The Good Shepherd

by Thomas Fleming

  On the altar, standing between Cardinals Cooke and Carberry, Matthew Mahan raised his eyes above the blaze of light that engulfed them and glimpsed familiar faces in the stands. It was a little like dying, he thought, watching the circle of loving faces recede from flesh to wavery vapor. There was Mary Shea and Mike Furia and Bill Reed, all looking very solemn. And his sister-in-law, Eileen, and Timmy. He had paid very little attention to them since he arrived. Timmy was probably sneering that he only had time for the big givers. But their pastor, Monsignor Frank Falconer, was taking good care of them, Eileen had told him at the dinner last night. Matthew Mahan said a prayer of gratitude for the good solid steady priests like Frank Falconer who refused to permit the current turmoil to distract them from the fundamentals of their job - an abiding concern for their people that showed itself in 1,000 ways.

  In gaps between the masses of spectators winked the red eyes of the television cameras. The old and the new. The Church was trying, trying so desperately, to come to terms with the transformed world. Somberly now, his eyes sought the face of Pope Paul, whose hands were outstretched, reading in Latin the prayer of the mass, asking God for the grace to follow the example and intercession of St. Joseph. Next he read the Epistle from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, which began, “Brethren: Have charity which is the bond of perfection.” How difficult it was to live those simple Gospel words.

  Paul bowed his head, and they joined him in the Gospel prayer which he recited in heavily accented English. To Matthew Mahan, it would always sound better in Latin. Munda cor meum ac labia mea omnipotens Deus. Cleanse my heart and my lips, O Almighty God, Who cleansed the lips of the Prophet Isaiah with a burning coal. In Your gracious mercy, deign so to purify me that I may worthily proclaim Your Holy Gospel.

  The Gospel was from St. Matthew and told the story of Jesus’ failure in the synagogue of his native Nazareth. “How did this man come by this wisdom and these miracles? Is not this the carpenter’s son?” the people asked. Mournfully, Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, and in his own house.”

  Matthew Mahan thought of Pope John. To these Romans, he had been the peasant from Bergamo, and now they were doing their best to keep him in the grave by calling him Good Pope John, the people’s Pope. Good for an illustration on a holy card, but it would take a hundred years to repair the damage he had done to the Church. Whose voice was that? Not the voice of the Church, the people of God. It was the voice of the realist, the administrator, the man who wielded power.

  Was this the voice that had whispered Frater noster taciturnus to him yesterday? The modern power broker, coolly rounding up the lost sheep by tempting him with trinkets of red and gold? No, he still refused to believe it. The sadness, the sadness with which the voice spoke, this was proof of the other meaning, of the man’s innocence.

  The Gospel was over. The concelebrating Cardinals descended from the altar and sat in seats reserved for them there. Pope Paul walked to a gold lectern and began to speak. He opened the sermon in Latin, then went to Italian, then to French, German, English, Spanish, and ended with Latin again. He talked about the Christian dignity of work and said it was something that should bring men together, not separate them. He lamented the “painful inequities” that existed between the various classes and urged his audience to bring the Church’s social teaching to a world that desperately needed it. The end of the class struggle must be achieved not with violence, but with the meekness of the Gospel. Yet, it must be done with the moral force of justice and with the explosive force of love. Finally, he urged the Cardinals to become more faithful disciples of the poverty of Christ.

  After the sermon, Pope Paul descended to a simple chair at the foot of the altar. One by one, the names of the new Cardinals were read out, and each advanced to kneel before the Pope while he placed a plain gold ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. Solemnly, Paul repeated in Latin the formula: “Receive the ring from the hand of Peter and may the love of the Prince of the Apostles strengthen ever more your love of the Church.”

