The Good Shepherd

by Thomas Fleming

  “We wrote a letter to the pastor telling him that we intended to open a community clinic in the parish. We never heard a word from him,” Sister Agnes Marie said.

  “Of course, you didn’t,” Matthew Mahan said. “He forwarded the letter to me and I asked the vicar-general of the diocese to investigate it.”

  “He wrote us a very intemperate letter,” Sister Agnes Marie said. “So intemperate, in fact, that we did not feel we could receive it in the spirit of holy freedom, so we - or to be more exact, I - decided to ignore it.”

  “And that is why 250 people showed up in front of St. Thomas’s rectory last week, demanding free access to the parish bowling alleys, social hall, and gymnasium?”

  “I suppose, to some extent, you could assign it as a reason. But only by a very strange, inverse logic. The real reason for the protest was the situation in St. Thomas’s parish. How long must people wait for pastors like Monsignor Farrelley to die?”

  Matthew Mahan’s temper began to flame. Part of the reason was Sister Agnes Marie’s bluntness. Part was the knowledge that he was about to defend the indefensible. Jack Farrelley was one of those cool Irishmen who run their parishes to suit their own convenience, which in his case included spending a month in Europe each summer and a month in Florida each winter. There were a half-dozen aging pastors like him in the downtown parishes. They were all inclined to the sumptuous lifestyle of the former Archbishop. “Monsignor Farrelley has been pastor of St. Thomas’s for thirty-five years.”

  “About thirty years too long,” Sister Agnes Marie said.

  “Thirty-five years,” Matthew Mahan continued, “and there has never been a single criticism leveled against him, in spite of the fact that the parish became heavily Italian during those years.”

  “It is now heavily Puerto Rican,” Sister Agnes Marie said.

  “We know that, we know that. We have demographic maps for the whole archdiocese down at the chancery.”

  “A pity you don’t send some of them to your pastors, Your Eminence,” Sister Agnes Marie said, pouring herself a glass of water and taking a tiny sip of it. “Please don’t regard what I am saying as impertinence, or worse, disobedience. We are only responding to the summons of the Gospel, seeking out, in our Lord’s image, the lost sheep of the House of Israel.”

  “Truly, truly, I say to you,” said Dennis McLaughlin, “he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.”

  There was a moment of astonished silence. Sister Helen Reed, her pencil poised above her pad, was glaring at Father McLaughlin in a most un-Christian way. Sister Agnes Marie smiled and said, “I didn’t know we had a scripture scholar among us.”

  “I learned that line in fourth grade,” Dennis said.

  “That was well put, Father McLaughlin,” Matthew Mahan said. “Let me go on to another point - in fact, two points that disturb me. At least one of these community clinics is soliciting funds from people in the parish and from well-to-do people outside it. Monsignor Mulcahey, at St. Rose’s, says that this has resulted in a 30 percent drop in his weekly collections. Now, you may think that this sounds unsavory. You may see me as a walking cliché, the cold-blooded bishop as banker - I don’t care what I am called when I am fighting for the good order and spiritual health of this diocese. Money is a very important part of good order, and, for your information, of spiritual health as well. The average man soon becomes disenchanted with a church that bombards him 365 days a year with pleas for help. When I became coadjutor bishop nine years ago, there were dozens of Catholic organizations, some local and some national, competing for funds. I brought order out of this chaos by insisting that every fundraising appeal had to be authorized by the chancery office. We soon found that we could include most of the local appeals in our annual Archbishop’s Fund Drive.”

  “We asked for a grant from Catholic Charities,” Sister Agnes Marie said. “Monsignor O’Callahan turned us down with a three-line letter.”

  “I saw that letter. I also saw your grant application. It was poorly done. Your program was vague, and your goals were undefined. It didn’t meet the tests of professionalism, in Monsignor O’Callahan’s opinion.”

  “Professional what?” Sister Agnes Marie asked.

  “Professional social work.”

  “But we have no intention of doing social work,” Sister Agnes Marie said. “We see ourselves as translators - translating the words of the Gospel into acts, making it flesh once more.”

  “Isn’t that what the Church is doing and has been doing since the Resurrection?” Matthew Mahan snapped.

