Every Saint a Sinner

by Pearl Solas

  An even more complicated truth struggled to rise to the surface: He had so long admired and wanted to emulate Father Paul—what did this say about him? And, even in the midst of his confusion, he still cared about Father Paul’s opinion of him, and craved Father Paul’s approval.

  Joshua was a person of action. He never remained paralyzed with indecision when confronted with a problem. Instead, he developed plans and attacked them. But Joshua had no idea where to begin formulating a plan for this situation. Worse, the person whose advice he valued the most was the problem. Joshua felt nausea rise within him once again. He rushed to the grass nearby and his stomach emptied itself of its contents. He unlocked his bicycle with the precise movements that characterized his usually orderly mind, but then buried his face in his hands, crying out in gulping, gasping sobs.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Paul woke himself with the sobs that had carried over to his body from the dreamworld. He breathed deeply to calm himself as he returned to the awareness that, in fact, he occupied his own body and mind instead of the body and mind of Joshua Phillips. Paul hadn’t spared a thought for Joshua in years. But now, having lived within Joshua’s experience, Paul couldn’t lie to himself any longer. He couldn’t tell himself that Joshua had been a mature young man when they had known each other. He had been a child who had had no point of reference for his encounter with Paul, and no skills to extricate himself from the situation.

  For the first time, Paul caught a glimpse of the enormity of his actions. Regarding his “seductions,” Paul experienced a new emotion: shame. By inhabiting Joshua’s perspective, Paul internalized what he had been told but had never before appreciated—that Joshua and, Paul now realized, all the other boys had neither the capacity to give consent nor the tools to refuse him.

  Dwelling within Joshua’s perspective laid bare another lie Paul had repeated to himself so often that he had come to believe it. The substance Paul added to the boys’ drinks did not simply relax them and remove their inhibitions. In combination with the stiff drinks, it impaired their awareness and rendered them incapable of resistance. The lies fell away, and the truth to which Paul had willfully blinded himself looked him full in the face: Paul had not seduced those boys—he had raped them.

  Once he was confronted with the truth, Paul experienced horror at the enormity of the damage he had inflicted over many years. For the first time, he wept for the pain he had caused rather than for his own perceived persecution. Not used to feeling guilt, the sensation was crushing and inescapable. Paul was certain that, now that it had broken in, it would dig in like the most unwelcome of guests.

  The immediacy of the dream and its aftermath had been so consuming that Paul hadn’t taken in his surroundings, as one usually does upon waking. When his weeping had run its course, he felt that hollowed-out, soul-scrubbing effect following uncontrollable sobbing. It was only then that he realized he had not awoken in his usual bunk. He considered the dim, sterile light of his strange surroundings, and the circumstances that had landed him in the prison hospital came flooding back to him. But it seemed as though the situation had changed vastly from when he had drifted into the sleep from which he feared he wouldn’t awake: though his eyes were puffy from weeping, both were fully functional.

  Paul took further stock of his body and was surprised to note an absence of pain. Reasoning that the medical staff must have put a powerful opioid in his IV as he slept, Paul felt his body and his face with his hands. In addition to the ease with which he was able to move his broken limbs, Paul was mystified by the smoothness of his face. It contained none of the lacerations or swelling from the severe beating he had endured a few short hours earlier.

  Paul began shouting for the attendant, for the doctor, for anyone within earshot. When the duty nurse ran in breathlessly, she started upon seeing Paul sitting up in his bed without any cuts or bruises. In an urgent tone, Paul said, “I need to see Father Frank right away.”

  Unconsciously responding to his imperious tone, the nurse replied, “I’ll call Dr. Yvette.”

  While he waited, Paul removed his casts and bandages, and slid to his knees on the floor.

  Yvette, rushing in a few minutes later, found Paul in this prone position, alternately praying, weeping, and laughing as his emotions alternated between intense grief and shame as he remembered his dream, and confusion, amazement, and gratitude for his remarkable healing.

