No Greater Love

by William Kienzle

  He had no “Roman connection.” He had not spent a moment of study in any Vatican educational institution. And increasingly, the Roman connection carried ever more weight.

  Perhaps most important there was his health—or lack thereof. He’d had several heart attacks. He’d had a quadruple bypass. And he had a stomach aneurysm that could pop at any time and conceivably end his life that quickly.

  Priests and concerned laity could speculate to their hearts’ content, but the fact remained: Father Patrick R. E. McNiff, sixty-five years old, a Roman orphan, with serious medical problems, had been consecrated a bishop. That was that.

  Of course, Father Koesler had attended the ceremony—at one time referred to as consecration, more recently called simply ordination. Blessed Sacrament Cathedral was jammed with priests (mostly older ones), laity (mostly members of parishes McNiff had served over the years), and, of course, a few bishops.

  Father McNiff became a bishop the way any priest becomes a bishop: in gradual crescendos. He was anointed, blessed, given symbolic implements, and attired in layered episcopal vestments. All the while, masters of ceremony, as well as other bishops, hovered about the fledgling. With all that going on, someone as vertically challenged as Pat McNiff from time to time disappeared from view.

  Finally, with most of the prayers said and most of the vestments in place, the principal ordaining bishop positioned the miter on the new bishop’s head and handed him the crosier—known irreverently as the walking stick—and Patrick R. E. McNiff was a bishop.

  Then the masters of ceremony and the ordaining bishops stepped back from the newly outfitted bishop as if to say, “Look what we’ve created.”

  At that point, in this specific ceremony, Father Koesler, from his distant vantage point, was struck by the resemblance of Bishop McNiff to a small, ornate statue—perhaps the Infant of Prague.

  The new bishop did not wait long for his assignment. He was named rector of St. Joseph’s Seminary.

  And then and there, at least as far as Father Koesler was concerned, the bishop fell out of circulation. McNiff was swept up in his new responsibilities. That and continual meetings prevented him from maintaining prior friendships. Since becoming a bishop and a rector over five years ago, McNiff had not—unlike the Good Old Days—shared a single meal, or palled around, or recreated with Father Koesler.

  During infrequent phone conversations, as often as Koesler fished for the seemingly secretive reasons for McNiff’s elevation to the episcopacy, the bishop firmly evaded any semblance of a relevant reply. Thus, Koesler, on his return from the cruise, had been surprised by the summons to meet at the seminary.

  But he would not hurry McNiff. The ball was in the bishop’s court; he would serve when he was ready.

  “I suppose,” McNiff said, “you’re wondering why I asked you to come see me.”

  “You suppose correctly, Bish—uh, Excellency … uh, Pat … uh—what the hell do you want me to call you, anyway?”

  “Pat will do just fine.” McNiff looked at him in curious amusement. “I’m surprised you had any doubt. After what you used to tell me all the time …”

  “What was that?”

  “You don’t remember?” McNiff chuckled, then made a face. “You used to say that if you had a dog that looked like me, you’d shave his ass and teach him to walk backward.”

  “Oh, yeah …” With that youthful insult in mind, Koesler studied his friend more intently. The face squeezed into a map of Ireland, did, he thought, bear some resemblance to a Pekinese. “That’s history.” Koesler inclined his head in a semblance of a slight bow. “Your present dignity demands greater respect—at least face-to-face.

  “But,” he went on before McNiff could respond, “I’m much more interested in what’s happened to you than what you want with me. Everybody in Detroit, Catholic or not—maybe everybody anywhere who knows about your appointment—wants to know—has been wanting to know for the past five years—why you were made a bishop at your age.

  “So, ol’ buddy, that’s what I want to know—not what you want of me.

  “After all, I’m retired—as you should be. It’s not likely I’ll do anything I don’t want to. I mean, we didn’t promise obedience to auxiliary bishops … just to the Ordinary.”

  McNiff blew his nose again. “It’s not without precedent, you know,” he said after a moment.

  “Oh?”

  “Fulton Sheen was in his seventies when he was given Rochester, his first diocese. And he quit after three years. Then there was Pope John Twenty-third, who was an old man when they elected him. And you can bet your bottom dollar I’m not going to get a diocese.”

  “And they’re not going to elect you Pope.”

  McNiff winked.

  “So, the question remains: Why? Why was little Father Pat McNiff made a bishop?”

  “I intend to tell you, Bobby. The answers to why I asked you here and why I’m an auxiliary bishop are related.”

  “They are?” Koesler was incredulous. “Tell me about it.” He could not help feeling elated that he was about to become privy to a tightly kept secret.

  “What we’re going to talk about now is just between us,” McNiff stated firmly.

  Koesler shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way it’s got to be.”

  “Did you have to get someone’s permission to tell me?”

  McNiff grabbed for another Kleenex and quickly raised it to his nose. But the anticipated sneeze didn’t come. He shook his head. “No, not exactly. I know I can trust you.…

  “Besides,” he said after a moment, “if you agree, you’ll be involved in this thing.”