  Again Matthew Mahan was one of the last names called. He knelt before the Pope, and their eyes met and he found himself searching desperately for the truth he was seeking on Paul’s face. For a moment, he thought he found it in the remarkable mixture of concern and sadness, gentleness and resignation. The stark contrast between this man’s delicate, almost feminine personality and John’s earthy reality overwhelmed him. He almost heard himself saying to this visibly suffering man John’s unforgettable greeting at the opening session of Vatican II - I am Joseph, your brother. It would have the double meaning that it had in the Old Testament, when Joseph, sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, forgave them from his heart when they appeared before him as starving supplicants. What was the full quotation? I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. Yes, Matthew Mahan thought, those words not only would proclaim his fraternity but would also declare his forgiveness of this man, who had betrayed him into bondage. As the Pope slipped the plain gold ring onto his finger, Matthew Mahan found himself compressing his lips as if he feared he might actually say the words.

  To his dismay, with those almost spoken words came a surge of unexpected anguish - the very opposite of the peaceful humility he had hoped to achieve in this ceremony. To him this Pope suddenly personified the fragility and weariness of the old world, struggling to come to terms with the new world that was being born all around it. As an American, a man of the new world, he could cope with this birth agony. It was his continent and his country, America, with its vision of freedom as a new human dimension, an absolute spiritual necessity, that was creating this travail. Trust us, he wanted to whisper, trust us. Have faith in us, and we will make you free.

  He walked back to his seat in a daze, catastrophic voices shouting inside him. Who do you think you are, Mahan? The accidental Archbishop lecturing the successor of St. Peter. Perhaps you should have said it, perhaps you should have whispered the first sentence at least, whispered it in Latin. Ego sum Joseph, frater vester (I am Joseph, your brother.) Wouldn’t that have been interpreted as insolence? Almost a sacrilege? Mahan, you are a fool. By now, he did not know where he was. Cardinal Dearden had to reach out a hand as he passed him and gently guide him to his seat, preventing him from blundering into the audience.

  As he sat down, his entire body was shaken by a fantastic throb of pain. It was a new dimension, a shift from primitive weapons to some kind of futuristic death ray. Or flamethrower, he thought as it happened again. A twentieth-century weapon. No need to reach for extravagant metaphors to describe this agony. He had learned to live with the first primitive visitor, why couldn’t he convert this one into an old acquaintance, if not a friend? Was this his burning coal that would enable him to worthily proclaim the Gospel?

  Again and again it returned, a whoosh of pain that soared up through his body. Unbelievable. Was he going to faint, make a complete fool of himself? Slowly, carefully, he took a deep breath. The pain seemed to subside slightly. He was taming it, yes, he would make a friend out of it yet. What did John call death? Oh, yes, his sister. Sister Death meet Brother Pain.

  The rest of the mass was a blur. Somehow he managed to return to the altar with his fellow celebrants. At the Agnus Dei, the Pope gave the kiss of peace to Cardinal Yu Pin as a gesture of brotherhood, and it traveled around the altar. Matthew Mahan saw the black Cardinal who was standing next to him (what was his name? - unpronounceable, Rakotomalala from Madagascar), felt those dark lips brush his cheek and found a strange, unexpected comfort from them. Was that all you wanted, really, to escape this torment, to be gathered into the arms of God like a weary child? No, there were still miles to go. Like a drowning swimmer, he turned and groped toward Cardinal Dearden, embraced him, leaned forward to kiss him. Dearden eyed him strangely. Did he think he was drunk? God knows what sort of rumors the
Vatican circulated about the Pope’s frater taciturnus.

  Going down the aisle at the end of the mass, he could barely see the smiling faces calling congratulations to him and other Cardinals. When he smiled and nodded, his head seemed to float up and down on a rubber neck, like one of those giant inflated toys in a Thanksgiving Day parade. Suddenly, with amazing clarity, his eyes found Dennis McLaughlin, sitting with Davey Cronin in the corner of one of the raised stands beside an ugly woman with a small, thin boy on her lap. Dennis seemed to be glaring at him, his face frozen in that blend of anger and arrogance that was the standard expression of the young these days. For a moment, an incoherent voice in him almost cried out the truth of his agony. Not all glory, not all glory, the voice wailed.

  In the chapel, he handed his robes over to an obsequious monsignor and dazedly shook hands and exchanged congratulations with the other American Cardinals. He edged his way to the door and was enormously pleased to find Dennis McLaughlin waiting just outside it. He would never have found his way through the Vatican labyrinth to the Belvedere Courtyard, where the limousines were parked.

