The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  Stephen found special delight in examining his Sunday-school pupils on points not covered by the catechism. One Sunday afternoon he propounded a puzzler to a class of thirteen-year-old boys:

  “Can Protestants go to heaven?” he asked.

  Young faces, blank, bewildered, gazed up at him. What kind of trick question was Father Fermoyle pulling? Stephen saw a bright talkative boy, Charlie Boyle, holding up his hand.

  “Well, Charlie, can Protestants go to heaven?”

  “Of course not, Father,” said Charlie. “Everyone knows”—his voice broke in a comical adolescent croak—“that only Catholics are let in.”

  Father Steve nodded solemnly at the upturned faces. “Do you all believe what Charlie says?”

  “Yes, Father,” came the obedient chorus.

  “Sorry,” said Steve, “but you’re all wrong. No matter what you’ve heard elsewhere, the Catholic Church teaches that anyone—Protestant, Jew, or Mohammedan—who sincerely believes in his own religion, and who lives up to its teachings, can get to heaven.”

  He let this astounding fact sink in, then continued: “It is true that God has given special blessings to the Catholic Church and has made it the divine instrument of salvation. But wouldn’t it be hard to believe that this same God who loved mankind well enough to send them His Son would turn His face away from billions of His children?” Stephen paused, wondering how much their young minds could absorb. “We must honor the religion of our neighbor just as a great modern missionary, Cardinal Lavigerie, honored the Mohammedans he went to convert. He sought earnestly to win them to the Catholic faith, but so great was his respect for their religion that whenever he passed a mosque, he alighted from his carriage and walked!”

  The boys heard what Father Fermoyle said, and they saw that he meant it. But they were still unconvinced. After he had gone, Charlie Boyle spoke for the lot of them by mumbling: “If it’s true like he says—that any old hard-shell Baptist can get into heaven—what’s the use of going to all this trouble to be a Catholic?”

  ONE OF Monaghan’s insistencies was the “house call”—that constant round of visits to every home in the parish. “Look to your flock” was a cardinal point in his pastorate; as a younger man he had been a tireless roundsman of the Lord, ringing doorbells or knocking at doors without bells. But he had long ago delegated the chore of parish visitation to his curates, requiring from them a weekly list of the homes they had entered and a general report of the conditions they found there. One day he called Stephen into his study and instructed him on the art of the house-to-house visit.

  “You’re familiar with the chief spiritual works of mercy, Father?” Dollar Bill began.

  “Of course.”

  “Run over them, just to refresh my mind.”

  Stephen felt like one of his own catechism scholars. “The chief spiritual works of mercy,” he replied, “are seven: to admonish the sinner, to instruct the ignorant, to counsel the doubtful, to comfort the sorrowful—”

  “That’s fine,” interrupted Monaghan. “Now look you, Father, these spiritual works are prescribed for the layman, which is not to say that they don’t apply to a priest. The best means of practicing them—far and away the best—is the house-to-house call. It’s an institution with us here at St. Margaret’s. No special hours or days are set apart for it, but whenever you’ve got an afternoon that you don’t know what to do with, or a morning that hangs heavy on your hands, just devote it to the honor and glory of God by making a few parish calls.”

  “I’ll do so, Father.” Stephen started to go, but Monaghan recalled him with a pastoral finger.

  “After you’ve admonished, instructed, or just listened to troubles as the case may be, you will sometimes be offered a bit of refreshment in the way of tea or coffee, bread and butter. This I would strongly advise you not to accept. First, because often enough it’ll be a drain on their pantries. And in the second place, the drinking of tea and the munching of cakes may lead to—y’mm—relaxations of tongue and mind that don’t always turn out to a curate’s advantage—if you take my meaning, Father.”

  “I do,” said Stephen.

  “And one last thing, Father Fermoyle. These poor women—and they’ll be mostly women you’ll meet—will be forever trying to press a little money into your hand as you take your leave. They’ll say, This is for yourself, Father,’ or, ‘Here’s a little something for your special charity.’ It’s their good heart prompting them to piece out the meager pay they know a curate gets.”

