Prodigal Father

by Ralph McInerny

“Good.”

  Despite her world-weary air, Marie was dying to tell him of it, so he did not prompt her. She followed him into the study where he sat behind his desk. His two favorite books were on the desk where they always were. If she had moved them in his absence he would have known immediately.

  The first part of the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, the portable BAC edition, which was the second edition he had owned, the first being the blue and typographically forbidding Ottawa edition with the Leonine variations in the footnotes. And La Divina Commedia. Old friends. The older he got the more he reread rather than read. The tried and true.

  “He was looking for a priest he had known in California.”

  “He?”

  “The visitor. Stan Morgan. I started to look him up in the Catholic Directory when he told me the man had left and married.”

  The Catholic Directory was back on the shelf. He could see now that it had been taken out and returned. He never kept things so neat.

  “So he went away disappointed?”

  “I told him to call back when I had a chance to ask you.”

  “What was the name?”

  “Richards.”

  Marie was a woman without guile, or at least without any guile she could conceal. She was simply repeating what the man had asked.

  “That was his last name?”

  “I never heard Richards as a first name.”

  Even so it set his mind going. The bearded former Athanasian who was going through a period of testing before he could be reinstated. Could that be the priest Stan Morgan was seeking?

  “What was it, nostalgia?”

  “It emerged that he was a lapsed Catholic. I think he thought Richards could help him.”

  Marie recounted her own pastoral session at the kitchen table. She was self-effacing about her role, but he could imagine her in action. Marie had been here for some years when he arrived and had begun with the attitude that she was showing him the ropes. Potential trouble, that, but within a week he was sure he wanted her to stay on. From what Marie said, it was possible the man had been in search of Richard Krause. He had been raised in a local parish, he had lived in California, where he had met Richards. Krause had told Boniface he had worked on both coasts, but latterly in California. It was possible. But he said nothing.

  “He said he’d call?”

  “Would you like to see him?”

  “If he comes.”

  “I’ll suggest that.”

  She filled his Mr. Coffee pot with water but left the making to him. The strength of his coffee did not meet with her approval.

  “I don’t know how you ever get to sleep.”

  “Lying down usually does it.”

  “Did you have a good week?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are they?”

  “The Athanasians? They may be coming out of their darkest days.”

  “What’s the point of all these little orders?”

  “They each have a slightly different purpose.”

  Marie was unconvinced. Of course she thought of the Franciscans as one of the little orders. “I like Father Boniface anyway.”

  “He sent his regards. And I asked him to come say one of the masses next Sunday.”

  Marie brightened under this. How could she not like Boniface? He was always lyrical about her cooking and ate like a trencherman when he was in the rectory.

  “You might have come by to say hello at least,” Marie said to Phil when he came to lunch after the noon Mass.

  “And you all alone in the house, Marie? I have a reputation to consider.”

  “It’s too late, Captain Keegan. Far too late.”

  Marie went off to her kitchen before Phil could reply. “So you’re all rested and refreshed, Roger.”

  Roger Dowling nodded.

  “I drove by Marygrove once during the week. What a sight it is to see those magnificent grounds the way they’ve always been. It must cost them a fortune to keep it up.”

  “Anderson is after them.”

  “I hope they have the good sense to ignore him.” Phil gave him a sudden look. “They’re not so hard up they’ll jump at it, are they?”

  “It isn’t that.”

  Boniface had recounted the argument that it was selfishness on their part to live on that vast acreage when it might accommodate hundreds of families. It was clear the old man did not have a ready answer to that. Or rather he’d had one that was turned against him.

  “A dog in the manger.” He had shaken his head.

  “I hope you won’t be swayed by the thought of hypothetical houses and equally hypothetical occupants.”

  “Father, we take the vow of poverty, and look at how we live.”

  “Very modestly, I should say.”

  This was true. The food was plain if plentiful, there was no bar in the recreation room, which was where the only television in the place was located. Those well-tended grounds and handsome buildings seemed small compensation. The acreage wasn’t the problem. More than ever before, Roger had felt that he was making his retreat in a rest home. Chanting the office was no doubt a good thing, but most of the Athanasians had not been blessed with voices and there was hesitation over the now-unfamiliar Latin.

  “That might have been a mistake, Father Dowling. Not everyone is enthused.”

  “Richard obviously is.”

  Boniface agreed. “Sometimes I wonder if he wants to come back for aesthetic reasons. Gregorian chant, the liturgy properly done, the green grass of home.”

  After Phil left, Father Dowling went over to the parish center to find Edna chatting with a man in her office. They both stood up when he came in without knocking.

  “This is Stan Morgan, Father.”

  “Roger Dowling. Marie is expecting your call.”

  “Marie?”

  “Mrs. Murkin. My housekeeper. You can catch her now if you want.”

  The man looked at Edna, gave a little shrug. Edna looked away. “Can I talk to you, Father?”

  “I’ll be back before you leave,” Father Dowling said.

  He and Edna seemed to listen to the sound of his footsteps going downstairs. Father Dowling shut the door.

  “And who is Stan Morgan?”

