“Bless me. Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was about a month ago.”
Koesler guessed what was going on. The whisper sounded as if it belonged to a boy. In any case, it was probably the youngster’s parents who had countermanded the training he’d received in school and had taught their child to confess in the manner they had been taught. If Koesler was correct, this formula would be followed by the old-fashioned “laundry list” of sins.
“And since then,” the child proceeded, “I disobeyed my mother ten times. I disobeyed my father about five times. I swore six times. I talked in church four times. I used God’s name in vain once. I lied twice. I fought with another boy once. And I stole a nickel from my little sister. I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life, especially for adultery.”
Koesler did not bat an eyelash. This was by no means the first time a child had demonstrated ignorance concerning the nature of things sexual. But Koesler, in confessional matters, lived by two rules: Don’t interrupt a child’s laundry list of sins—the list is probably memorized and if it is interrupted one may reap prolonged silence. Followed by a starting over. And secondly, don’t use the confessional for teaching.
To these, the priest had recently added a third rule, occasioned by experiences such as this: If parents insist that their child grow up in the same manner they did, let it be.
The only bad thing was that the young person would probably never mature out of this childish approach to confession, just as the parents had never shed their own penitential adolescence. But parents had prime responsibility for their children—let them look to it.
“OK,” he said to the screen, “for your penance, say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys—and try to return the nickel to your sister.”
“Yes, Father.”
Koesler gave absolution, after which the child departed.
He was followed by an extremely small girl who fairly skipped around the screen and lifted herself onto the chair. Seated, her feet did not reach the ground. Koesler recalled that barbarians sometimes used such as a position of torture, and he resolved to have a smaller chair added to the confessional furnishings in the near future.
“Hi,” he greeted the new penitent.
“Hi, Father, I’ve been thinking about all my faults, and I think the worst one is I bug my brother. I’m going to try not to bug him so much.”
“Good idea, Andrea. I’m sure Tommy will appreciate that. For your penance, try to do something nice for Tommy tonight.”
He absolved her and she departed.
A few moments later, he heard the sound of small knees hitting the kneeler on the other side of the screen.
“All right,” Koesler said, letting the penitent know that all was ready.
After a few moments, came a small boy’s voice: “Hell, damn, shit, son-of-a-bitch, fuck it, fuck it in a bucket.” Then, silence.
Silence also from Koesler’s side of the screen. He had almost said, “What was that!” but he didn’t need reiteration. He recalled with all too great clarity what the boy had said. The question was why he had said it.
Suddenly it was clear. Instead of confessing he had used bad language, he had given Koesler an itemized account of just exactly what he had said.
“Is that all?” Koesler asked at length.
“Yes, Father.”
“Then say five Hail Marys for your penance.
“And by the way: If this happens again, you don’t need to tell the priest precisely what you said. Just say you used vulgar language.”
“OK, Father.”
There may be more exclusive clubs in the Detroit area, but not many, thought Bishop Ratigan, as he pulled into the circular area where valet parking was available.
Orchard Lake Country Club was nestled among a string of small lakes, not the least of which was Orchard Lake itself, quite possibly the most beautiful of them all.
Ratigan’s car rocked as he braked abruptly in front of the attendants’ station. A uniformed young man sprinted to the car so quickly he was there before Ratigan had climbed out.
“Hi, Bishop!” The young man’s uninhibited smile beamed. Not only was Ratigan well known at OLCC, he was also known to be a generous tipper.
“Hi, Johnny.” Ratigan smiled more with his eyes than his lips The crow’s-feet deepened but the rest of his face remained nearly immobile. The phenomenon was indicative of his reserve. “Be careful with this heap of tin. There’s not much life left in it.”
Johnny just laughed as he swung himself into the car, adjusted the seat forward, slipped it into gear, and eased it into the parking space. Actually, the late model Olds Ninety-eight would be right at home with the other luxury cars in the lot. All the attendants were acquainted with Ratigan’s penchant for self-deprecation. It was as if he knew that clergymen should exist on a less opulent level than his. But, rather than live poverty, he talked it.
