Continued silence.
“Jimmy, you still there?”
“I’m here,” Ingram spoke finally. “Did you—did you really just compare molestation to a bee sting?”
“Don’t be obtuse, Jimmy. That’s not what I was saying and you know it.”
“Inappropriate, Owen. Still wildly inappropriate.”
“You see what I’m getting at, right?”
“Your metaphors, Owen, are—and have always been—abominable.”
The day before, even a few hours before, this comment would have prompted a laugh or some good-natured verbal sparring like they’d done since their days growing up in Kingsbridge. But this time there was an edge to Ingram’s voice. Owen couldn’t quite read him.
Ingram piped up again. “So you didn’t find out about Hartnett until March of that year, and then you got rid of him?”
“Of course—we couldn’t have him working with children.”
“Where did you send him, Owen?”
“You mean where did he go?”
“Yes—did you send him to treatment?”
Owen refrained from answering. He knew he had to handle this one carefully.
“I recommended he be placed in treatment,” he began slowly. “But once he was removed from Claremont, it was really up to his new superior to decide.” More silence greeted him.
Finally Ingram spoke. “So that’s a no, then. You didn’t send him to treatment.”
“Not directly, no.” Every inch of Owen was tense, every muscle flexed in a subconscious attempt to control the direction of the conversation.
“And you didn’t feel the need to follow up on it? To give his new superiors a call to make sure they’d sent him?”
Owen stifled an exasperated sigh. He should have seen that one coming.
“Look, Jimmy—do you know how many priests I’m responsible for at any given time? Dozens. Too much to manage. And I know if there’s one, there are probably more. But what am I supposed to do? Drop everything to pursue one guy to the ends of the earth?”
“You don’t have to pursue him to the end of the earth, Owen. You just have to pursue him somewhere away from children. And maybe even try to help cure him.”
Owen pushed back from his desk in irritation. The wheels of his chair slid across the plastic base under his desk, stopping abruptly where the carpet began and nearly pitching him onto the floor.
“Damn it, Jimmy!” The shout ricocheted off the ceiling, amplifying to the point that Owen shrank from it. “So I go after him and leave everything else to fall apart?” He took a breath and started again, speaking more softly, more gently to his old friend.
“You can’t just drop everything, Jimmy. You have to think of the whole picture, the whole community. That’s what it means to be a good shepherd in every way. You’re out on a mountain and you come upon a wolf that has killed one of the herd. You want to chase it off—you do. You want to kill it. But you have all the others to think about. And now you know there are wolves out there. Because where there’s one, there’s bound to be another, of every kind, shape, and color. So what do you do? Do you leave the rest of the flock alone? Sacrifice them for one that’s already gone? Or do you accept that you can’t save it now and focus on protecting everything else? It’s a calculation, Jimmy. Figuring out how much we can possibly control. We do the math every day. You can’t do and be all things all the time. You have to choose. Even you, Jimmy.”
He heard Ingram take a breath. For a moment he felt it—the triumph of having for once beaten his cerebral friend at his own game. But it didn’t last long.
“Jesus, Owen,” Ingram said after a long pause. His voice sounded quiet and far away. “You sacrifice yourself, then—if that’s what it takes. You look after the others and you pursue the one with a taste for blood. Every day, all at once, until it breaks you if you have to, but you do it all. Every last thing that it’s physically possible to do. Because that’s your job, Owen. That’s your responsibility. Your duty. Without it, you don’t deserve to wear a collar or call yourself a man of God.”
Owen covered his mouth. He couldn’t even summon breath, let alone words to respond. After an interminable silence, he licked his parched lips.
“Jimmy.” His voice cracked as he said the name.
“I know, Owen. I know you knew about Hartnett. I’ve got a copy of your letter to Mary Keenan right here in front of me. You know when it’s dated for? Do you remember? January fucking third, Owen.”
The profanity sounded foreign issuing from Ingram’s lips. It was so crass and harsh that Owen winced.
“You even close it with best wishes for a healthy, happy New Year. You knew he was raping kids, and you still sent him to replace me. Used me to show him around. I handed him the keys to the kingdom, set up a camping trip at the retreat center as the last thing I did before moving on. I served those kids to him on a platter, Owen, and you tricked me into doing it.”
“It wasn’t like that, Jimmy. I’m telling you, it wasn’t.”
“And I’m telling you I know, Owen. I know about this. And like you said, where there’s one, there’s others. Others you covered up for. Others you protected when you should have been protecting those kids. I’m going to find them, Owen—every last one of them—and make it right. And when I’m done? You’re going to make it right, too.”
The room started to spin. Owen reached for the desk to steady himself and take a deep breath. But by the time he recovered, it was too late.
James was already gone. Nothing but the angry whine of a disconnected phone line greeted him when he held the handset back up to his ear.
Even now, as he stared at the information James had compiled in that brown envelope, he couldn’t figure out where it all started. How James had stumbled upon Hartnett. He was hardly the first or most egregious of victimizers out there. The case in Claremont had been handled quietly. Each of the families involved accepted out-of-court settlements and agreed not to speak publicly on the subject. The abuse problems in Boston, California, even Ireland had garnered far more attention than anything that went on in the communities where William Hartnett was relocated. That James should have looked into something so minuscule by comparison remained a mystery.