  “He came by last week, asking for someone, and Marie came over and …” Edna stopped. “I sound like one of my kids.”

  It was of those kids and what must be Edna’s loneliness that he had thought when he saw her with the very attractive man, not much older than she. Having heard Marie’s story of how the man had captivated her, he had the impression that he was doing the same with Edna.

  “I’ve seen him several times, Father.”

  He sat down. His wariness about Stan Morgan was irrational, he knew that. A stranger come to ask about a former priest he’d met in California who had mentioned Fox River, Illinois. From that he had jumped to wondering if it could be Richard Krause who wanted to be reinstated with the Athanasians. And what if Morgan, too, was a laicized priest? One thing was clear. Marie might have been just a lady to jolly, but Edna was an attractive young woman, forced by her husband’s prison sentence to live a celibate life in her prime. He was sure that one of the reasons she gave so much of herself to the Center and her kids was to keep her mind off such things. There weren’t many good-looking, smooth-talking men who stopped by the former principal’s office where she now worked, and she was clearly susceptible.

  “Edna, it’s none of my business.”

  “He took me out to dinner once. And he took us all to a ball game.”

  She might have been going to confession. He wished he could back up the clock and make his entrance again, knocking this time. And not sending Morgan off to Marie as if he meant to scold Edna.

  “Who is he?” he asked again.

  “Father, I really don’t know much about him. He can talk and talk and …” She shrugged her shoulders.

  He had the uncomfortable feeling that he had returned to his days on the archdiocesa
n marriage tribunal. Of course Edna would be susceptible to the attentions of a fine-looking fellow like Stan Morgan, particularly when he seemed as interested in her family as in herself. The children could have only the vaguest memories of their father and Earl had been unbending in his wish that they should not be brought to see him at Joliet. One married for better or worse, and Edna had ended up with more worse than better, but that did not make her any less married.

  “So how is Martha Vlasko doing?”

  The abrupt change of subject brought an almost audible sigh from Edna.

  “She has decided not to sue.”

  Martha, a busy and self-important woman who affected the air of just looking in at the old people when she came to the Center, which was nearly every day, had pushed through a small group at the door and stumbled outside onto the playground. A bruised knee and ego were the sum total of her injuries, but she decided to make a federal case out of it. The Center did not meet the minimum specifications for such an operation.

  “Nonsense,” said Amos Cadbury. Amos, the premier lawyer of Fix River, product of the Notre Dame Law School, took care of all the legal work of St. Hilary’s parish—pro bono, of course. He and Father Dowling had become good friends over the years.

  Martha asked where the handrails were, where the easy-access elevators, where the automatic door openers.

  “Tell her to look at her membership agreement,” Amos advised.

  The majority of the seniors came in the door from the parking lot, spent their day in what had once been the school gym playing cards, shuffleboard, watching television, or just drinking coffee and talking. It was not a high-risk schedule. In any case, the old people agreed to take the place as is.

  “She wanted a class-action suit, Father. That was her mistake. The others laughed her to scorn.”

  “Where do people learn all this legal jargon?” Father Dowling asked Amos Cadbury later when the lawyer dropped by the rectory. Amos’s clear blue eyes lifted to implore the mercy of heaven.

  “Everywhere. People can go to the library and receive legal advice from computers. They can buy handbooks in the drugstore. Law For Idiots or whatever it’s called. I am told that new clients now explain to their lawyer the strategy they have mapped out for him.”

  Amos no longer took new clients himself. He was still a presence in the firm he had founded, and there were several things that he kept in his personal control, among them the affairs of St. Hilary Rectory. He had come out to have a little chat with Martha Vlasko, to make sure her discontent was behind her.

  “She said she was only concerned for the old people,” Amos said.

  “Altruism unleashed.”

  “She will be no more trouble. I knew her husband …”

  Sometimes Father Dowling wondered if there was anyone on whatever social level in Fox River that the patrician Amos Cadbury had not known. The circle of his acquaintances had shrunk in recent years, of course. He had been to many funerals, he made regular visits to rest homes to visit other undeparted friends. Casey Vlasko had been in plumbing and heating. Nothing big, but he had a good reputation and his business could have grown if he had wanted it to. When he retired he sold the business.

  “To Anderson, of course.”

  “The developer.”

  “That suggests a dark room. Appropriately.”

  It was unusual for Amos to volunteer an opinion about anyone, let alone a negative one. But they were interrupted by the entry of Marie Murkin with a tea tray. No master of ceremonies to a cardinal archbishop could have been fussier than Marie when she served tea to Amos Cadbury. The lawyer had sincerely and often sung the praises of her scones, and Marie all but ignored the pastor when Amos was there to be waited upon. She dropped a slice of lemon in a cup and then poured as if she were measuring out some incredibly precious liquid, not a drop of which should be lost. She handed the cup to Amos. He took it with a bow, raised the cup to his lips, and tasted it with closed eyes. The purring began before he returned the cup to its saucer.

  “Marie, Marie …”

  She made an impatient gesture and turned to go. “Your coffee all right, Father?”

