The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  A glance from the Apostolic Delegate’s brilliant brown eyes said: “I’ll try not to disappoint them.”

  The book-lined shelves, open fire, and deep leather chairs of the library made a perfect setting for the performance that followed. In the relaxed mesmeric voice that Stephen remembered from classroom days, Quarenghi began drawing the American prelates into the field of his personality. He spoke of the Holy Father’s grief at the melancholy posture of human affairs. Then, as was his habit when developing a line of thought, Quarenghi arose and paced quietly before the open hearth. A huge global map of the world flanked one side of the fireplace. As Quarenghi talked, he spun the globe gently, then braking its motion with his hand, brought it to a stop with Italy under his palm.

  “Italia,” he said, “progenitrix of law, womb of culture, mother of the arts, awakener of Europe! That awakening, my friends, has had unforeseeable results. For today Europe is a grid of contesting races, so riddled by anxieties, military and economic, so cluttered with nationalist debris, that the stanchest soul can scarcely find kneeling space.” Alfeo Quarenghi shook his head sadly. “I am a European. I love the cultures of Italy, Germany, France. They are the priceless yeast that will leaven new loaves. But I cannot honestly say that the future of civilization dwells in the fatigued and battered continent of Europe.”

  Quarenghi’s hand moved north, eastward. “And here is Russia—‘All the Russias,’ as we used to say. A vast expanse in which the light of God’s word has been officially extinguished. Last year His Holiness sent fifty missionary priests into this area—candle flames in the darkness. Their tongues of light were discovered, snuffed out. Not a man of that heroic company now lives. A hundred more will be sent this year. They, too, will suffer martyrdom.” The Roman legate put a question in the Latin form that expects a negative answer: “Can the world look hopefully to Russia as a champion of religion while the atheism of Lenin endures?”

  He gave the globe a fresh spin. “Here is the New World. Concerning South America, what can be said? Though the dominant faith is strongly Catholic and most ardent, these loyal children of the Church are plagued by economic and political problems. They will be fortunate if they can preserve their pristine faith—a good fortune that has not been permitted their Mexican brethren.”

  The Apostolic Delegate now laid his open palm on the shield-shaped curvature of the United States; seemingly he experienced the tactile pleasure of a man rubbing a ruddy apple. “This is the land I have so often envisioned in fancy. What may we not expect from a country so boundlessly blessed by God? I speak not of the iron in your hills, the carbon in your mines, the torrential power generated by your rivers and machines. I speak rather of the spirit generated by your people—the spirit of American fortitude and resourcefulness, tinged by an almost mystical trust in its own destiny.”

  The arch of Quarenghi’s discourse became a bridge between present and future. His hearers saw nations and religions crossing that bridge in a vast migration toward a divine goal. Quarenghi made the toiling progress seem possible, real. And in closing he revealed both the nature of his mission to American Catholics and their responsibility to the future.

  “The Holy Father has sent me to your country not in the spirit of authoritarian conquest. I come as neither a meddler nor an overseer, but merely to remind you that the world looks to the Catholics of the United States for a rekindling of the spiritual flame that is now almost extinguished in the world. If your light fails, there is danger of universal darkness.”

  No one in that room had ever heard such a declaration of faith and hope. During a long silence each man sat before the council fire of his private thought; then Patrick Hayes voiced with characteristic simplicity the hesitation and fears of all:

  “You lay a heavy burden upon us, Archbishop. Our strength may falter, our light may fail.”

  Quarenghi was too realistic to deny the truth of the Cardinal’s statement. “That is possible,” he replied. “But as Socrates pointed out long ago: ‘No one can come to harm in contemplating ideals of love, government, or education.’”

