No Greater Love

by William Kienzle

  “I don’t see the problem, Bobby. You’re retired. You’re not on the firing line anymore. That’s the image you’ve got. They—the faculty and the students—don’t know that by joining me you’ve gone back to that front line.

  “You’ll see: You’ll be venerated; you’ll be a figure who’s been, through the battles. You’ll be like the old professors here when we were students: a Father Klenner, a Father Leo Ward, a Father Stitt—”

  “Wait a minute, Pat. I’m not a relic these kids will reverence after breakfast.”

  Their laughter was cut short by McNiff’s coughing spell. Koesler rose, crossed over, and pounded McNiff’s back. “Lay off,” McNiff managed to gasp through his coughs. “You’re gonna kill me!”

  Koesler backed away and seated himself again.

  McNiff grabbed some Kleenex and dabbed at his eyes. Finally, back in control, the bishop spoke. “Listen, Bob, we can work this out. I’ve given it a lot of thought. And you’ve had only a few minutes to let it sink in.”

  Koesler nodded. “You’re right, Pat. What was the time limit the Cardinal gave you originally? A week or so, no? How ’bout I give you my answer before this week is out?”

  “Great!”

  Koesler rose, got his coat and hat, and insisted that he could see himself out. “Take care of yourself,” he admonished. “You don’t want to celebrate your victory at St. Joe’s by dying.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Bob. Oh, and by the way, if you should come across anyone in the hallway, would you ask them to clean up that door? And Bob: About tonight—”

  “It’s our secret.”

  After closing the door, Koesler took one more look at it.

  Disgusting.

  As he turned the corner at the staircase, he almost literally bumped into a young woman carrying a bucket of water with soapsuds popping on the surface, and a sponge.

  She gave a startled little squeal. Koesler thought it a cute sound. “Let me guess: You must be Patty Donnelly.”

  She shook her head. “A friend.”

  “Are you about to clean the bishop’s door?”

  “Yes, Father.” Although she didn’t recognize him, she gave the title to his clerical collar.

  “Then you are a friend in deed and indeed.”

  As Koesler drove to Old St. Joseph’s, he reflected on how the parish and the seminary shared the same name. He wondered whether this was an omen. He also reflected on the conversation he’d just had with Pat McNiff.

  Koesler felt privileged and gratified to have been let in on easily the most analyzed and most baffling puzzle in Catholic Detroit. Certainly the hot stove topic among Detroit’s clergy.

  He had put McNiff on hold as far as his participating part in the St. Joe’s mission. Now, in the shelter of his car, Koesler knew that he would go along with the bishop’s proposition. But Koesler would wait until the weekend to make his acceptance official.

  Meanwhile, he would work things out with Father Zachary Tully, the pastor of St. Joe’s.

  Koesler would have lodging—he was reluctant to call it a suite, even though it would be a couple of rooms and a bath—in the seminary. But if Zack wanted his presence in his former parish, Koesler would not refuse. The same would apply to weekend liturgies.

  Any priest—in the world, practically—who could play free safety, to borrow a football metaphor, was welcome as the first flowers of spring to fill in on weekends. So if, for any reason, Zack did not need Koesler’s help, there were plenty of other pastors who would grab him up thinking they had gone to heaven without benefit of dying.

  In talking this over with Zack Tully, Koesler would have to be careful not to leak in any way the confidence he had agreed to keep. He knew that he need only indicate that certain questions were out of bounds and Zack would respect that.

  It wasn’t a long drive home. Both the parish and the seminary were not far from the heart of downtown Detroit, the parish being the nearer of the two. If he chose to live at the parish it would be only a short drive to the seminary. And, of course, vice versa.

  He continued to mull over his meeting with McNiff.

  Good Lord, it was tough to think of Pat McNiff as a bishop!

  In their youth, Koesler and McNiff had been counselors together at a Catholic boys’ camp. That, as well as being classmates for twelve years, had bonded them tightly. About the only thing they’d never tried was sharing the same assignment as priests. Now they would turn that page by working together at the seminary.

  Koesler smiled, recalling the image of Pat McNiff at the door of his room, disheveled in Salvation Army pajamas and robe … not to mention slippers with a toe hole.

  Koesler was reminded of the old story about a prodigal son-type priest. Having spent all of his pittance on wine, women, and song, the priest, who now looks and acts like a down-and-out bum, calls at a rectory and says to the priest who answers the door, “Sum sacerdos [I am a priest]”—to which the dapper, clean-shaven priest responds, “Some sacerdos!“

  In the case of Pat McNiff: some bishop!