“I’m meeting Mr. Hoffman for lunch,” Ratigan announced to the desk attendant.
“Right, Bishop. Mr. Hoffman is expecting you. He’s downstairs.”
Ratigan made his way down the stairs, ignoring wall plaques commemorating past officers of the club. Once on the threshold of the sunny downstairs dining room, he easily spotted his host sitting alone studying the menu.
“Been waiting long?” Ratigan seated himself across from Hoffman.
Hoffman consulted his watch. “No, just a few minutes.”
“Here’s the relic you wanted.” Ratigan pushed a small golden reliquary across the table. Then he handed Hoffman a folded parchment. “And here is its certification. Notice the words typed in, ‘Vera Crux.’ But,” he leaned back, “you didn’t tell me why you wanted a relic of the true cross.”
“It’s not for me. It’s for my sister Cindy. She likes this sort of thing. Send the bill to my secretary, Mike.”
“Already have.”
Ratigan barely had time to adjust his napkin before the waiter arrived to take drink orders. Hoffman ordered a perfect Rob Roy, Ratigan an extra dry Beefeater martini.
“I thought we’d just have something light, if you don’t mind,” said Hoffman. “I’ve got some things I’d like to talk to you about.”
“Perfectly all right.”
“Shrimp salad?”
“Fine.” Actually, Ratigan would have preferred a far more substantial lunch. But while he normally was an assertive person, he generally deferred to Hoffman.
The waiter returned with the drinks, took the salad order, and left.
Hoffman took a sip of his drink, hurriedly set it down, and was just able to produce his handkerchief and cover his nose and mouth before sneezing violently.
“Bless you!” said Ratigan. “Coming down with something?”
“Blasted cold, I suppose. This day did not begin well. And, while it’s improving by the hour, I got a chill this morning that seems to be developing into something nasty.”
“Better take care of it. Bad time of year to come down with something. Just going into winter and all.”
“You’re right. I think I’ll stop in and see the doctor on the way back.”
They sipped in silence. Both gazed out the window. The trees, still multicolored, were beginning to lose their leaves. Ratigan noticed that a single leaf, tinted gold and red by the season, had been placed in the table vase usually reserved for a fresh flower. A nice touch.
Salad was served. Hoffman ordered another drink for each of them.
“A nice time to be alive,” Ratigan commented. The martini was cold, delicious, and soothing. Any hint of winter’s coming severity was muted by the longer autumn.
“A nice time to be in Rome,” Hoffman said.
“Eh? Oh, I suppose. You going?”
“Not me. Not now. Frank Martin.”
Ratigan rolled his eyes as he placed a forkful of shrimp salad in his mouth. “When?”
“Next month.”
“Still be nice then.” Ratigan sensed that something to do with Frank Ma
rtin’s impending Roman holiday was the reason for this luncheon.
“I’d like to arrange something nice for him while he’s there.”
“Oh?” Had this been a poker hand, Ratigan felt he now would be raking in the chips.
“What would you suggest?”
“A papal audience, I suppose. After all, the Pope is Rome’s most important product.”
“I know. But there are audiences and then there are audiences.”
“Indeed.” Ratigan enjoyed cat and mouse as much as Hoffman did.
“So, what sort would you suggest?” As Hoffman finished the last of his salad, the waiter was there to remove the plate. Hoffman ordered another drink. Ratigan declined.
“How would it be,” Ratigan leaned forward, “if you were to go into Frank Martin’s office and tell him you’d arranged for a private audience for him with the Pope?”
Hoffman smiled. “Not the sort where the Pope goes around a circle meeting individuals in a group?”
“No.” Ratigan’s crow’s-feet crinkled. “More the sort that heads of state receive. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Martin, His Holiness, and maybe an aide, in the throne room.”
Hoffman slapped the table top. “Just what the doctor ordered, Mike. Can you pull it off?”