  THOUGH PHYSICALLY TIRED, Stephen slept poorly that night. The excitement of being home again, the stimulus of Quarenghi’s eloquence, and the knowledge that a new chapter of relationship was opening between Rome and America made him restless, eager for the new day to begin. Around three o’clock he rose to gaze out his window at the great metropolis silently receiving its sacrament of snow. From the window sill he picked up a handful of the precious substance that gave rigor to the American climate, fortitude to the American character. A gleam of light from a street lamp made the snow sparkle with crystalline fire. Stephen praised the glinting flakes—frozen sparks of the flame that Quarenghi had invoked against darkness.

  He made a snowball with his bare hands and sponged his forehead with its grateful cold. Then, moved by some overhang from boyhood, he felt the need of heaving the snowball at something. At what? The lamppost stood at a too-difficult angle of fire. No chance of hitting it. Peering through the gauze transparency of snow, Stephen saw the apse of St. Patrick’s looming to the west. For a moment he enjoyed the boyish fantasy of having an arm strong enough to hit one of its pinnacles. What a wing that would be!

  The fantasy vanished like a grace note in a song. Stephen tossed his snowball out the open window, watched the arc of its flight as it fell harmlessly to the sidewalk. He threw two more snowballs, drank in a lungful of the frosty air, then, tensions released, he leapt back into bed and fell asleep.

  IT WAS February 17, 1926. Not a date to be remembered in history—but typical perhaps of the era in which it fell. Mayor James J. Walker, ill with a cold, was snatching a vacation in Atlantic City. Senator Fernald of Maine had pledged a last-ditch fight against American entry into the League of Nations. President Coolidge was opposing an outlay of half a million dollars for repairs on the White House roof. A certain Reverend Mr. Empringham, having made a tour of New York speakeasies, was declaring Prohibition a bleary failure. The “Spanish trunk” fraud was being revived; a bill limiting the working hours of women and children to forty-eight hours a week had just been introduced in the New York State legislature. Samuel Insull was buying control of the Chicago, Aurora, and Elgin Railroad; two obscure gentlemen named Hoffman had taken out a six-million-dollar insurance policy on their collective brains. A seat on the New York Stock Exchange would sell that day for $148,000, and real estate in Miami was being snapped up at a hundred dollars per running foot. In the sovereign state of Delaware the whipping post had just been revived to check the mounting wave of burglary; and in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Seventh Day Adventists were predicting the end of the world.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE RESIDENCE of the Apostolic Delegate to the United States was, in 1926, a three-story limestone building at 1811 Biltmore Street, N. W., Washington, D.C. American bishops, drawing on diocesan funds, had underwritten its construction, then in token of their loyalty and devotion had presented it to the Holy See. By means of cornice and entablature the architect had given the Delegate’s residence the unmistakable exterior of a legation, which indeed it was. A purely ecclesiastical legation, to be sure; an embassy dealing not with civil government but solely with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the United States.

  In May, 1926, Archbishop Alfeo Quarenghi, for the past few months Apostolic Delegate to the United States, sat in the oak-paneled study on the second floor of his residence, writing a letter to His Holiness Pope Pius XI. It was a personal letter, not a report, combining respectful intimacy, grave matter, and literary style in fairly equal proportions. He had already covered five pages of crested stationery with the small script of the practiced writer; before the letter was done he would cover five more. Halfway down the sixth page he wrote:

  The secret of the American temperament still eludes me. These people teem with a physical and nervous vitality for which (I am beginning to think) they have as yet found no complete or satisfactory expression. Their outstanding achi
evement appears to be a vibrant and highly perfected technology; with breathtaking machines they have developed a remarkable system of production and exchange capable of creating incredible wealth. Yet this very technology has bred deep conflicts in their personal lives and national polity. Unless these conflicts can be solved, I fear that the collective American soul will suffer a rude shock in the not-too-distant future.

  Alfeo Quarenghi read what he had written and started a fresh page:

  I am beginning to understand the difficulties that beset my distinguished predecessor. Daily it becomes more apparent that the Holy See faces a special problem vis-a-vis the bishops of this democratic, intensely national, and very prosperous country. Not that the American hierarchy is stiff-necked or rebellious. Quite the contrary; the prelates who have thus far paid their respects to your legate are animated by the liveliest devotion to Rome. Their orthodoxy is unimpeachable, and I have been deeply touched by their material generosity. But I have also been struck by the spirit of independence that has made these amazing people what they are. In a word, Americans.