  When Yvette touched Paul’s shoulder, Paul looked up with red-rimmed but shining eyes. “It has to be a miracle, Doctor,” began Paul in a rush. “My body has never felt better. I need to see Father Frank right away.”

  Yvette maintained a thoughtful silence, as if she needed to see Frank herself. “We’ll send someone to bring Father Frank, but first, let’s take a better look at you.”

  The doctor began checking Paul’s current condition against the inventory of wounds she had catalogued less than twelve hours earlier. Every single one of the lacerations, broken bones, bruises, swelling, and potential sources of internal bleeding she had noted seemed to have disappeared completely. Although Yvette was a woman of lifelong faith, and she attended her respectable, stolid Episcopalian church semi-regularly, her religious inclinations knew their place. While she conceded the theoretical possibility of divine intervention, she placed such possibilities firmly behind explanations that relied on observable, replicable scientific reasoning. The further Yvette’s examination of Paul progressed, the more she had to subdue competing sensations of wonder and panic as the foundations of her comfortable worldview suffered indelible cracks.

  As Yvette prepared the paperwork for new x-rays of Paul’s ribs, a guard entered the room in a flurry, his face ashen.

  “It’s Father Frank,” blurted out the man. “You need to come right away.”

  Yvette’s long training took over and she responded unhesitatingly to the panic in the guard’s voice. Almost before she realized it, she had put down the camera she was using to document Paul’s condition, and had taken two long strides toward the door. Hesitantly, the guard nodded toward the camera and said, “You might want to bring that.”

  Wrinkling her forehead and thinking to herself, What in the world is going on? Yvette had a presentiment that whatever was happening with Father Frank related to Paul’s astonishing recovery. She hastily retrieved the camera and followed the guard at a trot.

  When Yvette left, Paul resumed his prostrate position on the floor, praying. He alternately thanked God for his physical improvement and wept because of his new awareness of the gravity of his sins. He did not know how long Yvette was absent, but he felt a shift in the air around him upon her silent return.

  Paul was surprised to find that Yvette’s face mirrored his own—swollen and blotchy from crying. Paul raised himself from the floor and sat on his bed patiently. Rather than joining him at the bedside and resuming her examination, Yvette sank into the closest chair and rested her forearms on her thighs, her face a shifting mask of grief, confusion, and disbelief.

  When she was finally able to collect herself enough to speak, Yvette cleared her throat. Her voice lacked the authority that she’d learned from holding her own for many years among the prisoners. She sounded much younger and more fragile. “Father Frank has died,” she said simply.

  Paul sat in stunned silence. “What? . . . How?” he finally asked.

  In a voice raspy with grief Yvette replied, “The guard found him in his cell this morning, looking like he had been severely beaten. He was still alive when I arrived, but he died as we were moving him from his cell to the prison hospital. The autopsy should clarify some things, but I suspect he died from internal bleeding.”

  “When . . . Who . . . ?” Paul stammered.

  “We don’t know,” Yvette answered. “He went back to bed in his cell after visiting you late last night, and as far as we know only the guards had access to him between then and this morning. Of course, they’re being questioned, but I would be surprised if that yields anything.
It was the strangest thing . . .” Yvette broke off, shaking her head as if to clear it.

  “It was the strangest thing,” she began again, “but Father Frank’s injuries looked identical to yours. His left eye was swollen shut, he had the same lacerations to his face and arms, and I think his autopsy will catalog injuries that match the injuries you had last night. How does something like this happen?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Paul truthfully. “I mean, obviously . . . God . . . but I don’t know how, and I certainly don’t know why.”

  After a brief and incredulous silence, Paul asked, “Have you called in a priest to say last rites for Father Frank? It would be important to him.”