  Dollar Bill weighed his next words as if measuring out his own blood. “You’re under no obligation to take this money, Father; and oftener than not, the poor souls who offer it need it more than you. But if you do take it”—and here Monaghan spoke with the force of a man who had thrown the devil of indecision over a cliff—“I want all such money turned over to me! It belongs to the parish. If you weren’t a curate at St. Margaret’s, you wouldn’t be getting it. Is that clear?”

  “Quite clear,” said Stephen. He closed the door and went to his own room to sort out the curiously mixed instructions his pastor had given him. What a marvelously consistent piece of work the man was! A true shepherd of his flock, a master in the niceties of official conduct, a veteran calculator of probabilities, and the unrelenting collector of the coin of parish tribute.

  From these pragmatic woolgatherings Stephen was aroused by the knock of Bridget Loonan, the housekeeper. In the unenthusiastic voice reserved for new curates she said, “Your sister Rita phoned while you were in with him.” (Mrs. Loonan always referred to her employer by the third-person pronoun. “ ‘He’ wants to see you.” … “The Cardinal is begging ‘him’ to take a bigger parish.”) “Your sister says to call her right away at Beacon 1218.”

  Stephen called the unfamiliar number. Rita’s voice, tremulous with anxiety, was saying, “Steve dear, I’m at Dr. John’s, 12 West Newton Street. Can you get over here this evening? John’s in trouble.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “It’s what he hasn’t done. Oh, Steve, they want him to kill babies with forceps or some such thing. If he doesn’t promise to kill them, he’ll lose his appointment, and we won’t be able to get married.” Rita checked her panic. “Please come over, Steve. Dr. John’ll explain it all to you.”

  “I’ll be there at eight.” Steve made his calculations to get out of house duty that evening. Would Milky Lyons stand in for him? No, the Milky one couldn’t—he was playing whist that evening at the home of Annie K. Regan, chiropodist and arbiter of the medium-high social circle of Maiden. How Milky was permitted to spend so much time munching cakes and relaxing his mind was something Stephen couldn’t quite understand. Distracted, Steve turned to Paul Ireton for help.

  “Sure, Steve. I’ll take over for you. Say nothing about it to Monaghan. What he doesn’t know will never hurt him.”

  A few minutes after eight o’clock Steve rang the doorbell of a shabby brownstone house on West Newton Street—a region of Boston almost entirely taken over by medical students and interns. He climbed three flights of dark stairs, saw the crack of light at an open door. There was Dr. John Byrne, paler, gaunter than ever, greeting him. Rita, in tears, arose from a lumpy horsehair sofa and threw her arms about Stephen’s neck.

  “What’s this I hear about killing babies?” asked Steve.

  “Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?” said Dr. Byrne. “But it’s true. If you can bear hearing another man’s troubles …”

  Stephen loved him for that. He sat beside Rita while Dr. John got into the middle of things.

  “As you know, Steve, I’m beginning my last year of residency at the City General. It’s a fine appointment. Among other things, I see a lot of obstetrics, rare cases that would baffle the average practitioner. Of course, most births are normal, but in the past month we’ve run into an unusual series of big-headed babies—so big-headed (to keep it nontechnical) that they just can’t get through the birth canal.”

  “I thought they perfo
rmed Caesareans in such cases.”

  “Smart, foresighted doctors who take measurements in time can perform a Caesarean. But a great many mothers never go near an M.D. till the day a child is born. Then it’s too late for measurements. If the birth is started, and the infant’s skull gets wedged in the pelvis”—Dr. John’s hand closed over Rita’s—“then you’ve got something serious. And that’s exactly what’s happened three times in the past month.”

  “What do you do about it?”

  “Routine practice among non-Catholic doctors calls for a craniotomy —that is, the crushing of the infant’s skull.”

  “But that’s murder,” said Stephen.

  Dr. John Byrne sat dejectedly on the edge of his desk. “I know. That’s why I refused to perform one yesterday. The mother died.” Memory racked him. “Her husband made a terrible scene. Took a punch at me. I don’t blame him much. Now he’s suing the City General. In self-protection the hospital will hereafter require every intern to sign a paper saying that he’ll perform what’s known as a ‘therapeutic abortion’ when, as, and if the situation demands.”