  On one point particularly—the absolute separation of Church and State—the American hierarchy is most emphatic. Their attitude is best expressed perhaps in the words of the late eminent Cardinal Gibbons: “American Catholics rejoice in the separation of Church and State … it seems to us the natural, inevitable, and best-conceivable plan.” Without necessarily accepting this viewpoint, I am at present exploring its foundations in American character and history. My search has been aided by the study of several works, among which I may mention Lord Bryce’s American Commonwealth, Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government, and, of course, all documents and publications touching upon American synods and plenary councils.

  Thoughtfully, Quarenghi began his seventh sheet.

  My position here is one of extreme delicacy. I must, by definition, maintain an “office of vigilance” over the health and progress of the Church, while striving always to leave unimpaired the authority of American bishops. What is lacking here is any well-founded corpus of precedent and practice that will serve both sides in their dealings with each other. My constant effort will be directed at casting the core of such precedent—an armature (so to speak) that will stand up under the highly charged energies flowing between Rome and the Catholics of the United States.

  The Apostolic Delegate rested his eyes momentarily on the excellent copy of Luini’s Christ Disputing in the Temple hanging on the wall opposite him.

  Already I am beginning to see that the absolute separation of the two powers has many practical advantages. Though the Federal government grants no subsidies to the clergy, neither does it meddle in the appointment of bishops or the religious education of the young. Religious and political freedom walk hand in hand here, guarded by a clause in the American Constitution which declares: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust.” While it would be naive to think that bigotry is nonexistent, I find that the clause operates effectively in many sections of the country. For example, the present Governor of New York State, His Excellency Alfred E. Smith, is a Roman Catholic, thrice elected to his high office by the combined suffrage of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant voters.

  Speaking of Protestants, Your Holiness will be interested to learn of their current attempt to weld their numerous sects (some 250, I understand) into a common front. Tomorrow an Inter-Faith Convocation begins, under avowedly nonsectarian auspices, in New York City. Representatives of all faiths have been asked to attend. I received a cordial invitation to be present in person and was in somewhat of a quandary about accepting. I shall observe the amenities by sending Monsignor Stephen Fermoyle to the Convocation as an envoy, so to speak, without portfolio.

  While on the subject of Monsignor Fermoyle, may I tell Your Holiness what a bulwark of strength he has been during these first difficult weeks? As my equerry, courier, and counselor, he has proved himself the perfect liaison buffer between me and an unfamiliar world. When newspapermen clamor for interviews, it is Monsignor Fermoyle who gives them their “story.” He has accompanied me on my round of courtesy calls to the State Department and the embassies of foreign powers. Most valuable of all, he coached me on the personal and geographic idiosyncrasies (striking, in some instances) of the fifteen American bishops who have thus far paid their respects to your legate. I scarcely know what I should have done without his brilliant assistance. …

  And where, at this moment, was Archbishop Quarenghi’s adviser, equerry, and liaison buffer, Monsignor Stephen Fermoyle? Why, he was in an adjoining office patiently listening to the complaints of Father Peter Morkunas, a Lithuanian pastor who was having trouble with his German-born superior, Franz Josef Schwabauer, Bishop of Steubenville, Ohio.

  Father Morkunas wanted to build a social hall behind his church and listed a dozen reasons for building it, including basketball games, card parties, charity bazaars, and communion breakfasts. But in ticking off his needs, he had somehow failed to mention prior financial obligations. Under the pressure of Stephen’s cross-examination it appeared that the roof of Father Morkunas’ church was sagging under a little mortgage—a mere nothing at all—well, to be exact, something in the neighborhood of thirty-three thousand dollars. “And what,” asked Father Morkunas, “is thirty-three thousand dollars in boom times like these?”

