The Gathering

by William X. Kienzle

  “That’s true,” Smith agreed. “What we’ve got to decide is whether that kind of move is necessary.”

  Lucy Smith toyed with her wedding ring, sliding it up and down her finger. “I think,” she said, “that we’re making a mountain out of a molehill. After all, it’s only one year of integrated classes. And it is our parochial school. Remember, Henry, one of the main reasons we chose to live here was the high reputation of Redeemer’s schools—”

  “With gender segregation,” Henry interrupted.

  “Gender segregation or integration,” Lucy said, “it’s not as if our school has turned into Martin Luther Reformation Academy.”

  “I think,” June McMann spoke out, “we’ve forgotten something: The nuns are all qualified teachers. And I don’t think there’s another parish school in the archdiocese that doesn’t have nuns as teachers.”

  “Lucy’s right,” Nat McMann said. “It was nice having the Brothers … but not essential. As for segregated classes, well, what can you say? It was a noble experiment.

  “Sure it seemed to work for us. But what do we know? The priests who run our parish— and even more so the guys downtown who are in charge of education for this archdiocese—they’re the ones who made the decision. And I think it was rightfully their call.”

  Nat and June had discussed all this prior to this meeting and had agreed that they would try to swing the scales in favor of having Mike—following Manny—stay in Redeemer for that problematic eighth grade.

  They felt sure that as Mike went, so would Rose go.

  The McManns knew they themselves could not afford the tuition for any given private Catholic school. No matter how insistent their Alice was certain to be, the money just wasn’t there.

  They knew that the Smiths would be similarly strapped if both Mike and Rose were to be enrolled in a private—as opposed to a parochial or a parish—school.

  “Nat’s right,” Lucy said brightly. “With or without the Brothers—even with or without the segregated classes—it’s still a good school. And the tuition is reasonable. I say we enroll Mike in the eighth grade at Redeemer. And, frosting on the cake, he stays with his buddy.”

  “It’s your daughter,” June observed. “I don’t think Nat and I need vote on it. But since our Alice will insist on accompanying Rose, I think you ought to know that I”— she stole a glance at her husband—“and I’m sure Nat goes along—we think Mike should stay at Redeemer.”

  Henry looked from one to another. Each face had an “affirmative” expression.

  “That does it, then,” Henry said.

  “Now,” Lucy said, “we come to the much more tangled situation of the girls. For them, it’s not a matter of a single year. Rose and Alice face attending high school for all those years … wanting to become religious, but having to cope with all those distractions …”

  “You mean boys?” June almost giggled as she identified the “distraction.”

  “Well … yes.” Lucy’s tone made it clear that she didn’t think it was all that funny.

  “If you don’t mind,” June said soberly, “Alice and I have been talking about this. We considered the various possibilities. Now, I don’t want you to think that we anticipated what all of us as parents would decide. But high on the list … well, we thought you might agree that Mike should be at Redeemer with his friend for this scholastic year. And now we all seem to have reached that consensus …”

  “Did you and Alice,” Nat said with some affront, “come up with a solution for her and Rose too?” This was the first he had heard of the tête-à-tête between wife and daughter; he was piqued that he had not been consulted.

  “We think we did. But only if it was decided that Mike attend Redeemer this year. Which”—she looked at the Smiths—“is what you have decided.

  “Incidentally, dear,” she addressed her husband, “Alice and I didn’t mean to leave you out. It just started as girl talk and eventually got more serious—”

  “Well,” Henry interjected, “let us in on what you and Alice concluded. We sure could use another consensus right about now.”

  “Immaculata,” June said.

  “Isn’t that the girls’ school out near Marygrove?” Lucy asked.

  “Never heard of it!” Nat was still in a minor pout.

  “Well, I have,” Henry Smith said firmly. “I just can’t think of why it slipped my mind.”

  “Is it or isn’t it near Marygrove?” Lucy pressed.