  “And if you don’t sign?”

  “I’ll lose my appointment.”

  Stephen knew that to toss away a residency at the City General was to ruin all prospects of advancement among the surgical elite of Boston. The Harvard crowd that controlled the best hospitals might occasionally admit an Irish-Catholic of unusual promise—as they had admitted John Byrne. But if for any reason he lost his place, it meant a second-grade career, the rat race of minor surgery: tonsils, hemorrhoids, fifty-dollar deliveries, with an occasional hernia or appendix as the ultimate top. No chance at the nice thyroids, bowel resections, or end-to-end anastomoses. You stepped aside, even in the Grade B hospitals that took you in, and watched a man from City General coolly enter a belly, and considered it a wonderful break if he asked you to sew up after him.

  Obliged by every canon of faith to uphold the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” Stephen could not bring himself to exert pressure on a good man faced by such a choice.

  “When do you make your decision?”

  Dr. John Byrne gazed at his scrubbed bony hands as though apologizing to them for the hack work that stretched ahead. “I’ve made it already, Steve. I told Dr. Kennard this morning I couldn’t sign.”

  Rita’s full fresh lips pressed against Dr. John’s cheek. “My man’s no baby-killer,” she said.

  Stephen was wrothy. “You can make an issue of it,” he flared. “If the Cardinal knew that murder was now mandatory at the City General, he’d break the thing wide open. The more I think about it, the madder I get.” He seized John’s high bony shoulders. “How about my nailing this right onto the Cardinal’s door as a test case?”

  Dr. John shook his head. “No—that’s not the way to handle it, Steve. You’d only get a name for meddling in affairs beyond the jurisdiction of a curate. Besides, I happen to know that the attitude at the Chancery is ‘hands off.’ There’ll be a ringing editorial about it in The Monitor, but as for interfering with the internal management of the City General, well —Number One is too smart for that.”

  John Byrne’s diagnostic turn of mind let him see the other side of the case. “I can understand why, Steve. To the lay mind, the Church’s position in this skull-crushing business is a nasty one to defend.” He hooked a long arm around Rita’s waist. “Most men, myself included, feel that a living wife is more valuable than a dead baby.”

  Watching Rita’s head find a natural place under Dr. John’s collarbone, Steve understood very well. “What’s your next step, John?”

  Humor too grim for smiling, too controlled for bitterness, played through John Byrne’s reply. “Oh, I’ll open up shop in South Boston and write prescriptions for people with sniffles and hangovers. I may even get some life-insurance examinations at a dollar apiece. And don’t forget, I’m supposed to be an obstetrician. People in South Boston have a lot of babies, and at the last minute they’ll be asking Dr. Byrne to kindly step around with his little black bag, and please bring his own soap because the rats ate the last piece in the house. There’ll be plenty to do, once I get started. Meanwhile, Rita and I—well, I guess we’ll just keep on waiting.”

  For the first time in his life Stephen wished that he had a great deal of money. He would say to this wonderful pair: “Look, you two. Here’s twenty-five thousand dollars. Get married right away and buy a house in Brookline, with enough room for five or six kids. Then you, John, set yourself up on Commonwealth Avenue, with waiting rooms, receptionists, and nurses—out-Brahmin the Brahmin doctors at their own game of high-priced surgery.”

  How childish! No, salvation didn’t come that way to people like John Byrne and Rita Fermoyle. Steve said the thing he really believed. “I’m glad you made the decision, John. It’s tough—but there’s nothing else you could have done.”

  He kissed Rita, shook hands with Dr. John, and felt his way down the dark, banistered stairs. He knew that as soon as he closed the door, Rita’s consoling mouth would be under her John’s. The knowledge brought only gladness. In a world of grief, frustration, and loneliness, when men and women kissed and clung to one another for mutual support, Stephen felt neither alone nor unsupported.

  A sea of greater love buoyed him; he floated on its sustaining wave.

  Yet as he reviewed John Byrne’s decision, Stephen saw quite clearly that God’s weather was not always halcyon. The sea of faith could buffet as well as sustain. To accept its salt chastisement without whimpering required extraordinary self-discipline and perfect trust.