  “I wouldn’t trust the times too much, Father,” said Stephen, glancing at his wrist watch. In less than an hour he must catch the Congressional Limited for New York. “But good times or bad, the Apostolic Delegate has no authority to intervene in this affair. The matter is one of diocesan jurisdiction. Bishop Schwabauer is the sole and final judge of whether or not you may build your social hall.”

  “But can’t an Apostolic Delegate overrule a bishop?” asked Father Morkunas, somewhat puzzled.

  “No. In the spending of diocesan funds, the Apostolic Delegate has no voice.”

  The Lithuanian pastor began to get apprehensive. With a not-quite-clean handkerchief he mopped a far-from-dry brow. “You won’t tell Bishop Schwabauer that I’ve been here—that I tried to go over his head?”

  “You didn’t try to go over anyone’s head, Father,” said Stephen. “You came here to find out what your rights were. Or perhaps you came just to make a call on His Grace. Would you like to pay your respects in person?” Stephen added an enticing coda. “He speaks Lithuanian, you know.”

  In the brief interview between the Apostolic Delegate and the obscure pastor from Steubenville, nothing of world-shaking importance was said. Quarenghi asked Father Morkunas what town in Lithuania he came from. When the pastor replied: “Siauliai,” Quarenghi recalled having heard the church bells there. “One was bronze, with an excellent throat. The other two were, as I remember, a trifle on the tinny side.”

  “The Prussians stole two of our best bells in 1914,” said Father Morkunas. “The chimes you heard were poor replacements. Ah, Your Grace should have heard the original trinity.”

  Fifteen minutes later the Apostolic Delegate was back at his personal letter to the Pope; the Lithuanian pastor was standing on Connecticut Avenue, marveling at the God-tuned ear of a man who could hear church bells once, then describe them ten years later. And Monsignor Stephen Fermoyle, having taken an affectionate farewell of his superior, was boarding the Congressional Limited on his way to the Inter-Faith Convocation in New York.

  THE PULLMAN CAR was barely half filled; in 1926 the tidal flood between Washington and the rest of the nation had not yet begun. Relaxing in his parlor chair, Stephen felt like a seminarian on a holiday; for the first time since his return to America a free afternoon stretched ahead. While the car wheels clicked soothingly, he watched the scenery flash past, then in a pleasantly eupeptic state he began paging through the Times.

  There was a mixed bag of news. The stock market was soaring into the empyrean blue; Herbert Hoover, Secretary of the United States Department of Commerce, had announced that the production of auto
mobiles had touched a new high. President Calvin Coolidge was being scolded by a group of Middle Western Senators for his refusal to aid the farmers, struggling through the worst agricultural depression since 1845. Coolidge advised the farmers to rotate their crops a bit more, then went on to praise the exploits of General Custer. Gertrude Ederle was preparing to swim the English Channel. Bishop Leonard of the Methodist Episcopal Church snapped both barrels at A1 Smith’s eligibility for the Democratic nomination. “No candidate who kisses a papal ring can come within gunshot of the White House,” declared the bishop. Imperial Wizard Evans, presiding at a Klan Kloncilium, announced that the sheeted brotherhood would parade (without masks) in Washington, D.C. A dispatch from Illinois described the utter collapse of Prohibition enforcement in Cook County; with leaden ballots the Capone gang had taken over virtual control of Chicago’s municipal government.

  A photograph on the religious page showed Aimee Semple McPher-son garbed in long white raiment, ecstatically preaching her Foursquare Gospel to a packed Temple in Los Angeles. From Agawam, R.I., came news that Otis Cubberley, aged fifteen, had just descended from a flagpole on which he had sat for ten days, eleven hours, and nine seconds. At his descent a brass band gathered and gave music. In Philadelphia, members of the rapidly growing Water Cult sat in hot water with cold towels around their heads, concentrating on difficult questions for the Water Master to answer.