  Yvette nodded without speaking, lost in thought. A few minutes later, she spoke again, “He was still conscious when I arrived, and he spoke to me as we were moving him here.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was obviously in a lot of pain, but he didn’t seem afraid or upset. Instead, he was . . . joyful? He was insistent that nobody had beaten him. He said . . . he said that his injuries were proof that God loved him and that God was willing to use even imperfect people for great things. He said I should tell others what I had seen and heard. He also asked me to pass along a message to you.”

  Yvette paused to locate a glass and water, and Paul waited impatiently while she took a long drink. After she had finished, she continued, “He said that God wants to use you, too, and that your imperfections make you perfect for God’s purposes. He said not to squander your new knowledge. Does that make any sense to you?”

  Tears that had been eager all morning once again escaped from Paul’s eyes and raced down his cheeks. “It makes all the sense in the world,” he affirmed. “When Father Matt finishes with last rites, will you please ask him to come and see me? I need to make my confession.”

  Yvette observed the difference between when Paul requested to make his confession to Father Frank the night before, and his current request. Although he had obviously been in a great deal of pain the previous evening because of his physical injuries, Paul’s request for Father Frank’s presence had had an urgency borne of terror. A different motivation was manifest in this morning’s request. He asked to see Father Matt with an air of hope, and his eyes shone with wonder and purpose.

  Yvette’s head reeled from the whirlwind of the previous twelve hours, and from the inexplicable phenomena the morning had presented to her. “Absolutely,” she said, “I’ll let him know.” She pulled the clipboard from the end of Paul’s bed and retrieved her camera from the chair where she had set it down.

  “Shall we continue?”

  Part IV

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As Dr. Yvette had predicted, Frank’s autopsy revealed the cause of death to be exsanguination resulting from a liver laceration. This particular injury did not match the injuries Yvette had treated and documented with respect to Paul the previous evening, but in every other respect, the medical examiner’s written observations of Frank’s injuries were consistent with, and in fact eerily identical to, Yvette’s notes on Paul’s injuries. Yvette surmised the liver laceration would have been revealed if she had access to the right imaging equipment.

  One of the many surprising aspects surrounding Frank’s mysterious death and Paul’s remarkable recovery was that the events did not generate larger ripples of attention. The story was not widely publicized because the prison had an interest in containing the news of a mysterious death of a prisoner within its care. As Frank had no living family willing to maintain contact with him, the prison did not have to contend with pressure from that quarter. The Church had its own reasons for containing the story. The institution’s public relations machine, always leery of miracle claims, was particularly circumspect regarding an unexplained phenomenon in which the primary participants were priests convicted of sexual crimes against children.

  But those who had been affected by the events, or who had observed them firsthand, couldn’t help but talk about what they had witnessed. They soon learned, though, that most people dismiss fantastic stories they haven’t personally experienced. Even the previously unblemished credibility of observers like Yvette did not lend much weight to the remarkable tale, and Yvette watched her own stock drop with each telling—her audience averting its eyes in embarrassment at what they perceived to be her delusion and newfound religious fervor. Even friends and colleagues Yvette knew to have their own religious inclinations were uncomfortable discussing the subject with her, and their faces feigned polite interest while their eyes did not quite conceal concern for Yvette’s mental health.

  As had Yvette before the event with Paul and Frank, her friends and colleagues preferred their church (and, by extension, their God) to stay in its place. For the most “religious” of them, it was a forum for gathering, socializing, and networking, and for others with only nominal religious affiliation, it was an occasional obligation. Their faith memberships were perhaps most helpful in allowing them to identify where they stood in the endless categorizations of “us versus them,” and bolstering their feelings of belonging and superiority. Even the regular churchgoers among Yvette’s circle of acquaintances, who were steeped in language regarding God’s omnipresence and omnipotence, did not translate the concept of such power into their daily lives.

  Absent a plausible scientific explanation for the events, Yvette continued to believe she had witnessed a miracle. Yvette was baffled by God’s motives in trading the life of a good, though flawed, man for a man who had been such a willing instrument of evil. Yvette didn’t see evidence that the miracle had transformed Paul into a valuable member of society, or in this case, the prison community. Instead, when he was not required to be out of his cell, Paul spent all of his time on his bunk, sobbing.