  “It’s on the campus.” June warmed to what she sensed would be quick approval. “Right on the Marygrove campus.”

  “It’s Catholic?” With a name like Immaculata what else could it be? But Nat didn’t give in easily.

  “Owned, operated, and run by none other than the IHMs.” June’s response was aimed at her husband.

  “Tell us about it,” Lucy said.

  “Well, as I said, it’s on the Marygrove campus. Now you know Marygrove is an all-girl liberal arts college … very Catholic, modest tuition. Immaculata is sort of Marygrove’s younger sister.”

  “Okay, okay,” Nat said. “I know about Marygrove. But what’s with the other place?”

  “Immaculata?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “In effect, it’s a prep school. It prepares Catholic girls for Marygrove. And when you get to Marygrove,” June added, “you’re in Monroe’s backyard.”

  “You mean the girls could graduate from Immaculata and then—more or less—begin their religious life?” Lucy asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “What about transportation?” Nat was determined to play devil’s advocate since he’d been left out of the planning that had occurred in his own house.

  “We examined that carefully,” June said. “It’s not far out of the way for both you, honey, and Henry. You could take turns driving the girls. And, in a pinch, they can get there by streetcar.”

  “Let me get one thing straight,” Henry said. “Rose and Alice would go to Redeemer this final year, then start high school at Immaculata.”

  “Right.”

  “Then they graduate from Immaculata and go on to Marygrove? Do all the girls from Immaculata go on to Monroe to become nuns?”

  “No, silly.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “As I said, it’s a prep school,” June explained. “It prepares the girls for Marygrove but not necessarily for the religious life. The group that Alice and Rose will belong to will go on to Monroe and study and live there. But their academic records will all be kept at Marygrove.

  “Now,” June concluded, “I think we’ve touched all the bases—”

  “Wait a minute,” Nat objected. “What about Rose? Does she get a say in all this?”

  “We just completed our study a couple of days ago,” June said. “We haven’t had the opportunity to get Rose’s input. But”—she looked questioningly at Lucy—“both Alice and I are sure Rose will welcome this solution.”

  Lucy nodded.

  “In that case, it’s settled,” Henry said. He looked at the others in turn. “Mike attends eighth grade at Redeemer. He’ll be taught by the nuns instead of the Brothers. Then it’s off to the seminary.

  “Alice and Rose will do the same, except they’ll go on to attend a high school that is more appropriate than Redeemer for preparing them to be nuns.”

  “Then it’s full speed ahead,” Lucy said. “Let’s get the kids together and talk it all over with them.”

  “Shall we include Manny Tocco?” June asked.

  “If he wants to join our group, tell him to come aboard,” Henry replied.

  ELEVEN

  ROMAN CATHOLIC DOGMA was a strange animal, Father Simpson thought, as he tried to puzzle out the canons, the Church’s laws affecting marriage.

  This was about as academic as he got.

  Ordinarily, Simpson’s reading did not go beyond the sports and comics pages of the daily papers. Actually, this was the first time he’d cracked the Codex Iuris Canonici (the Code of
Canon Law) since his final year of Theology. But he had a stake in the present case, so it was worth his while to try to work it out.

  The Bensons, along with their son, Stanley, had accepted Father’s Simpson’s invitation. The priest had been the soul of cordiality, ushering the threesome into the rectory dining room. He offered the parents coffee, which they accepted. Stanley had a Coke.

  Father Simpson understood that the couple had consulted his predecessor about their marital state and how—or whether—if necessary, it could be regularized.

  Father assured them that he was not impugning his predecessor’s expertise in Church law. But laws change. Perhaps that might reflect on their marital status. It couldn’t hurt to take another look.

  In reality, Church law changed about as often as the bishop of Detroit paid a visit to old Guadaloop. No one could remember such an occasion.

  But Father had to set the scene … give them hope. Because one way or another they were going to have their marriage validated. Then the stage would be ready for Stanley’s entrance to the seminary.