  Matthew Mahan turned as they entered the sun-filled courtyard in the rear of the cathedral and pointed to a nearby doorway. “The first day I came to see John,” he said, “we parked here and went in that door, and took the elevator up to the library.”

  Beneath medieval arches dripping with overhead spikes they rode, passing orange, red, and blue uniformed Swiss Guards and then on the right a cemetery with tall black cypresses among the gray gravestones. Finally, the streets, crowded with people, and the distant sound of marching bands, crowds cheering. The driver explained rapidly in Italian that he would have to take a detour because of the parades and demonstrations. They headed north, crossing the Tiber on the Ponte Matteotti and racing through the park of the Villa Borghese. Beside him, Dennis McLaughlin was silent, almost morose, gazing out at the lush green grass and brilliant flowers of the villa’s lawns. Bishop Cronin, he explained, had met an old compatriot who had persuaded him to risk lunch at the Irish seminary.

  As Matthew Mahan got out of the car at the hotel, the driver bade him an extravagant goodbye. He stopped, leaned against the car, and pulled a 1,000-lira note from his pocket. “Give that to him,” he said to Dennis.

  Slowly, carefully, he picked up one foot and then another and managed to reach the lobby without attracting any attention. He felt like he was walking under water now, a giant fish with a hook in his belly. Some sadistic fisherman on the top floor persisted in trying to reel him in. “Have you picked out your twelve apostles yet?” Dennis asked.

  “What?” he asked dazedly, as they stepped into the elevator.

  “For the audience tomorrow at St. Peter’s, remember? You’re supposed to pick twelve people and bring them forward to speak to the Pope.”

  “No, I haven’t,” he said. “Whoever thought of that was no fundraiser.”

  “I know. You said that the first time you heard it.”

  “Pick out about twenty for me. I’ll eliminate nine tonight.”

  “Any priests?”

  “Just Petrie and Malone. What’s the rest of the schedule today?”

  Dennis gave him a puzzled look and took a notebook out of his pocket. “Lunch at 1 p.m. with your seminary class.”

  “Oh yes. Yes. I should go but -”

  A spasm hit him, the worst one yet. He crumpled against the wall of the elevator. “Dear Jesus -”

  He stumbled into the hall and asked Dennis to help him. “Put your arm around me,” he gasped, “before I make a fool of myself.” They walked together down the hall like a three-legged man. He handed Dennis the key to his room, and they continued at the same gait to the bed. “I’m afraid - the ulcer’s kicking up, Dennis,” he said. He retched and suddenly his mouth was full of muddy, mucky blood. He stumbled to the bathroom and spit it into the toilet.

  Coming back to the bed, wiping his mouth, “You’ll have to go down and apologize to them, Dennis. Say I’ve got a virus. I’ve had it for a couple of days. Worn out.”

  Dennis nodded obediently and departed. Matthew Mahan lay in bed, shuddering with anticipation before every spasm and almost crying out in agony when it hit. Here is pain, with interest for all those wounds you never got, my heroic chaplain, whispered a crazy voice within him. Here is the real teacher of humility, my dear Prince of the Church.

  Should he call Bill Reed? Or some other doctor? No, he knew what was wrong, and he knew it was his own fault. He had brought all this on himself by ignoring his diet. He had no desire to be lectured like a naughty boy, especially when he was guilty. He would suffer through, somehow.

  Downstairs, Dennis McLaughlin listened to the class of 39 uninhibitedly recalling their seminary days. To hear them tell it, they were a bunch of rowdies, mugs from the city streets beyond all hope of reform in the opinion of their professors. Monsignor Eddie McGuire, pale and wasted from a recent operation for cancer of the prostate, asked if anyone remembered the time they had heated the bowling ball.

  Cries of joy, gasps of laughter. “That was Matt’s idea.”

  “Yeah, to get rid of that damn Benedictine.”