Ratigan nodded curtly. “Give me a few days.”
He had arranged for many varied meetings, tête-à-têtes, what-have-yous in his day. But he’d never tried for a private audience with a Pope. He would have to call in virtually his every marker. But with the president and chairman of the board of The Company, one of the most influential and wealthiest Catholics in Detroit, even a private audience might be possible. Ratigan was certain he could elicit the cooperation of Mark Boyle, Archbishop of Detroit. And, since Boyle was a Cardinal, his support would carry the added weight of the red hat.
Ratigan, as was the case with most priests, seldom, if ever, played a game of quid pro quo with favors for or from the laity. Such a game would have been hopelessly uneven from its inception. Priests, most of them shameless do-gooders, genuinely enjoyed doing favors for people. Ratigan was no exception.
But most priests could not compete with the laity in this sort of venture. Over the years, dentist and doctor friends would build up untoppable advantages just in uncharged fees. And priests, unless they dined alone or with fellow clergymen, very rarely picked up a dinner check or even contributed to its payment. In time, if anyone were keeping score, most priests fell heavily in debt to their lay friends. But, of course, generally, no tab was kept.
So, Ratigan would do his best to secure the honor of a private papal audience for Hoffman’s employer. He would do so gladly. But between this papal audience and the next favor Ratigan would render Hoffman, the auto executive would pick up many a tab, host many a luxurious trip, buy many an expensive gift for his friend the bishop.
“How’re you set for time, Mike?”
Ratigan consulted his watch. “OK. I’ve got nothing on till three.”
Hoffman pushed his chair back from the table. “Then how about a short stroll?” He sneezed again.
“Bless you! OK. But you’d better put something on. Almost November and you’re coming down with something.”
“You’re probably right.”
They stopped at the unattended cloak room where Ratigan retrieved his hat and coat and Hoffman slipped into his topcoat.
“No hat?” Ratigan donned his hat and coat.
“Never wear one. You know that.”
“Yeah.”
Up the stairs, past the main dining room, and out the double doors. They were on the veranda overlooking Orchard Lake.
“Did it ever occur to you, Mike, that if you hadn’t become a bishop, we would never have become friends?”
Ratigan mulled this over. “Oh, I don’t know. Any number of ways we might have met. We could have been on some committee together. Or, I easily might have been pastor of your parish.”
“I said friends.” They walked briskly along the perimeter of the veranda. “Father Koesler is my pastor but we’re not friends. Have you ever given much thought to our friendship? Do you know why you and I are friends?”
“Can’t say that I have. We like a lot of the same things: golf, concerts, poker, good cars, good food . . . it’s natural, I would think.”
“That’s not it.”
“What, then?”
“We’re cut of the same cloth.”
Ratigan stopped dead in his tracks. Hoffman stopped one step ahead. Ratigan’s amazement was impossible to conceal. Hoffman smiled. “Surprised?”
They recommenced their walk.
Ratigan was more than surprised. He was shocked. He knew something of Hoffman’s business dealings, some of his method of operation at work. And, in all honesty, he could not approve of all he knew. In addition, Ratigan was aware that what he knew of Hoffman’s business practices was only a tip of the iceberg. Normally, Ratigan preferred not to think about it.
“Think about it sometime, Mike. We are upwardly mobile. We have high pot, as they say in my industry. And we are cashing in on our potential, each in his own way, each in his own field.
“I didn’t become general manufacturing manager of The Company by being meek and waiting to inherit something the Beatitudes might promise. And you didn’t become a bishop by choosing the lowest place at the table as in the Gospel story.”
“Now, wait a minute—”
“I know what you’re going to say. And I know there are people who actually make the Gospels work for them. There’s Mother Theresa of Calcutta and there’s Dom Helder Camera of Recife. There are exceptions in my field too. Every once in a long while you may run across a genuinely nice guy who’s made it. But we both know that’s the exception, not the rule.