  That, of course, was why Stanley’s presence was required. As a rule, some of the topics to be discussed tonight would not be considered appropriate for one of Stanley’s tender years.

  Questions and answers regarding failed marriages as well as intimate details could be dicey. But Father Simpson was certain that he could end the evening on a high note of hope. He wanted very much to have Stanley see how much this would mean to his mother. His mother’s happiness was the big stick that Father Simpson was betting all his marbles on—the impelling force that would see Stanley into the seminary … and the priesthood.

  That was enough for Simpson. Once he had produced an honest-to-God priest from this godforsaken parish, the chancery would be bound to recognize the magnitude of the feat.

  So, they had their meeting. Stanley fidgeted throughout the evening. Nonetheless, he endured. By God, Simpson thought, there might be some backbone there after all.

  Father Simpson asked obvious questions. The Bensons bared their thoughts, emotions, and deeds. Then, everyone exhausted, the threesome went home.

  The very next day found Father Simpson buried in textbooks. The problem, as his predecessor had concluded, was Mr. Benson’s previous marriage: There was nothing canonically wrong with it.

  Mr. Benson—George—had been Lutheran. He had married another Lutheran. That marriage, childless, had failed.

  People tend to think the Catholic Church does not recognize marriages between non-Catholics. Not so; the Church presumes any attempted marriage valid unless proven invalid.

  Aside from the fact that the couple had been incompatible, nothing in that marriage could be attacked canonically. Both had been baptized (in the Lutheran Church, but that was recognized by the Roman Catholic Church). No one had forced either of them to marry. Neither had been married before. Neither was under age.

  There being no impediment to the validity of the marriage as far as the Roman Catholic Church was concerned, George Benson’s first marriage was therefore declared valid. And that was why—even though the marriage had been a Lutheran ceremony, and even though the couple subsequently divorced—George could not, again as far as the Roman Catholic Church was concerned, marry Lily. In the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, he was already married, and he could not marry canonically again unless and until his first wife died.

  Father Simpson really did not expect to find any loophole. His predecessor had known much more about Church law then he himself could ever hope to. But he owed it to himself to reexamine the marriage. After all, if he was able to validate George and Lily’s union to the satisfaction of the Church, he would have no fear whatsoever of a sanction aimed at him.

  Of course he had little fear in convalidating an impossible situation. The comparative anonymity of Guadaloop should protect him. But should both belt and suspenders be available, Simpson was ready to use them.

  Having found no solution in the domain of reality, he was now in the realm of fiction.

  He couldn’t send a signed form to the Tribunal. He didn’t have a case.

  Some would have found such a situation discouraging. Not Father Ed Simpson. No, Father Simpson knew enough about Catholic dogma and law to open his own emporium of dispensations and decrees of nullity.

  Once the Church had insisted that baptism was needed for salvation. All well and good, but what about babies who died without being baptized? Were we going to send these otherwise innocent souls to eternal hell just because the parents were negligent and postponed the ceremony until it was too late? Or because it was a stillbirth?

  Even the most adamant Canon lawyer could not look at that package of innocence and envision its soul burning forever in hell. Well, some few could, but they would be the exception.

  In any event, clearly, something had to be done. Voilà!—the invention of Limbo.

  Limbo came to be described as a place of natural happiness. A place containing all one needed to be perfectly happy, lacking only the vision and presence of God. Sort of a Garden of Eden without apples.

  Limbo would be the eternal destiny of all who were unbaptized through no fault of their own, and were guilty of no actual voluntary serious sin.

  In more recent times, the concept of Limbo was becoming less logical. And when a dogma such as this lost its logic, it began to fade like the Wicked Witch of the West. Most now would concede such innocents as welcomed into heaven.

  Father Simpson needed an explanation for the dispensation he was about to grant. But he wasn’t going to find it in Canon Law.