  Just because Yvette didn’t observe an improvement in Paul did not mean he hadn’t changed profoundly. Part of the reason Paul wept was because of his confusion and grief about Father Frank, whose joyous selflessness, as reported by Yvette, baffled Paul. The bigger reason for his constant tears, though, were the dreams that inundated his sleep and haunted his waking hours. He did all he could to avoid sleep. Even so, inevitably, eventually he succumbed to what his body demanded, and the resulting dreams were visceral, intense, and singular in their theme. Paul experienced, from the adolescent perspective of his victims, the sexual violations Paul had inflicted upon them. He inhabited their naivete and trust of priests; he experienced their confusion, pain, and shame about the acts into which Paul forced and coerced them; and he lived within the ever-present, stomach-churning sense of betrayal.

  In his dreams, Paul so often saw his own face twisted in manipulation and lust that in waking life, his reflection became repulsive to him. For most of his life he had been unable to pass a reflective surface without admiring his own pleasing features, but he began covering the polished sheet of metal that served as a mirror in his cell, and avoiding the other mirrors within the prison’s walls.

  Because Paul continued to refuse to identify his attacker, he was housed in a single-person cell within the protective unit. Other than the solitary walk in a small, secluded courtyard for an hour each day, he passed his time praying or speaking with Father Matt, the prison chaplain.

  While Yvette did not believe that Paul was using the remarkable gift he had received for any higher purpose, Father Matt had a different perspective. Paul was, admittedly, spending a great deal of time in seclusion, but that time alone was not wasted. Before the Event, Father Matt’s interactions with Paul had been infrequent and unpleasant. Paul had postured and attempted to exert hierarchical dominance over Father Matt. Father Matt had reminded Paul, as gently as possible, that Paul was no longer a priest and that his time might be better spent repenting for the crimes that had landed him in prison and resulted in defrocking. Paul had responded by raising his chin defiantly and arguing that the process that stripped him of his status as an ordained priest had been illegitimate. The two men hadn’t had much
to say to each other after that.

  But the Event significantly altered this dynamic. In his terror and grief, Paul requested a visit from Father Matt and, with unprecedented humility, Paul began making his confession. As with Saint Augustine, a single session of confession was grossly inadequate for Paul to detail the extent of his sin or to adequately express the depth of his remorse. Paul and Father Matt understood that this confession would be an ongoing process that would take as long as it took. After it became apparent that his dreams would continue to plague his sleep and recall specific instances of abuse he had inflicted, Paul and Father Matt decided to allow God’s messages, in the form of the dreams, to shape each confessional session. Father Matt scheduled time to visit Paul every day, and every day, Paul described some new horror he had inflicted on a young man who had trusted him to be God’s representative on earth.

  The stories that Paul shared haunted Father Matt but, paradoxically, they also gave him reason to hope. Father Matt had heard the confessions of other men who had sexually abused children and adolescents and, like Father Frank had done with Paul in the medical ward, he had occasionally been forced to suspend confessions because of a demonstrable lack of true repentance.

  His current sessions with Paul were markedly different, however. The confident, arrogant priest who had refused to acknowledge the validity of the process that had defrocked him, and who had not accepted that he had raped sexual “partners,” had been replaced by a broken man with tormented eyes. Paul’s previous physical fastidiousness, which he had maintained even throughout his pre-Event incarceration, deserted him. A lifelong adherent to rigorous physical exercise, a healthy diet, and meticulous grooming, Paul had lost all interest in food and exercise. He became unkempt, and his increasingly sallow skin, declining weight, bedraggled hair, and stale odor contributed to a general impression of wretchedness and despair. Anyone meeting Paul for the first time would have found it impossible to believe he had been a respected and admired member of the community only a few short years before.