  Sister Agnes Marie shook her head wearily and leaned back in her chair for a moment. The gray March daylight made her face look old - although she was only fifty-five, the same age as Matthew Mahan. According to rumor, well propagated by her followers, Sister Agnes Marie was a saint. She lived in a bare unheated room with planks for a bed. She frequently fasted for days. If it was true, Matthew Mahan could only wonder why the Holy Spirit declined to send her a little common sense.

  “Could we take up another point?” Sister Agnes asked. “I fear we are poles apart on this matter of money.”

  Cardinal Mahan lowered his head and shook it back and forth. Dennis McLaughlin braced himself for the explosion. “Sister Agnes,” the Cardinal said, “I have not come out here to be told we are poles apart. On this matter, I am giving you an order. You will not raise another cent in another parish in this archdiocese without my permission. Do you understand me?”

  Sister Agnes Marie’s mild expression did not betray an iota of emotion. “Yes, Your Eminence. I understand you. But I reserve the right to appeal that decision to Rome.”

  “You have a perfect right to do that. I intend to have a long talk about this situation with Cardinal Confalonieri of the Sacred Congregation for Bishops and Cardinal Antoniutti of the Congregation for the Religious.”

  Matthew Mahan found he enjoyed rolling these Italian names off his tongue. Maybe this red hat will serve a purpose after all, he thought grimly.

  Sister Agnes Marie nodded. “I’m afraid we have no hope of winning an argument with you, Your Eminence, but we feel conscience-bound to try.”

  Matthew Mahan saw all too clearly that Sister Agnes Marie was spiritually one-upping him. But there wasn’t time to play psychological warfare. They had to get to the next item on the agenda. “Let us take up the matter of St. Clare’s Hospital.”

  A moldering pile in the depths of the First Ward, St Clare’s was over 100 years old. Its clientele was almost totally black and non-Catholic. After much soul-searching, Matthew Mahan had decided to close it. Minimum repairs were costing $300,000 a year. The over-all deficit this year would exceed a million.

  “You know how much money we are losing in that place. Yet you let your nuns join that demonstration last week, demanding in the name of the community - whatever that means - that the hospital stay open.”

  “Your Eminence - I led that demonstration,” said Sister Helen without a trace of apology in her voice. “Those people have no place else to go. As you may recall, I’m a nurse by profession - before I went into inner-city work. I’ve seen what comes into that outpatient clinic.”

  “I know, I know, I’ve read the studies,” Matthew Mahan said testily. “But where are we going to get the money, Sister? The age of miracles is over. Can you raise the money? Show me you can do it, and the hospital can stay open.”

  “If you can’t raise the money, how can we hope to do it Your Eminence?” said Sister Agnes Marie.

  Another spiritual left jab? Wasn’t she saying that was all Mahan stood for - Cardinal Moneybags?

  “I send a plan to Catholic Charities - a stopgap plan to convert the whole operation into a clinic. I never heard a word from them,” Sister Helen said.

  “I’m sure it was impractical,” Matthew Mahan said crisply. “Or else I’d have heard of it.”

  “Are you sure that you didn’t hear of it because Monsi
gnor O’Callahan down at Catholic Charities disapproved of our counseling women to use the pill?”

  “I haven’t heard a word about that,” Matthew Mahan snapped, There was nothing in this world he disliked more than being caught off guard. “But let me say this. If you are doing that - and I heard about it - I would have supported Monsignor O’Callahan 1,000 percent. What else could I do? Really, Sister, don’t you see that I have no alternative?”

  “As women, I’m afraid we have no alternative, Your Eminence,” said Sister Helen. “We find the Pope’s position intolerable.”

  For a moment, Matthew Mahan wanted to say: So do I. But he could never say that to anyone. Especially to anyone as antagonistic - that was the only word for it - as this young woman.

  “I’m afraid I must issue another order. You will cease this sort of counseling forthwith. The most you are permitted to do is tell a woman - if she raises the question - that there are two points of view on the subject. That she must follow her own conscience.”

  “Your Excellency,” Sister Agnes said. For the first time, she betrayed a trace of emotion. “These are poor people. They don’t have the background, the intelligence, the time, to read Humanae Vitae.”