  Eddie explained to Dennis that the Benedictine had taught them plain chant. He insisted on them memorizing dozens of hymns, when all they needed to learn was how to sing Kyrie Eleison. He was also the monitor of the fourth floor of the dormitory and enforced every letter of the regulations. So they had stolen a bowling ball from the seminary’s lone alley, heated it in a fireplace on the second floor, and hoisted it to the fourth floor in a bucket. There, Big Matt had balanced it delicately on a shovel, stepped into the hall, and sent it hurtling to the monk’s end of the building. He had rushed out of his room and seen this engine of destruction rumbling toward him. Naturally, he bent to stop it before it put a hole in the wall. Only then did he discover that it was very, very hot.

  “Back to the monastery for him,” said Eddie McGuire, laughing so hard he almost swallowed his cigar, “after he got out of the infirmary.”

  Dennis sat there letting his eyes rove around the square of laughing faces in the private dining room. Nineteen had been ordained that year. Two were dead; one, Fogarty, was a failed priest, a drunk. The other fifteen were sitting here paying homage to the man who had been their leader “from the first day inside the wall,” said Eddie McGuire, making “first” sound like “foist,” which in turn made it sound like he was reminiscing about a reform school, not a seminary. Next to Eddie the Mug sat George Petrie, of the cultured voice and elegant phrase. Next to him sat slight reticent prison chaplain Peter Foley, the only man who did not have a parish.

  “Remember the sermons we used to get about the younger generation?” asked Monsignor Harry Hall, another suave one. He was pastor of Christ the King parish in suburban Hollisport. He clipped the ends of his cigars with a set of gold nippers before he smoked them. But he was a hardworking thoroughly modern priest who had taken courses in psychology and marriage counseling on his own time and had, according to Matthew Mahan, saved several dozen marriages in his own and nearby parishes.

  “Oh yeah,” said Eddie McGuire, laughing in anticipation, “and the imitations Matt used to give of what’s his name. The Wheezer.”

  “Father Dermot McNulty,” George Petrie said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” gasped Eddie McGuire. “He had emphysema, I guess. He smoked about three packs a day. He worshiped Father Coughlin. We thought he was an asshole. In fact, we thought they were both assholes. Anyway, Matt used to give this fantastic imitation of ‘im. You know, a wheeze after every word.”

  “But his imitation of the Old Man was better,” said portly square-jawed Monsignor Frank Falconer.

  “It’s a toss-up,” said Eddie McGuire. “Old Hogan spoke in an absolute monotone. Not the slightest inflection. Not even when he got to a period.”

  From the doorway on the right came a droning voice: “I want all you young men to know how lucky you are to be here at Rosewood.”

 
The room exploded into shouts of joy. “It’s the Big Cheese himself,” rasped Eddie McGuire.

  Matthew Mahan stood in the doorway, smiling. He looked terrible. His face had a deathly pallor. In spite of the Cardinal’s protests, Dennis vacated his seat at the table and sat down in another chair against the wall. A waiter came in, and Matthew Mahan spoke to him in fluent Italian.

  “That’s why he’s wearing the royal red, fellas,” shouted Eddie McGuire, “while we’re all still pulling away at the oars. It’s a ginny conspiracy.”

  “You didn’t say that when I used to take you home and feed you the best spaghetti in the state, you two-faced mick,” Matthew Mahan said.

  “I know, Matt. But who ever heard of getting a red hat for slipping the recipe to Il Papa?”

  “No, no, I got made Archbishop for that. To get here this time, I had to come through with the one for ravioli.”

  Roars of laughter. While Dennis, the observer, smiles his outsider’s smirk.

  “You should have given it to the maître d’ here,” said Monsignor Falconer.

  Matthew Mahan frowned as the waiter handed him a glass of milk. “Seriously, Frank, was it a bad lunch? Because if it was, we’ll have another one tomorrow free of charge.”

  “Has Fastidious Frank liked anything that wasn’t haute cuisine straight from the Champs Ulysses?” demanded Eddie McGuire. “I remember he used to complain on steak night.”

  “Because it only came once a year, you clod.”

  “Ah, tell it to your French chef, Frank,” said Eddie, taking a large draft of his well-filled brandy glass. “You’re a traitor to your own kind. On the level, Matt, how do you let him get away with it? Is there another rectory in the archdiocese, in the country, with a resident French chef?”