  However, giving credit where it was due, McNiff, in accepting this assignment, had exhibited a significant measure of clerical obedience if not downright bravery.

  Which reminded Koesler to guard against any move to make him some sort of coadjutor to McNiff with right of succession. He could admire McNiff while having no intention of following in his footsteps.

  McNiff had an extremely narrow line to walk. He had to move an ostensibly immovable culture several delicate degrees to the left. All the while the immovable object must remain unaware that it is sideslipping.

  The purpose: to transform a faculty that had become largely closed-minded to one that was open-minded.

  Koesler felt that Bishop McNiff was going about the task in the only possible way: gradually replacing the personnel. It was Koesler’s experience that once a person either closed or opened his or her mind, it was likely to remain in that position forever and ever. Amen.

  He did worry about McNiff’s health. Those heart attacks, the quadruple bypass, and, most of all, the time bomb aneurysm—each and every one was a realistic cause for concern.

  Koesler resolved that, insofar as he was able, he would try to be a buffer, protecting his friend from the powder keg of stress and hazard. If he could help it, Bishop McNiff would not die on Koesler’s watch.

  Seven

  Patty Donnelly had forced down a simple dinner. She knew exactly when her appetite had vanished.

  It wasn’t the slopping of Bishop McNiff’s food all over his door. That was boneheaded, not like her at all.

  It was one of those embarrassing moments that would return periodically to memory, each time causing her to wince. Everyone has such uncomfortable memories that haunt and scar. Patty could have laughed the incident away had it not been for the seminarians—Reverend Mr. Horses’ Asses—who made a laughingstock of her and turned her away from their august table.

  That’s when appetite had deserted her.

  Page and Cody hadn’t yet left, even though they had finished eating and were draining the coffeepot to the dregs. She could hear Page’s distinctive tone. He was doing most of the talking in his sotto voce delivery, which was just loud enough to be heard but not loud enough for the words to be made out.

  Patty was startled when, seemingly out of nowhere, another young woman sat down opposite her. “Andrea! Where did you come from?”

  “Just doing a few chores.” Andrea Zawalich set a cup of steaming coffee on the table. She took a cautious sip, then shuddered. “Ugh! Strong and hot and right out of the bottom of the pot.”

  “I think the mad deacons drained it. It’s good you’re holding the cup. If I had it, I’d probably pour it over their heads.”

  “Something particular tonight?”

  Patty studied the tabletop. “Oh, I did something stupid. Those jerks got wind of it and found it infectiously funny. Then they put on a public show of not letting me sit at their table.”

&nb
sp; “How’d they do that?”

  “They pretended they were saving two unoccupied places.”

  “The old tip-up-the-chair routine?”

  “Yup. What with one thing and another, I could kill them.”

  “I can think of one redeeming value in this incident.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I heard them talking about the bishop’s door and what had happened to it—”

  “What I did to it.”

  “Okay, what you did to it. The thing is, I just got done cleaning it up.”

  Patty reached across and affectionately touched Andrea’s arm. “You’re an angel.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t so bad. At least the slop was fresh. A while longer and it would’ve congealed. And then you know what would’ve happened?”

  Patty shook her head. Already she was emerging from her blue mood under the guidance of the almost always ebullient Andrea.

  “Somebody would’ve looked at that mess that had become part of the door and seen the image of Jesus or His mother, or a favorite saint. Then they would’ve sealed Bishop McNiff in his room and declared the place a shrine.

  “Then the next time you wanted to help the bishop, you’d have to climb outside on a ladder and spill the soup and spaghetti all over his window.”

  They both dissolved in laughter.

  That irritated the Reverend Mr. Bill Page. If Donnelly could laugh after what she had done and the embarrassment he’d inflicted upon her, his lead was definitely narrowing.

  “Why’d you do it?” Patty asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Clean up for me. I would’ve taken care of it. I just didn’t feel like it at that moment.”

  “Listen, it’s easier to clean up someone else’s mess than your own.”

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “While you’re thinking about it …” Andrea tried the coffee again. It was cooler, but perhaps more bitter. “I’ve been thinking about a priest I almost literally bumped into on my way to cleaning up the bishop’s door.”

  “A priest? What’s so odd about that? This is a seminary.”

  “This was a strange priest—”

  “He was wearing a false nose and a bushy mustache?”