  Three

  Patty Donnelly had never been more embarrassed, and it showed. She was blushing profoundly.

  She feared she was assuming some of the worst masculine traits. Balancing a loaded tray against a door that was most probably going to be opened! A typical male approach.

  The result: the worst case scenario. And then she’d been stupid enough to ask the bishop if he was hungry. For what—the food that was oozing down his door?

  In time, she assured herself, she would be able to laugh at this.

  But not now, and not soon.

  How had she made such an obvious blunder? Did she want to be a priest so much that she was willing to betray her own sex and take on the shortcomings of the male sex?

  Even worse, word of the incident had gotten out and was making the rounds. Probably someone from the kitchen. It was easy enough to piece it together. They had to know from the moment they saw her return with the messy tray, an empty bowl and a near-empty dish. No one, particularly an ill person, could have eaten a meal that quickly.

  She promised to clean up the mess as soon as she finished her dinner. That was fine with the kitchen crew; as long as they weren’t expected to clean it up, they didn’t care how many meals she dumped.

  But they hadn’t lost any time in passing the story on. As she entered the cafeteria, the conversational hum came to a momentary halt, then slowly resumed. She proceeded to fill her tray, acutely aware—it was all too obvious—that the clerically cassocked clique, seated together as always, were talking about—snickering about—her.

  Four young men sat at a table set for six. Should she join them and deal with the situation head-on? Or should she sit with some of her fellow non-priest-candidate classmates, and wait for the incident to blow over?

  No, it was not realistic to think it would blow over, given the characters—and they were just that, characters—sitting there so insolently, watching her amid barely stifled laughter. No, this bunch would not let her embarrassment fade away; these guys would spread the word like an arsonist’s fire. She would have to confront them and get it over with.

  She stepped toward the table.

  Immediately, the two empty chairs were tipped inward against the table, barring her access. “Sorry, Patty; these are reserved.” The seminarian who had tipped the chairs gri
nned cockily.

  Wordlessly, she veered from the table. She had not thought it possible, but she was even more humiliated.

  Banned from that company, she had few choices. She headed for a vacant table for two. No sooner had she seated herself than the young man who had tipped the chairs straightened them.

  The point was made; the lesson clear: The seats were not reserved; simply, her presence was not desired at their table.

  Once certain that the lesson had been absorbed, two of the four seminarians stood and headed for the door, thus leaving two at a table for six.

  Patty Donnelly definitely was not wanted.

  The two remaining seminarians now dawdling at the table—they had finished their meal several minutes ago—were deacons, one step removed from ordination to the priesthood.

  Deacon Bill Page rose from his chair. “How ’bout some more coffee?” he proposed to his tablemate.

  “Sure. Why not?” Deacon Al Cody responded.

  Page brought the carafe to the table and filled both their cups. En route back to the hot plate, he stopped for a moment, and held the carafe out to Patty as if to offer her some.

  Without looking up, Patty, face still red, shook her head.

  Page returned to his seat, careful to pull the pleats flat beneath him as he sat down so he would not wrinkle his cassock. He smiled broadly. “A double whammy!” he gloated. “First she dumps McNiff’s tray, then she tries to sit with us. Sometimes life is sweet.”

  Cody did not respond. He looked up to and was in awe of Page, who was older and far more experienced than the others.

  Page was what used to be called a delayed vocation, although the term had virtually faded from usage.

  When seminaries and convents were filled to overflowing before the onslaught of the conciliar era, the norm was for girls and boys to begin preparation for their vocations in high school, or shortly thereafter.

  Now, in a desperate search for tomorrow’s priests and nuns, people who were in the midst of, or even completing, their secular careers were being recruited.

  Bill Page, in his mid-forties, would definitely have qualified as a super-delayed vocation in the earlier Church. Now he was one of the boys—perhaps one of the Good Old Boys.

  Fresh out of Notre Dame and armed with that university’s mystique, he had won a berth at a prestigious Chicago ad agency.

  However, failing to make the most of his promising beginning, he found himself in a downward slide.

  The inverse of his failures in advertising was his success at the dating game: He wooed and discarded many fine women.

  As luck would have it—for those women at least—he had never married. His celibate state left the door open to the priesthood.

  As a boy, Page had felt a slight, quiet call to the priesthood. Lots of little Catholic boys, particularly those who attended parochial schools, did. It was the mid-sixties, and Page was an altar boy mouthing unintelligible Latin prayer responses (so unintelligible that he might as well have been speaking in tongues as far as his comprehension of what he was saying went).

  To this lad, priests were like God, above everybody and in command of everything. And, in fact, he was taught that a priest was “another Christ.” And Christ was God. So … there you were.

  What really influenced young Page to at least profess an interest in the priesthood was the attitude of the teaching nuns. Almost as much as most Catholic mothers wanted a priest son, so did most nuns want a priest pupil.

  No harm then in creating the impression that he favored this vocation. It won him special status at home, as well as in school.

  However, high school, the earliest opportunity to enter a seminary, came and went. Notre Dame followed, and the concept of his priesthood was allowed to fade.

  And then one day, he took stock.