  “I made it myself.”

  She hesitated, but no parting shot occurred to her and she was gone.

  “So you were on retreat last week, Father Dowling.”

  “Yes. At the seminary of the Athanasians. Do you know it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  6

  Blessed is he whom you choose and call to dwell in your courts.

  —Psalm 65

  The first time Amos Cadbury was consulted by the Order of St. Athanasius was in the early seventies. He had been highly recommended at the chancery, Father Geoffrey Skipton told him, watching with narrowed and interested eyes for his reaction to this.

  “Bishop Baglio?”

  A shake of the head. “No. Himself.” Skipton said this in an unsuccessful brogue.

  “Ah.”

  “You’re a Knight of Malta.”

  Amos had not cared for this. Thirty years ago his reputation had been well-established and while he respected a potential client’s wish to know what kind of lawyer he might be getting, he did not care to have it seem that he was bidding for business. The only reason he had come in response to Father Geoffrey’s invitation was that he was a priest. What he would have assumed was that the man had learned he did work for the Church pro bono.

  “And what might I do for you, Father?” His voice emphasized the subjunctive.

  “It’s an unusual matter. I thought it was just canon law at first, but that is unclear.”

  With great circumlocution, Father Geoffrey came to the point. Perhaps Mr. Cadbury had followed the sessions of Vatican II and the exciting events that were following on it. Religious orders were asked to renew themselves by returning to the charism of their founders, the purpose for which they initially began.

  “That is where the difficulties lie.”

  The Athanasians had been founded in Turin in the middle of the nineteenth century by a saintly priest, Don Raffaello Schiavi, first as a community sanctioned by the diocese, then expanding into other parts of Italy. To say that the order had flourished would have been an exaggeration, but it had attracted vocations, it had been assigned an African mission, and it had established itself in the United States, in Fox River, Illinois. There had been semiannual meetings of local superiors at the mother house in Turin since the close of the Council, but the sunny prospect that had seemed to lie before them at the outset of their meetings changed radically.

  “Vocations are down everywhere,” Geoffrey had said. “But we are losing priests.”

  The great exodus had begun and the Italians and the Americans could not agree on what the remedy was. In Turin, they wanted to abolish street clothes, the habit to be worn always and everywhere. They wanted the novus ordo, the new order of the Mass established after the Council, to be said only in Latin by Athanasians. They wanted to allow some men to live a hermetic life.

  “What it comes down to is that they are really against the Council.”

  Amos waited.

  “The only remedy is divorce, Cadbury. Believe me, I have far more sympathy with people caught in a bad marriage than I ever had before.”

  What was wanted was a new corporation that severed all ties with the mother house in Turin, and gave the Fox River institution full autonomy. Amos agreed to undertake the matter, reluctantly at first. He had not liked Geoffrey. He disliked his arrogance, his condescension to the “people in Turin,” his certainty that he had an infallible sense of the spirit of Vatican II. And he had been full of the jargon of that time. The Church must read the signs of the time, which he apparently took to mean it should take its cue from the secular world. The windows were to be thrown open, apparently to let in the spirit of the age. Habits, clerical dress, fasting and abstinence, all the gloomy and negative attitudes toward sex were out. “Let’s brighten up. Look at John XXIII, for heaven’s sake.” Amos might have fou
nd a way to avoid the task, but the more time he spent with the Athanasians, the less typical did Geoffrey seem. Bartholomew was a delight to work with; he knew to a dime what the assets were. Amos suggested a cash settlement to Turin.

  “What for?” Geoffrey cried.

  “Under the present legal setup, they arguably own everything here.”

  “They never provided a nickel.”

  “But everything you accomplished was as members of the Order, the assets, the buildings, the grounds, are community property. I suggest being very generous or this may be in the courts forever.”

  A lawyer wants to protect his client from future litigation, from any negative effects of what he does for him. Playing fast and loose with the Italian Athanasians could stir animosities that would not soon subside. Far better a generous parting gift. God knows the Americans could afford it. They had indeed prospered. They were situated on what had once been the estate of a Chicago banker whose second wife had been Catholic and brought him into the Church. Left a widower a second time, old Maurice Corbett’s thoughts turned more decidedly to eternal things. He had arranged the loan for the first modest foundation of the Athanasians in Illinois and eventually he left them his estate. The mansion remained but was no longer visible as one came up the long drive from the county road. Amos would see the sun sparkle from the statue of Athanasius atop the main building. The chapel was exquisite, the whole nave a choir, with descending facing pews in which a sea of seminarians wearing snow-white surplices had knelt.

  Within a year, Amos had completed the work. The Athanasians were established as a corporation according to the laws of the State of Illinois. All previous legal provisions for their presence in the state were superseded by the new arrangement. The archdiocese approved, as did the relevant cardinal in Rome.

  “So that’s that,” Geoffrey had said after the signing of the papers in Amos’s office. He was wearing a plaid sport coat and a shirt open at the neck. The spirit of Vatican II?

  “That’s that.”

  “I consider this my gift to the Order, Amos.”

  The question of his fee came up and Amos dismissed it.