  It just needed a good excuse, a good reason for solving a problem that had not been foreseen. Like Limbo. Or like purgatory.

  There is no mention of purgatory in the Bible. But purgatory answers the question: What happens to someone who is not bad enough for hell, nor good enough—yet—for heaven? Everyone seems to know such people.

  On its face, that arrangement seems fair enough. Merciful, even. But dogma was loath to be too merciful. So the punishments of purgatory and hell were described as similar, if not exactly alike. The unending, nonconsuming fire awaited all who were either condemned to hell or sentenced to purgatory. Except that hell was eternal and purgatory was circumscribed. Purgatory continued until … until purgation took place.

  That span could be as brief as the twinkling of an eye or could last hundreds of thousands of years; no one knew. Indulgences helped. But the duration of purgatory and what suffering it comprised were no more than opinions.

  Recently, Father Simpson had heard a fellow priest deliver his concept of purgatory. He compared it to a ticket for an extremely attractive amusement park. You couldn’t get in until your ticket number was called. It was very frustrating to be on the outside looking in. It was, indeed, a mild form of torture not to be able to get in and enjoy the park.

  The crux was that you were going to get in. Meanwhile, you learned lessons of patience and other virtues you had not attained on earth.

  Frankly, as far as Father Simpson was concerned, that was way too merciful. People need a dose of hellfire and brimstone—for hell as well as purgatory.

  Yes, thought Simpson, I need a tag, a name for my new law. Something descriptive—like Limbo or purgatory.

  He rose from the table with its books invitingly open but leading nowhere. He headed for the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and found a stalk of celery. He was embarked on a quasi-diet.

  Somebody sometime in antiquity must have come up with the concept of Limbo to explain how the nonbaptized avoid hell.

  Somebody sometime in antiquity must have come up with the concept of purgatory to provide a place in the next life for people who were neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell.

  Father Simpson had not met anyone in his volumes of law, dogma, or morals who had invented a means of making it possible for George Benson to marry Lily when he had already been canonically married.

  Things looked dark. The thought of worki
ng Guadaloop until he dropped made things look even bleaker.

  As he walked back to the dining room, he passed a statue of the patroness of his parish: Our Lady of Guadalupe. Composed of plaster of paris and painted garishly, the statue depicted a young Latino woman framed by a robe brimming with roses. A rosary—not part of the original sculpture—was draped over the fingers of her right hand. The rosary undoubtedly had been placed there by one of the previous pastors of this parish.

  Father Simpson had never paid much attention to either the statue or the addended rosary.

  Now something made him stop and think.

  The rosary.

  Something about the rosary. Any rosary.

  But what?

  Way back when he had been ordained …

  As a brand-new priest, still wet behind the ears with the oil of ordination, what was it that had bugged him most?

  Blessing rosaries!

  It seemed that each and every Catholic owned at least one rosary, which, in time, was lost or broken, though probably not stolen. And all those rosaries—each and every one—had to be blessed by a priest.

  Maybe it was just his imagination, but the young, newly minted Father Simpson felt that he was spending an ungodly amount of time on such an enterprise. The blessing, in Latin, took a solid five pages of the Ritual. Multiply those pages by the hundreds of rosaries awaiting his ministration and one had a blueprint for madness.

  Then what should he find in his mail one day but a gimmee letter from a missionary organization. He had come close to throwing the packet in the circular file, when something—he no longer could remember what—caught his eye. Possibly it was an attractive layout. Whatever the reason, and whatever the missionary order—its name had long since escaped his memory—he had read the letter.

  One could join their missionary efforts in some distant, exotic land by sending a fixed stipend—he no longer recalled the amount. His face contorted in an effort to remember these long forgotten minutiae. No matter; the point was that this missionary organization had received from Rome a fringe blessing: permission for contributing priests—those who donated to this worthy cause—to bless rosaries with merely a simple sign of the cross.