  “When my test comes,” prayed Stephen, “grant, Lord, that I shall not murmur against the rigors of Thy love.”

  CHAPTER 4

  IN TRAINING the new crop of altar boys, Stephen crashed into unexpected trouble.

  A peculiar situation, of long standing and not wholly intelligible to Steve, had developed in St. Margaret’s: a mysterious young man named Lewis Day had installed himself as a combination of sacristan, verger, and personal acolyte to Pastor Monaghan, and devoted himself so single-heartedly to assisting him at High Mass that the pastor nourished the illusion that his curates were as well served as himself. Actually there was a grave shortage of altar boys, and the quality of their performance was unforgivably poor.

  Lew Day, in addition to being the perfect acolyte, had gradually taken over complete care of the altar. Its linen, candles, and flowers were in his charge, and he performed his duties so scrupulously that he could (and did) beat off all attempts of well-meaning female parishioners to share his labors as sacristan. Lew had gone even further; he had fitted up a little room off the sacristy as a workshop, and in this monastic cubbyhole he polished candlesticks, filled the sanctuary lamps, and exercised his talent for painting on parchment. The illuminated altar cards in the upper church were Lew’s handiwork, and he had also painted in crimson and gold the Latin inscription invoking a gift of purity in body and soul. This he had hung over the sacristy washbowl:

  Da, Domine, virtutem manibus meis ad abstergendam omnem maculam, ut sine pollutione mentis et corporis valeam tibi servire.

  More recently Lew had begun to mend and repair the sacred vestments belonging to St. Margaret’s. At his own expense he purchased gold and silver thread, and by skillful use of his embroidery needle kept many a brocaded garment in service long after its time. All this he did so quietly and self-effacingly that it was difficult for Sexton McGuire, or anyone else, to lodge a complaint against him.

  Such was the situation when Father Stephen undertook to reorganize the altar-boy system. At various times he had seen Lew Day gliding like a wraith into his cubbyhole, or kneeling with bowed head within the sanctuary, but Steve had always hesitated to break in on the young man’s work or devotions. Puzzled by the air of mystery hanging about this shy soul, Stephen applied to Father Paul Ireton for information.

  “What’s the story on Lew Day?”

  “A sad one, Steve. But there’s no secret about it. When
he was seventeen or thereabouts, Lew went away to one of the monastic orders. You can see why. There’s not a trace of the secular in him. Well, just before he took his final vows”—Father Ireton wasn’t being his usual outspoken self—“they discovered that his nervous system wasn’t—quite strong enough. His heart’s locked in the sanctuary, but they won’t let him be a priest. So he takes it out by being just about the best acolyte that ever assisted at the altar.” Father Ireton turned his gray eyes full on the younger priest. “Handle him gently, Steve. He bruises easy.”

  “Should I ask him to help me with the new altar-boy setup—or go around him entirely?”

  Paul Ireton pondered the question. “No matter how you handle Lew, he’s going to be hurt. Everything considered, perhaps it might be better to tell him what you’re planning to do.”

  Tact was uppermost in Stephen’s manner as he approached the brooding young man in his little workshop. Lew Day was about twenty-three, frail-boned, with thin, silky hair baldish at the crown, as though nature had given him the tonsure that the Church withheld. Steve found him sitting on a high stool, diligently rubbing metal polish into a massive candlestick. Some reticent dignity about this strange young man kept Steve from being too brisk as he outlined his plan.

  “Lew, I turn green with envy every time I see you assisting at High Mass. Do you suppose you could help me train a few kids in the lost art of serving properly?”

  Eyes downcast, Lew applied metal polish to the base of the candlestick. “How can I help?” he asked. Undertone of self-pity added, “An ordained priest doesn’t need help from a poor reject like me.”

  Temperament, thought Steve. Mr. Lew Day is touchy, all right. Aloud he said: “I can put the kids in shape for Low Mass, Lew—but I’ll need someone to help me while I’m getting them ready to serve at a Solemn High.” Steve let his enthusiasm ride. “You and I, celebrant and deacon, will run through the Mass for them on the sacristy altar. When they see how Mass should be served, it may mean the start of a new tradition here at St. Margaret’s. What do you say?”