But what mattered most now was that the folder was here with him. And the rest of James’s materials were sitting safely in boxes at Owen’s office, delivered obediently by Ignatius University, waiting for him to sift through them. The letters, the affidavits, the paper trails that James amassed would stay just as they were meant to remain. Far from the prying eyes of a public searching for someone to blame for what happened. His memory of James’s words, of the accusation that he didn’t deserve to wear a collar, still stung. Owen prided himself on doing exactly what was required of him, of performing his duty to protect the Church. It was what he was born to do. Even if it hadn’t come early or easily the way it had to James, Owen Feeney had known instinctually in childhood that he was destined to be in the service of God. Without the Church there was no serving Him the way he was meant to. Without the Church, there was nothing. He pondered how James could have spent so many years as a priest without recognizing how inextricably the two were linked. He could not, Owen firmly believed, be a priest in the truest sense of the word without serving the closest thing to God on earth in every possible way. When his church called, he would always answer.
With a shake of his head, he put the folder on the end table and rifled through his bag again. This time, he pulled out a binder that bore no resemblance to Ingram’s pile of ratty papers. It was sleek with tabs and foldout charts. And like many of the other documents in Owen’s life, it called on him to serve his church. He opened it and began reading. A grid labeled “Projected Impact Analysis” splashed across one page, and a bar chart followed on the next, the fingers of the data reaching skyward with labels like “Immigration,” “Abortion,” and “Homosexuality.” According to the summary and corresponding chart, a majority of Catholic voters paid a
ttention to a candidate’s stance on these issues. While it was difficult to trust hard numbers on how many of them allowed this stance to sway them in the voting booth, they had answered yes to it on a survey conducted by an independent polling company retained by Milton Casey at Arthur Wyncott’s campaign offices. Perhaps most important was the response to the last question on the survey. When asked how influential their religion was in making political decisions, well over 65 percent rated it as high on the list.
“Now again,” Casey had cautioned when he delivered the binder, “it’s not clear what aspect of Catholic religion—abortion, social justice, international relief work, even gay marriage—is having that influence. And that’s a real pain in the ass. But the point is, they’re listening. Whether they’re in the pew every Sunday or not, they’re paying attention to what religion tells them.”
Feeney shook his head. “No, Mr. Casey. They’re paying attention to what we tell them.”
It was exactly what the campaign was looking for, what they’d needed to confirm before moving forward. Now Owen could make his counteroffer. He laid it out. Exactly what the Church needed, how they wanted it done. Casey first offered to sponsor sympathetic judicial appointees. “Then we can funnel the cases to them.” Feeney wasn’t impressed. Too much left to chance. He repeated what they were looking for, this time being more specific. At the end of the description, he said, “I’ve seen some of Wyncott’s proposed legislation, Mr. Casey. If it’s possible for him to do it for Fortune 500 companies, he can do it for us.”
Casey mulled it over. “And in exchange, you’ll back our candidate?”
Owen nodded, but not without reservation. “Just so we’re clear—I can’t promise you that every person who walks in is going to cast a vote for Wyncott.”
“And I wouldn’t want you to. That would be election tampering,” he said, “and illegal.” Feeney gave him an incredulous look.
“But that said,” Feeney went on, “we can and will extol the virtues of your candidate anytime we can, and in exchange . . . Well, you know what we need.”
Casey nodded. The proposal was right in front of him, complete with a mock-up memo written on United States Conference of Catholic Bishops letterhead.
“We’ll have to pick our timing wisely,” he said. “Anything we try to rush through now, before the election, is going to be scrutinized even more than usual. It could be a risky move.”
Owen chuckled. “I try my best to avoid watching too much television, but even I know how long Wyncott’s health-care bill was. Over a thousand pages, I believe?”
“Closer to two,” Milton admitted.
“And who actually reads every last word?”
“No one—less than . . .” It dawned on him what Feeney was suggesting. In spite of himself, he broke into an enormous grin. “That’s something we can manage.” He resisted the urge to slap Owen on the back. Something about the man’s diminutive stature and the stiff way he sat in his chair, almost like he was taxidermied, made him worry the priest would break into a thousand pieces at the slightest touch. “You should’ve gone into politics.” The way Feeney smirked made Casey realize he already had.
Now in his living room, Feeney nodded at the memory and flipped the page. On the television screen, the pudgy pundit was talking about Thomas Archer and his latest tussle with church authorities over something said in a speech. Religious leaders across the board, not just in Catholicism, had exclaimed disapproval over his proposed taxation of church business transactions as though they were performed by corporations.
Archer wasn’t taking any of it. Through his spokesperson, he replied that his proposal would put money directly into the communities that helped create the profit in the first place. “I’m not sure I understand why religious authorities would have a problem with this. It’s in line with what the majority of them preach. Unless, of course, the money is supposed to be going to something else. I’d love to sit down with any of them and have them explain what they think the money should go to instead. In fact, I’d love for them explain to me where it’s all going right now.”
Archer knew how play to his audience and the paranoid pulse of American voters. Feeney had to give him that. But if Archer got elected and limited the real estate profits they originally anticipated, it was going to take forever to pay out all the claims and other liens against the Church. Preventing a win for Archer was going to save money no matter what. Getting Wyncott to push through legislation that capped the church’s civil damages offered even more. In an ideal world—and here Feeney thought of James Ingram and the parallel universe of altruism he seemed to occupy for most of his life—they would be able to ferret out the worst of the offenders on their own and implement a better system for dismissing them at the very first sign. Suits filed against the Church for abuse would eventually dwindle as more and more problematic priests were removed in an organized but discreet effort to clean house. But until then, money would keep going out the door. And his job, his duty as James had so snidely put it, was to keep that from happening. Until he was called on to do differently by his superiors, it would remain his focus.
He looked at the clock, calculating how late he’d have to stay up in order to reach Rome first thing in the morning there. What he saw on television wasn’t enough to keep him entertained that long. And the folders and papers around him held only bad memories, recrimination, and regret. He leaned back on the couch and shut his eyes. A few hours of napping would give him just enough rest to be alert for his conversation with the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The timing should be coordinated like a set of dominos. The Pope would publicly reiterate his position. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops would issue its memo. And Archer would be publicly humiliated.
CHAPTER 11
Weeks after Steve’s stunt, Ally was still seething. She arrived at the office one morning to a flurry of activity. It was now mid-April, and the hordes of tourists drawn to DC every spring by the cherry blossoms made it harder than usual to get to work. For most of her employment with Casey’s office, she’d arrived at work earlier than the others. But for the first week after the sabotage, she’d gotten to the office at her usual time to find Steve and one other person already there. The uncharacteristic rage she felt after his stunt increased tenfold with this close proximity, and her revenge fantasies ranged from juvenile (spitting on the salad he left in the refrigerator) to criminally insane (cramming him headfirst into the industrial-size shredder). Delaying her arrival twenty minutes hardly caused the collapse of the office, but it did enable her to better control her anger. That’s why she was surprised when she opened the office door to find her manager, Mark, already there. “Where the hell have you been?” he snapped.
“It’s not even eight thirty yet, Mark. I’ve been home. Eating breakfast.” Gone was the deferential employee she’d been when she started.
“I hope you were watching the news.”
“Don’t own a TV, Mark.” She walked to her desk and began unpacking her bag. “You don’t pay me enough to buy one.”
“You’re going to want to see this.” He turned up the volume on the largest of the TVs mounted on the wall. On CNN, an anchor leaned toward the camera and thanked his colleague for joining them from the scene.
“Well, Dan, this is huge news, but it’s also the first time we’ve ever seen a formal directive of this kind.” An attractive young woman with bookish glasses spoke into a microphone on location in a plaza (“Olivia Fontana Reporting Live from Rome,” the screen read). “Public reaction is difficult to predict. Churches that obey it could be in violation of the Johnson Amendment, a tax code provision barring nonprofits and churches from endorsing or opposing political candidates. And as you know, in the past the American political tradition has not taken kindly to foreign attempts to influence our government or electoral process.”
The anchor leaned forward. “But does this really qualify as a foreign attempt, Olivia?”
“That will be the question, Dan. Catholicism is the only major Christian faith in America to still have its seat of power in a foreign country. No one’s arguing that voters in America who happen to be Catholic aren’t still American, but a move like this is bound to ignite some controversy about if or how much the Vatican should be allowed to interfere.”
Ally looked to Mark in confusion. “What are they talking about?” Mark shushed her and nodded back at the screen.
“So what does this mean for Thomas Archer and Arthur Wyncott?”
Behind Olivia, a flock of pigeons rose like a dark cloud, swooping over her and muffling her voice. She covered her head with one hand and hunched down a bit, shouting into the microphone.
“It’s hard to tell at this point, Dan. President Wyncott, of course, is not Catholic, so he’s not directly impacted. For Thomas Archer, the effect could be immediate. The memo issued by the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith states very clearly that”—she lifted a sheet of paper and read from it—“a Catholic would be unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate with a permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. Catholics who don’t share this stance but vote for that candidate for other reasons are guilty of remote material cooperation.”
She lowered the paper and looked back into the camera.
“Under the terms of this memo, he’s not only saying that Thomas Archer is unworthy to receive Communion because of his pro-choice stance, he’s saying that Catholics who plan on voting for Archer, regardless of how they feel about abortion, are committing a sin and should also be denied Communion.”
“Has that happened yet?”
“Well, copies of the memo were released to the public just today, but it’s dated last Wednesday, so American bishops have had several days to digest it. It’s not clear at this point if any of the bishops have instructed parish priests to follow the edict or not. So far, there have been no reports of denying anyone Communion, but that’s not to say it won’t happen. The Eucharist is a cornerstone of Catholic faith. This memo is a direct order about a vital component of being a practicing Catholic.”
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