job Father Urban was doing at St Monica’s.
Actually, everything would stop before Lent, for Father Urban was to top off his stay by preaching a mission. This, however, was moved back a week, after Monsignor Renton called from Florida to say that he and Phil were thinking of returning to Minnesota by the way of the Bahamas.
“You’re not waiting for warm weather, I hope,” said Father Urban.
“Has it been cold up there?” inquired Monsignor Renton—as if he hadn’t been reading the papers and subtracting eight or ten degrees from the Minneapolis readings to arrive at the temperatures in Great Plains.
“How’s Phil, Monsignor?”
“About the same.”
This could mean that Phil hadn’t yet been talked out of building a new church. “Is Phil there now? I’d like to say hello to him, if he is.”
“No, as a matter of fact, he isn’t.”
Phil could be in the next room, though, within easy hailing distance. This seemed more than just a possibility to Father Urban. “Did you call Father Udovic about this, Monsignor?” he asked, knowing that it irked Monsignor Renton to have to call Father Udovic about anything, and that he preferred not to hear the man’s name.
“I called the Chancery.”
“And Cox and Box?”
“It won’t hurt if they think I’m coming back earlier.”
“Well, O.K. then, as far as I’m concerned. But if I hear from Father Wilfrid to the contrary, I’ll call you back—collect. By the way, where are you staying now?”
“We’re checking out now. So long.”
Father Urban phoned the Hill. “I’ll be back in time for Lent, of course,” he told Wilf, who, however, seemed totally uninterested in the subject of his return. “Anything new?”
The brochure had gone to the Novitiate, Wilf said, but not to the printer. “Maybe it’s just as well. Maybe we should shoot for Holy Week, or late spring—or early summer. Lucky we don’t have retreatants here now.”
“The cold, you mean?”
“Weatherwise, it’s much like last year.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” said Father Urban, though what the weather had been like there—or anywhere—he didn’t know. “But otherwise?”
“Trouble in Parlor A. That north wall. We can’t get a bond.”
“A bond?”
“Paint won’t dry. Wall’s too cold, and you put heat in that room, and the wall sweats. It’s the roof. It’s coming down through the wall.”
“The roof?”
“Moisture. Melt and freeze. Melt and freeze. That’s where your roof goes.”
“Suppose it does, yes. Well . . .”
“Suppose it’s nice and warm where you are.”
“It gets pretty chilly here sometimes,” said Father Urban. This, though untrue, seemed the decent thing to say.
“You’re on a hill, don’t forget. You’re getting the same wind we are.”
“I didn’t think of that.” Father Urban, not wishing it to be thought that he’d forgotten them, inquired after the less fortunate ones at home, asked that they be given his best, and then he said good-bye to Wilf.
Later that week Father Urban arranged for Johnny to drive Jack over for the opening night of the mission (not to preach, of course). It was nice for Jack, just being there, away from Wilf and the Hill for a few hours, and he made a third for benediction. Nobody preached on opening night, Johnny announcing that Father Urban begged the people to pray for the success of the mission, since their prayers were much more powerful than any words of his, after which came the rosary led by Jack, who had trouble with the mike, and then benediction by Father Urban wearing a cope by Blaise of Bruges. Attendance was excellent. Even though Father Urban hadn’t been heard on the first night, attendance was better on the second. Thereafter, and this was the mark of a mission preached by Father Urban, it got better and better. On Friday night, closing night, there was standing room only in the church. This on a night when the stores stayed open until nine! Jack was on hand again, and somebody in Men’s Club had considered it advisable to bring in a tape recorder. The last night of the most successful mission anybody could remember began with the rosary (Johnny), was followed by benediction (Jack), and closed with Father Urban preaching his heart out.