  Inwardly, Matthew Mahan struggled to control the loathing aroused by the mention of that ruinous encyclical. Why, why, why? he wondered for the three or four hundredth time.

  “I agree, I agree,” he said. “I am not suggesting any such thing. I am only pointing out the complexity, the delicacy that marital counseling on this subject entails. The possibility of a scandal that could engulf the diocese in controversy - that’s what I want to avoid.”

  Sister Agnes Marie said nothing. There was no trace of sympathy on her face. Sister Helen Reed’s face was patently hostile. He glanced at his watch. Time was running out, as usual.

  “Sister Agnes,” he said, “with this news from Rome, my time will be devoured for the next month or two. Perhaps it would be best if you developed guidelines for marital counseling - and discussed your future plans with my secretary, Father McLaughlin here. He’s worked in those downtown parishes, so he’s familiar with the milieu. Just remember this. I don’t want to see anything happening down there that I haven’t heard of - and approved - in advance.”

  Sister Agnes Marie nodded. Did that mean she was saying yes, or merely signifying that she had heard him?

  “I’m afraid my time is going to be terribly limited, too,” she said. “I’m supposed to give a paper at a conference of Catholic college presidents next month, and I haven’t even started to think about it. I’m sure Sister Helen here would be glad to serve as my deputy. She’s serving as my vicar for our inner-city missionaries.”

  The word “missionaries” came close to making Matthew Mahan explode again. Only another exercise of willpower got him out of the office and down the corridor to his car without a farewell exchange of insults.

  “Did you hear what she said?” he asked Dennis McLaughlin as they pulled away. “Did you hear it? Missionaries. She’s sending missionaries to my diocese.”

  Dennis McLaughlin nodded, desperately trying to think of a response that would not state his opinion of the idea. He glanced at his fingernails, which were gnawed to the point where raw flesh was visible, and tried to make light of it.

  “Who knows? They might work.”

  The Cardinal missed the humor - totally.

  “Maybe you ought to put on a skirt and go back in there and join the revolution right now,” he snapped. “I hope you realize that I just gave you a very serious responsibility. If anything else goes wrong with those screwball women, it will be your fault. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes.”

  That was the last word spoken by either the Cardinal or his secretary on the ride back to the city.

  This isn’t real, this isn’t happening, Father Dennis McLaughlin told himself. Standing in the center of Matthew Mahan’s office facing the white glare of the television lights, his eyelids felt as if they might peel off like grape skins at any moment. Out in the hall, he could hear the Cardinal-designate answering questions for the newspaper and radio reporters. He was saying much the same thing that he had said to the girls at Mount St. Monica’s, earlier in the day. The honor belonged not to him, but to the people.

  A busty blonde in a pants suit ducked past a television camera, almost tripped over a cable, and rushed up to Dennis. “Have you got another bio?” she asked in a voice that struck him as exceptionally sultry. But on second glance, he decided it was only his perpetually lusting imagination. Besides, her legs did not come close to the sensuous perfection of Sister Helen Reed’s limbs (as the nuns probably called them, he assured himself in a burst of desperate complacency). He handed the blonde a two-page mimeographed biography of Matthew Mahan that had been produced by some previous secretary. Great writing it wasn’t, but it told the essential facts.

  Older son of devout Catholic parents, father a professional baseball player and then a minor league umpire who put his modest reputation and his savings into a local restaurant, which failed to survive the sudden evaporation of prosperity in 1929, thereafter a Parks Department official. Young Matt ordained a priest at Rosewood Seminary in 1939, one of the first to volunteer for the chaplain service in 1940 when war loomed, chaplain of an infantry regiment in the state’s National Guard Division, a local hero by the time the war ended, thanks to numerous letters from the front, praising “Father Matt’s” courage and compassion. The ultimate accolade, a column by Ernie Pyle.