  He had to admit that he wasn’t making it in the world. Realistically, he could look forward to nothing more than a series of failures that would terminate, if he lived long enough, in poverty and abandonment.

  What to do?

  He might marry well. He knew that in the twinkling of an eye he could marry more money than he could earn in a lifetime.

  Clearly, he had nothing against women; he’d had his share and more. Quite frankly, he was good at women. He’d left many satisfied, although in the end, sadder and wiser.

  But the very thought of marriage made him claustrophobic.

  And then the Archdiocese of Detroit launched an ad campaign to recruit single Catholic males—of any age or background—into the seminary. The ads—featuring three extremely attractive clerically garbed young men—trumpeted, “We want to collar a few good men.”

  They hadn’t pinched pennies in this campaign. The ads utilized print media, radio and TV, even billboards.

  Page thought the copy was better than average. He liked the pun with “collar.” But he wondered how effective the campaign could be. After all, this was not a pitch for a brand of cigarettes, a make of car, a detergent. This was an invitation to a lifelong commitment … more; once a priest, always a priest, the nuns had taught. Ordination imprinted an indelible, and fortunately invisible, mark on the soul. So no matter what, a priest was a priest forever, into eternity.

  Could an ad campaign be enticing enough, compelling enough, to induce one to enter into such a commitment?

  Then he paused. Something must have happened between his fling as altar boy and the present.

  Seminaries, back then, were notorious for dumping students. Page recalled that the vast majority of the guys who had entered the seminary during high school eventually returned to finish high school in the parish. Standards must have been tough, he reasoned; advertising for priest candidates back then would have been a foolish redundancy.

  Yes, something must have happened. That the Church needed—perhaps as never before—seminarians and priests was the only possible conclusion. In that case …

  Bill Page decided it was very much worth a look.

  As a boy, Page had been willing to grant the mystical near-divinity of priests—other Christs. He had been willing to convey the impression that he too might become one.

  That superficial quasi-commitment was as far as he would go toward the priesthood.

  Then came the realization that he was going nowhere in the secular world. Could he find success in a religious setting? Or would the priesthood be, like marriage, claustrophobic?

  In the course of his deliberations, he stumbled upon the diaconate.

  The diaconate ordinarily was a final step toward the priesthood. Or—and this marked the recent return of an ancient custom—it could be a permanent state. Deacons could do everything priests do, except say Mass and hear confessions.

  At first blush, the permanent diaconate seemed attractive. Celibacy was optional, though oddly, that meant little to Page. The diaconate was not as confining as the priesthood; not being allowed to offer Mass or absolve also meant one needn’t set aside time to perform these sacraments.

  However, one feature of the permanent diaconate made it, as far as Page was concerned, definitely and completely unfeasible. Permanent deacons received no salary. In addition to volunteering one’s services baptizing, marrying, burying, distributing Communion, preaching, and counseling, one was expected to hold down a job to support oneself—and one’s family.

  That, Page concluded, would seriously complicate his already dismal future.

  The priesthood promised more—much more.

  Page knew that priests came in different sizes; they weren’t cut out of a mold. He had not been aware that they came in different attitudes, outlooks, philosophies, and theologies. They ranged from the selflessly dedicated to those who did nothing exquisitely, to those who manipulated and abused the souls they had been sent to serve.

  Once he made this discovery, it wasn’t difficult for Page to select the personal model after which he would fashion his clerical self.

  Particularly now with the priest shortage, it was child’s play t
o pass the entrance tests. The studies were well within his grasp. After all, he had a degree from Notre Dame. He was a Catholic male who’d never married. He was sure he could bluff his way through growth in holiness.

  Once he became a priest, his future would be secure. Never again need he worry about food, clothing, shelter, or, for that matter, the finer things in life.

  Page would be happy to occupy the middle approach to priestly life. Metaphorically, he would turn over on his back and float through to, comfortable retirement.

  Perhaps the most momentous discovery he made shortly after being accepted at St. Joseph’s Seminary was the importance of being T.C.—theologically correct.

  The theology that was correct at St. Joe’s was decidedly conservative. Well, Page could say Amen to that. Actually, Page could have said Amen to just about any theological approach.

  In this he was not being eclectic—selecting what appeared to be best in various doctrines; all but a very few of the faculty of St. Joe’s, as well as the vast majority of the entire student population, were staunchly conservative.

  He had no quarrel with that. He just resolved to go with the flow.

  This approach had served him well; in a few more months he would be ordained a priest. Nothing could stand in his way now. He was sure of that.

  Four

  Father Koesler and Bishop McNiff inched their chairs nearer to each other. Their knees were not touching, but they were close.

  “Have you paid much attention to the current crop of seminarians here?” McNiff asked.

  Koesler thought for a moment. “Not really. Not for some time. What with the drought in the priesthood, I didn’t think I was in line for an assistant fresh from the seminary. And, as it turns out, I was correct. Even the classic big parishes are down in priest count. I was pretty sure that St. Anselm’s and especially Old St. Joe’s would be one priest parishes for the foreseeable future.”