“Each soul, then, a little world of its own, with its peaks and valleys, its prairies, rivers and lakes, and sometimes, yes, alas, its dismal swamps, its lightless deeps. Special, unique, known only to God, for better or worse. Only God knows the true nature of the spiritual universe that is this parish, of the little world that is your soul. God alone, the Great Cartographer, could draw it down to the tiniest detail. And if He did, and perhaps He does, what would we see, you and I? A world where God would care to dwell? Or a world too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry? Next to God, we are the best judges of that, you and I. Yes, for you cannot know my soul, and I, though skilled in this and skilled in nothing else, can only guess at yours. But as a priest, as one of God’s poor surveyors, I beg you keep your rivers and lakes unpolluted. If swamps there be, drain them, for God’s sake and yours, and do not wait. Where swamps were before, let there be gardens and orchards. Gardens and orchards and parks! How does your garden grow? With the silverbells and cockleshells of faith, hope, and charity? Rid your gardens of the ragweed of covetousness, the dandelions of pride, the crabgrass of indifference! And clear your orchards of the rusty tin cans and broken glass of avarice, the old rubber tires of self-indulgence! If necessary, plow up your gardens and orchards! Plant your gardens and orchards with the good seed and the green saplings of pious works, attendance at Holy Mass, regular confession, frequent reception of the Sacrament of Sacraments! Do these things, and leave the rest to God! Do these things, and the warm sun of God’s merciful love will shine upon you and yours! Do these things, and the gentle rain of God’s loving mercy will fall upon you and yours! Now and for all time! Now! Forever! If!”
Forty-five minutes earlier, Father Urban had begun with those three little words, treating them, he said, as an etymologist might—“Now don’t let that scare you, it only means wordsmith”—and, having made no great demands on the three little words then, he’d left them, had entirely forgotten them, so it must have seemed to the congregation, but he
hadn’t. In the end, he’d come back to them, and those three little words, two shouted and one whispered, had gone off like fireworks, like two bombs and a pinwheel. And thus another mission had ended—almost.
Still in the pulpit, Father Urban, eloquent in silence, stared out over the heads of the congregation and saw what nobody else in the old church could see so well, the clock on the choir loft, which said eight-forty. Making the sign of the cross, which rippled through the congregation, he turned and, for a moment, was invisible to the people. When he next appeared to them, he was down on their level, leaving the pulpit, walking, kneeling before them—for this purpose a prie-dieu had been placed in a central position in the sanctuary. After an interval noticeably longer than on previous nights, he rose, genuflected before the main altar, and, head down, made his way slowly to the sacristy. Then, when he was again invisible to them, and only then, did the people begin to stir in the pews.
The mission had ended. Many, however, had risen not to leave but to kneel and pray, Father Urban knew, and were now impeding the progress of others trying to leave and putting them in a bad light for trying to do so. This was the one thing about his missions (and there was always much more of it on closing nights) that troubled him. Why should the very first fruits of his week’s sowing be confusion, self-righteousness, and animosity in the pews?
Katie had called during dinner to say that Mrs Thwaites wished to see him as soon as possible, and so, when he’d got out of his surplice and cassock, and Jack had got out of his, they drove out to Lake Lucille. When they arrived at the house, Father Urban suggested that Jack remain in the car. “I don’t know what’s on her mind, and you’ll be warmer here with the heater on. You can listen to the radio while I’m gone.”
In Mrs Thwaites’s room, the TV sets were off, the lights were on, and Dickie, Mrs Thwaites’s son, was present. Father Urban sensed that Dickie, whom he’d met on another occasion, was to be the subject of the conversation—and hoped he wasn’t thinking of going into the Clementines. Dickie, who had been in and out of too many orders already, according to Monsignor Renton, was now running a book and church-goods store over in Ostergothenburg, an establishment called the Eight Seasons. When Father Urban had asked why it was called that, Dickie had replied, “Why, because of the eight seasons, of course.” “What eight seasons?” “Why, the eight seasons of the church year, of course.” Father Urban hadn’t cared for that, not a-tall, but even without that, he wouldn’t have cared for Dickie. The boy, as his mother fondly referred to him, was forty-six, fat in the middle and soft all over, with a bottlenose (from his father, to judge by photographs in Mrs Thwaites’s room), and lots of hair (this from his mother) swept up in a gray mane that might have looked all right on the conductor of a symphony orchestra. No, Father Urban just couldn’t see Dickie Thwaites, with his record and his hair, even as a Clementine brother, and so he was alarmed when he heard Mrs Thwaites say: