The Shepherd's Calculus

by C. S. Farrelly

  Ally looked at the date stamp. It definitely said February 22nd. But the memo had been released in April. On the page behind the timeline, a strange footer darkened the margin. She flipped to it and recognized Bishops Conference stationery. The page was stamped “DRAFT” and predated the formal Vatican memo. It was addressed to bishops and monsignors. Referring to the Vatican memo, the letter reminded them of the Church’s teachings and directed them to take every possible opportunity to advocate voting for the presidential candidate whose position on abortion was in line with the Church’s:

  Before us we have two candidates vying for President of the United States. One stands with us in preventing sin. The other, despite his claims of devotion to our Faith, supports that which goes against our central tenet of respect for life. Voting for a candidate who endorses rights in opposition to our teachings is a sin. As Shepherds to your Flock, you must protect them from committing the sin of formal cooperation in evil. It is your duty and obligation to encourage them to vote their conscience on Election Day.

  Part of her knew what she would see next even before she looked. Scrawled across the bottom right of the page was the signature of His Excellency Bishop Owen Feeney.

  Reading the letter seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Ally leaned against the door of Casey’s office to collect herself. She moved hazily toward the copier, the packet of papers still in her hand. The clickety-clack of the machine made her eyelids heavy. Finding what Steve Tilden left on Casey’s desk was now the furthest thing from her mind. While she was unsure what her next move should be, she was certain she needed to get a second opinion. She tucked her copy of the documents into her backpack and dashed out of the office. Before the elevator had reached the ground floor, she was on the phone with Peter Merrick.

  Per his recommendation, she walked a couple of blocks away from the office to meet him. He pulled up to the curb. They drove back to Takoma Park and settled down in her apartment. She made tea while he sat at the table, reading the documents in silence. When he was done, he put the packet down.

  “Crazy, right?” she said after he sat there for several beats without saying a word.

  “I’m still trying to process it.”

  She sat down opposite him and scooted up to the table. “Did you read it the way I did?”

  Peter sighed. “You mean, do I think Casey struck a deal with Feeney to campaign for Wyncott in exchange for getting out of paying civil damages? Then yeah, I did.”

  “Or maybe Feeney struck a deal with Casey.”

  Peter nodded. She was right. It could’ve come from either side.

  “What I don’t get,” he said, “is why this is the first I’m hearing about this clause in Wyncott’s bill.”

  She shrugged. “It’s almost eight hundred pages long. People are busy focusing on whether it lets large companies and corporations off the hook or not.”

  “With net assets of close to five hundred billion dollars, hundreds of hospitals, and investment portfolios with the biggest Wall Street banks, I’d say the Catholic Church has got to qualify as one of the largest corporations in the world,” Peter countered.

  “Yeah,” she said, “but everyone’s talking about the bill in relation to Big Tobacco or companies responsible for pollution and oil spills.”

  “Maybe,” he agreed. “But it still seems strange given all the coverage about abuse cases out there and the way Archer has been scrutinizing nonprofit statutes. This would definitely have gotten negative attention. Unless . . .” He tipped his chair and balanced on its back two legs. His eyes were closed, but Ally could see his eyeballs moving back and forth behind the lids. Suddenly, they popped open and he flopped the chair back down. “Unless it wasn’t there before,” he finished.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “When did they send the bill to the hopper?”

  “The final version? This morning.”

  “And you got notice you’d secured enough votes to pass it when?”

  “Two days ago. On Monday. They tweaked it one last time to incorporate changes the holdouts wanted before they’d come on board. Then they sent it out again. They all agreed to support it and Wyncott’s legislative team put it in.”

  Peter stood up and began pacing. Daylight streamed into the apartment. Birds chirped loudly outside the windows. He scrolled through the contacts on his phone. At five in the morning it was a stretch, but he was going to try. He dialed his friend Mike Trencher, who had helped him track down Kevin Garrity’s information. He was with the Washington Post now, covering politics. The phone rang a few times before Mike picked up, clearly a little annoyed.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Merrick?” Trencher griped.

  “Amateur,” he replied. “What are you doing asleep?”

  Mike wasn’t amused. “I’m serious, Pete. Why’d you wake me up?”

  “Who’s covering Wyncott’s tort-reform bill?”

  “Not me. Now let me go back to bed.”

  “I know it’s not you. I need to see a copy of what’s been preapproved by the majority. What went out to congressional aides to drum up votes. You guys got a copy of the final version, right?”

  “You can wait ’til the vote like everyone else, Pete.”

  “I don’t like waiting. Just do me a favor—I promise you’ll thank me for it later.”

  He heard the creak of the bedsprings as Mike sat up. “Okay. Shoot.”

  “Take a look at Title II, Section 101, a.6. It’s on page 657.”

  “Why?”

  “It gives churches an out for paying high damages to victims of sexual abuse.”

  “It says that?”

  “Of course it doesn’t say that. It caps the amount that can be awarded in civil litigation. But you and I both know what that means—with statutes of limitation on criminal charges, the only recourse victims of sexual abuse have just got slashed in half. Take a look at it and tell me when you’ve seen it.” He hung up and turned to find Ally staring at him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard the words out loud. I mean, I knew that’s what this was about, but hearing it . . .” She looked wounded, so surprised.

  “Well, look.” He tried to soften the blow. “I don’t know. Maybe we’re wrong. I can’t say that for a fact. Not yet. I do know that the Catholic Church has spent the better part of the past fifty years covering for criminals and the last ten refusing to take responsibility for it.”

  “But it just seems so far-fetched, doesn’t it?” she said. He thought back to when he was her age and wondered if he’d ever possessed her brand of naïve optimism. He didn’t honestly know. “Like I’m turning into a conspiracy theorist with all this stuff. Would they really do this? It’s just money, right?” she asked.

  He stopped pacing and turned to her. “You know priests used to marry all the time, right?” She nodded.

  “I mean, celibacy was always preferred, but they never really blocked priests from marrying before. Do you know when that changed?”

  “Not really,” she said. “The Middle Ages sometime, maybe?”

  He nodded. “That’s right. Gregory VII issued an encyclical on it in 1074. Then the Second Lateran Council reinforced it years later. And do you know why?”

  “To strengthen the bond between Christ and the priest as a mediator,” she said, reciting almost verbatim from her Sundays studying catechism.

  “Not the ideological argument, Ally. Not the party line. The practical reason.”

  She shook her head.

  “Because,” Peter explained, “when married priests died, everything they owned—property, riches—went to their firstborn.”

  She blinked at him.

  “And know what happened when they stopped letting them marry? It went to the Church. All of it—money, jewels, property. Everything left behind when they died. It went to the Church.”

  He sat down across from her. “They changed the terms of committing your life to God to make money, A
lly. Not because Christ ever said to. Not because the apostles did it. But for money. What makes you think they wouldn’t do this?”

  She couldn’t give him an answer. His cell phone rang, a welcome interruption. He picked up.

  “What’s the word, Mike?” he asked. There was a pause. “Is that so?” Then another.

  “Then I guess I gave you one hell of a story. Get someone over there today to see which version got put in the hopper.”

  He hung up and turned to Ally. “He checked the copy of the bill Senators Bingham and Ryan agreed to sign off on. And guess what? It doesn’t have a Section 101, a.6. No mention of churches at all, in fact.”

  He carried his mug over to her sink to wash it. When he finished, he picked up his car keys. He needed to get over to the Post and help Mike. “Don’t worry,” he said, gesturing to the materials she’d copied and shown him. “I’ll do what I can to keep this part quiet.” He was almost to the door when she called after him to stop. In her hands was her copy of the timeline and letter from Casey’s office. “Here. For your friend at the Post.”

  He looked at her. “You know Casey’s going to fire you, right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Take it.”

  After he left she climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling. There was no way she was going to fall asleep. After a few hours, she got up, took a shower, dressed, and set out on her walk to the Metro for what would likely be her last employed day for a long time.

  When she got to the office, the phones were already ringing off the hook with members of Congress calling to rescind support. Casey was ricocheting around the room, shouting orders and generally panicking.

  “Well, fucking try him again!” he screamed at a staffer who told him Senator Bingham was unavailable for his call.

  Finally another staffer got someone on the line. Ally could hear whoever it was screaming from two feet away. “It’s a misunderstanding, sir,” Casey tried, suddenly submissive and deferential. “We got the versions mixed up and sent the wrong one.”

  He repeated that phrase to anyone he could get on the phone. Someone called from across the room, “Vice President Eldridge on the phone.” Casey didn’t say a word. He stalked into his office, picked up the phone, and kicked the door shut.

  Mark changed the channel in time to see NBC showing two copies of page 657. Title II, Section 101, a.6 was circled in red in the copy on the right.

  “Again,” the reporter was saying into the camera, “the source of the discrepancy hasn’t yet been identified. Senators Bingham and Ryan maintain that they were told their copies were the final version before they agreed to vote for it and that this clause was not in the version they agreed to. At this point, all we know is that the version placed in the hopper for today’s vote contained a surprise line no one recognized or, according to Arthur Wyncott’s camp, authorized. White House spokesperson Walter Gillen maintains that is the first time Wyncott has seen the clause.”

  Mark changed the channel to CNN, where Jack Caffrey, the head of an abuse survivors’ advocacy group called Justice Now, was speaking with the anchor. Caffrey, a lanky man in his early forties, was red with rage. Article 6, he said, was clearly an attempt by the Wyncott administration to protect churches from taking responsibility for years of criminal neglect. The anchor interrupted him to quote Walter Gillen’s “no prior knowledge” statement. “Not good enough,” Caffrey barked. “Why didn’t he know? Isn’t it his job to know what he’s legislating? It’s one of two things here. He knew and was fine with it, or he didn’t and he’s asleep at the wheel. Either way, why would I want this guy in office for another four years?” A public opinion poll graphic popped up on the screen with a live-feed arrow charting Wyncott’s near-hourly descent in popularity.

  “TURN IT OFF!” Casey roared from the door to his office. Everyone stopped and turned toward him in shocked silence. He was holding a list. He called out the first name. A young staffer who worked on health care stood up. Casey called him into the office and closed the door. Ally turned to Mark in confusion. “He’s going to find the leak,” Mark explained. “He’ll bring everyone in one by one. I’ve been through it a few times now. It’s downright terrifying.” In between phone calls, Casey continued to call them in.

  By lunchtime, Casey was on the letter H. Every time the door opened, Ally watched shell-shocked staffers stagger out, some of them in tears. Casey called in the next person and closed the door. Mark turned only one of the TVs back on, and everyone huddled around it. Wyncott was giving a press conference. Standing there poised and looking into the camera, Wyncott disavowed any knowledge that the clause had been included in the bill or that it could be manipulated in the way victims’ advocates claimed. An enormous number of people worked to craft these bills, and numerous versions were always floating around, he explained. He couldn’t be expected to be responsible for every word in it, but was grateful that this error had been caught in time to prevent further problems.

  He called on a reporter in the third row. “But you are responsible, sir,” the reporter started out. “You’re the president—responsibility rests with you, doesn’t it?”

  Staring confidently into the camera, Wyncott said his tort-reform bill was meant to protect American consumers from high prices passed down by companies forced to pay egregious amounts in civil damages. But, he conceded, it was obviously too loosely written, too open to potential abuse and would need to be clarified further before resubmitting it for passage. He thanked them for coming and stated he wouldn’t be taking any more questions. The camera zoomed in on Walter Gillen for comment as Wyncott exited the podium.

  Mark heard the turn of the door handle on Casey’s office and snapped the TV off just in time. The staff scattered to their desks, but not quickly enough. Casey looked around the office. The angry man from a few hours before now stood hunched in defeat. He pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes before returning to the staff list. Ally took a deep breath and walked over to him. “Can I speak with you for a moment, sir?” She stepped into his office and closed the door.

  She stumbled through her confession, tripping over words and stuttering. When she finally stopped talking, she saw how violently her hands were shaking. Casey just stared at her. She couldn’t tell whether he was angry or murderously calm.

  “Why?” he said after what felt like an hour of excruciating silence. “I just don’t get it. You’re smart, Ally. You have a strong instinct for this stuff. Why would you ruin everything?”

  “Because,” she started to explain, even though she knew it was something a man like Milton Casey would never understand. Tears of exhaustion bubbled to the surface. “I wanted my church back, sir. The way it was supposed to be. And I wanted to stop wondering if this”—she gestured at the campaign posters and framed copy of the preamble of the Constitution on the wall—“all of it, is a sham.” If her words had any effect, Casey didn’t share it.

  She felt like her body was moving in slow motion as she walked back to her desk. Everyone was watching her, but no one would speak. She didn’t touch anything in her cubicle. All of it, even the framed Thomas Nast illustration, stayed in place. She just grabbed her backpack and turned to leave. The elevator chimed when she was halfway down the hall. Arthur Wyncott rounded the corner flanked by a Secret Service detail and walked briskly past her, a grim expression on his face. She looked back just in time to see him enter the office. In nearly two years, this was the first time he’d visited their office. Even two weeks ago, this encounter would have thrilled her. Now, she felt nothing.

  CHAPTER 17

  Peter Merrick read the headlines about Wyncott pressuring his campaign manager to resign with mixed feelings. In sound bites flooding cable news programs, the radio, and newspaper headlines, Milton Casey claimed sole responsibility for the line in the bill. Thus far, they had managed to spin the entire affair as a mix-up and the sort of thing that was apt to happen from time to time in the legislative process. “Still,” Casey announced,
“Arthur Wyncott trusted me to make important decisions on his behalf and to act responsibly and in accordance with his values. I failed to do that. And it is therefore that I resign my post.” Within hours of Casey announcing his resignation, Wyncott’s polling numbers began climbing again. With over two months to go, it was possible he might recover what he lost from the controversy, but most political analysts agreed that without Milton Casey driving things, it would be tough to pull off.

  Much to Peter’s dismay, coverage of the scandal didn’t draw any connection to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or the Vatican, just the impact Title II, Section 101, a.6 would have had on the ability of sexual-abuse victims to get compensation for their suffering. “No direct evidence,” Mike told him. “I think you’re probably right about the quid pro quo, but what do we have? A timeline and a draft of a letter every bishop got. Big deal.”

  The surprise clause and Wyncott being out of touch was a more reliable story. And it was the one the press ran with. The journalist in Peter knew Mike was right, but it didn’t help him feel any better about it. “Why so glum, Pete?” he asked. “We got the bad guy in the end.” But they hadn’t. He was certain Feeney was behind most of this and, just like he’d managed to get away with moving William Hartnett around like a chess piece, he’d come out unscathed. People like James Ingram would always be left to pick up the pieces. Meanwhile, Feeney would most likely be rewarded, possibly even made cardinal, for dodging yet another bullet.

  Archer’s campaign didn’t miss an opportunity to take advantage of the situation. Peter had to give him credit for being more restrained than he himself would have been—Archer refused to suggest Wyncott had attempted to trick Americans or that he was a puppet president, incapable of thinking or acting for himself. Instead he said Title II, Section 101, a.6 was another sign that America had lost its way and become too corporate under the leadership of Arthur Wyncott and men like him. Under his proposals, America would retain the entrepreneurial spirit that built the nation and made it so great. “But we can no longer sacrifice the values that made us Americans in pursuit of wealth,” he said. Part of Peter was relieved to see Archer capitalize on the scandal. Archer had seemed, for most of his campaign, to be a little too good to be true. It helped to see him use someone else’s misfortune to promote himself. For better or worse, it made Peter respect him a little more.