  Home, something of a celebrity, Father Matt quickly proved that he had what it took to succeed as a civilian. Given charge of the diocese’s Catholic Youth Organization, he transformed it into a social dynamo, spewing out athletes and awards. Gymnasiums magically sprouted from one end of the diocese to the other, leaving the YMCA (and presumably the YMHA) flat-footed. Promoted to monsignor in charge of diocesan education, he proceeded to repeat the performance, building enough high schools and parish grammar schools to win a word of praise from that master apostle of bricks and mortar, Francis Cardinal Spellman. Simultaneously known as a forthright spokesman for the rights of labor and of disregarded minorities, particularly blacks. Injudicious remarks in this area sometimes placed him under a cloud with the then Archbishop. But his money-raising talents neatly balanced those black points, and his aging mentor made no protest when mirabile dictu Pius XII finally died and that Deus ex Italiana, Pope John XXIII, appointed his friend, Monsignor Matt (they had met in France during World War II), to be coadjutor bishop, thus making him heir to the throne which he officially ascended in 1960.

  Now the man himself was standing in the doorway, calm, composed, like a veteran diver ready to do some familiar acrobatics into an equally familiar pool. To Dennis McLaughlin, on the wrong side of the lights, he was only a dark, elongated blur, booming cheerfully: “Is this television or a trip through Purgatory?” For a moment, half smiling, poised between discomfort and distrust, Dennis McLaughlin found the blur a satisfying image. That was all he really wanted to see when he looked at Matthew Mahan. He suddenly found himself wanting to see less and think more about what was happening to himself. What gave this bulky, affable (publicly) man the power to disturb him? As usual, there was no time to do more than record the intuition on the scar tissue of his cerebellum and stand there smiling (he was sure) vapidly while the Cardinal-designate disposed of a questioner or two in the doorway, and with swift, sure strides stepped through the wall of light into the center of the hothouse.

  It was all part of it, the way he walked and the way he talked, part of that enormous self-assurance that he projected, part of the vitality, the charisma (ugh), that wove a circle of charm around everyone near him. Was it simply envy, Dennis wondered, envy from a man who had neither bulk nor charisma?

  “Are we ready to go, Dennis?” Matthew Mahan said in a low voice intended only for him. “I can’t take much more of this.”

  The words jolted Dennis McLaughlin out of his introspection
. The Cardinal-designate was looking unusually pale. Or was it only the glare of the television lights, which would have given a pallor to a full-blooded Indian?

  “They’re ready,” Dennis said, “but I’m afraid I couldn’t persuade them to shoot a single interview. Each of them insists on doing it his way.”

  Matthew Mahan’s lips tightened, and his big squarish jaw jutted. “Didn’t you tell them I want it my way?”

  “I did,” Dennis McLaughlin said, hating the plea in his voice. He could see the headlines now: MCLAUGHLIN BLOWS ANOTHER ONE: PROVES HIMSELF UNWORTHY OF THE GREAT MAN’S TRUST.

  Matthew Mahan glared past him for a moment at the white wall surrounding them, then sighed and said, “Oh well. I guess another five minutes won’t kill me.”

  “Hello, Your Eminence,” said a short, balding man, who appeared almost magically through the glare and made a lunge for the episcopal ring on Matthew Mahan’s right hand, while simultaneously bending his right knee about two-thirds of the way toward the floor. His foot caught on a television cable, and he had to cling to the Cardinal’s hand to keep from falling on his face. There was raucous laughter from the technicians beyond the white wall. The proles are easily amused, Dennis thought.

  “Now, Jack,” said Matthew Mahan, “that isn’t necessary anymore.”

  “I still like to do it,” said Jack Murphy, the anchorman of KTGM’s news team. He nervously fingered his pale brown moustache, which looked like something pasted together from random bits of an Airedale’s coat. “It gives me the feeling that everything’s kind of in place, you know?”

  The moment they had returned from Mount St. Monica’s, Matthew Mahan had ordered Dennis McLaughlin to locate a folder in his personal file cabinet marked “Newsmen.” He found it with no difficulty, and while the new Cardinal rested for fifteen minutes in his Barcalounger, Dennis capsulized the already condensed biographies of the men he would be meeting at two o’clock. The more salient details were underlined in red: the man’s religion, if any; marital status; number of children; place of birth (a local boy or a cold-eyed outsider?); schooling and political inclination. Thus, the Cardinal could joshingly smooth Jack Murphy’s dented self-esteem. “How’s Jack Junior these days? Is he having a good season? I haven’t had much time to follow the sports news lately.”