“Mostly, it’s guys like you and me. We know which strings have to be pulled, which backs need to be scratched, which side the butter’s on, who to get papal audiences for . . . .” Hoffman glanced at Ratigan, who seemed to wince slightly.
“We know where the power is. We know the path to power and we take it. I don’t know where the skeletons are in your closet—I don’t want to know—but I know where the bodies are buried in my past, and I don’t regret one of them. I’d guess neither do you regret yours. If I hadn’t pulled the rug out from under some of the people who stood in my way, I’d still be on the bottom looking up.”
“But . . . but . . . deliberately undermining somebody else’s career . . . why, that’s immoral. It’s a sin!” Ratigan felt as if he should be hearing Hoffman’s confession rather than listening to an apologia pro vita sua.
“Sin! How could the only sure road to success be a sin! The Beatitudes may work in a monastery or a convent. But they don’t work at The Company. They don’t even work all that well among the people who preach them.”
“Must say I can’t agree with you, Frank. No, not at all!”
“Your problem, Mike, is that you haven’t thought about it enough. I know—”
Ratigan seemed about to speak again, but Hoffman’s raised hand cut him off.
“I know,” Hoffman continued, “because you’ve done it before, that you’re about to quote St. Paul about how if a man desires the office of bishop, he desires a good work.
“Well, I’ve never heard Frank Martin say it in so many words, but I can assure you that he has similar thoughts to those of St. Paul. ‘Any employee of The Company,’ Frank might say, ‘who desires a management position—and the higher in management the better—desires a good thing.’
“God bless us, we in management know damn well that we’ve got a good thing. We’d be too stupid to get where we are if we didn’t know we’re billions of times better off than the suckers on the line. And the higher we go, the better off we are. So, now, let me paraphrase St. Paul: ‘We who desire to be chairman of the board of The Company desire the best damn thing available.’
“Sure, it’s a good thing to desire to be a bishop. You’ve got it better than any priest in a parish or mo
nastery. Your perks go up in direct proportion to the height of your position.
“It just comes down to this, Mike: Some of us will do anything we have to do to get to this ‘good office’ that we desire.”
“I can’t agree with your reasoning, Frank.” They were standing at the shoreline of Orchard Lake. In another couple of months, this large lake would be frozen over, and instead of swimmers, rowboats, and fishermen, it would be dotted with fishing shacks, iceboats, and skaters.
“It may be true,” Ratigan said, “that there are some ancillary advantages to being a bishop, but along with that are greater responsibilities and obligations.”
“Of course there are, Mike. They go with the territory. It’s lots easier tightening bolts on passing chassis all day than making multimillion-dollar educated guesses about where the auto market will be several years down the road.
“But then, the blue-collar guy works in a pit, makes a slightly better-than-average wage, and lives in Detroit. While we have plush offices, private secretaries, investment counselors, and live in Dearborn, the Pointes, or Bloomfield Hills. It goes with the territory.
“And sure it’s easier filling out records, saying Mass, and bestowing sacraments than it is being responsible for personnel placement, purchasing sites for future parishes, and fielding problems too complex for a mere pastor. But priests’ lives fit into square boxes a few miles wide called parishes, and they do the same dull things every day of their lives. Whereas you bishops have as many offices as you want, live virtually where you want, at whatever level you want. And when you deign to visit a parish, it’s like the Second Coming of Christ: They throw down every red carpet they can find for you. And the perks go on, we all know it. It goes with the territory.
“We’re both of us in middle management, Mike. I’m living for the day I’ll be president and chairman of the board of The Company. And you can’t wait to get your own diocese. And,” he glanced briefly but significantly at the bishop, “it is just possible we can help each other get where we want to go.”
Silence.
Ratigan felt as if he’d been hit with buckshot. There was both truth and fallacy to Hoffman’s charges. But distinguishing one from the other was comparable to trying to pry little pellets from one’s body after a buckshot blast. Furthermore, what had Hoffman meant by “helping each other”?
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