  “You didn’t let me finish. I said strange because I’m pretty sure I never met him before. And yet I almost recognized him. Like I’d seen his picture in the paper, or maybe on TV …”

  “Old? Young?”

  “Old.”

  “That figures!” Patty sighed. “Probably a new faculty member. Probably the same age as the Pope. Probably agrees with everything the Pope says. Just like everybody else here.”

  “He had a kind face … and he smiled at me.”

  “Be careful then. Maybe he takes after Pope John Paul the First. He smiled a lot. But he didn’t last very long.”

  “You know what?” Andrea pushed away from the table.” I’m going to make some fresh coffee.”

  “And let those two freeloaders have some?!” Patty was indignant.

  “Maybe we’ll win them over to decency.” Andrea smiled as she went off to make the coffee.

  When it was done, she poured some for both deacons. Al Cody seemed genuinely grateful and thanked her. Page groused.

  Next she poured a cup for Patty and one for herself.

  Patty sipped. It was good. “How can you be what you are? You’re always cheerful and low-key. I wish I could be more like you.”

  Andrea caught the cheerless tone. “If you don’t mind my saying it, you could lighten up a little. For one thing, I think you’ve wanted to be a priest for too long.”

  Andrea was correct, Patty mused. She had wanted to be a priest as far back as she could remember.

  Her parents took her with them to Sunday Mass. Not all churches had “cry rooms”; the ones that didn’t expected parents to keep their children at home until the young ones could behave.

  But not Patty. As soon as she was free from the pacifier, she spent, her time in church looking and listening.

  Taking Patty to church was like putting a fish in water. If at that early age, she could’ve phrased anything, she would have paraphrased Paul’s description of heaven. Except that for her, heaven was a church. So Patty’s version would have read: “Eye has not seen, nor has the ear heard, nor has it entered the mind of anyone the joy that God delivers to people in church.”

  She was fortunate in being taken to a church where the priests were dedicated—serious about presenting a participation liturgy and providing a choir that sounded angelic.

  Because Patty became so absorbed in the Church, as the years went by, she read extensively about that subject.

  In one of her research projects, she came across a woman who would become her patron saint—even though nobody ever canonized her.

  Her name was Jeannette Piccard. She was married to Dr. Jean Piccard, a famous scientist and, in his hot air balloon, a space traveler.

  Sharing her husband’s life as totally as possible, Jeannette Piccard learned how to pilot the balloon, and accompanied her husband on his voyages. She felt it wasn’t right for him to be “up there alone.”

  In addition, Dr. Piccard needed someone he could rely on, someone who would not learn the secrets of space flight and then desert him. Of course, he knew he could rely on his wife.

  In a historic 1934 flight over Dearborn, Michigan, Jeannette Piccard set a record when the couple’s balloon rose to an altitude of 57,559 feet. But the record was unofficial; in 1934 there was no category for women. And when that category was established, it wasn’t made retroactive.

  They’d hoped to go to 100,000 feet, but couldn’t get any sponsors for the flight. Nobody wanted to be held responsible for the danger or the possible death of a woman and mother.

  “Danger?” Mrs. Piccard snorted. “Once I took our son up for a lovely flight in our balloon. Two weeks later I walked through a doorway and broke my hip. And doors are supposed to be safe.”

  In 1964 Jeannette Piccard was appointed a consultant to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. In 1970 she was cut from the program, a victim of the Nixon administration’s austerity agenda.

  Clearly, this was a woman who was all too familiar with the fabled glass ceiling.

  But what most endeared her to Patty Donnelly was Jeannette Piccard’s dogged pursuit of the priesthood.

  In 1916, as a sophomore at Bryn Mawr, she wrote a paper on the ordination of women. Nearly sixty years later, in 1974, she received a phone call. Four retired Episcopal bishops were going to ordain women to the priesthood: Did she want in? Indeed she did.

  When she was ordained, the NASA space staff sent her a congratulatory letter.

  And so, after a lifetime of persevering in the face of discrimination, this dedicated woman achieved her “impossible dream.” Asked when Catholic women might expect ordination to the priesthood, she replied, “When they get another Pope like John.”

  Patty Donnelly couldn’t see another Pope John XXIII anywhere on the horizon.

  However, even without a John as Pope, there was another crack in the dike.

  It was by no means probable, but faintly possible, that what had served Jeannette could work for Patty.

  Somewhere, somehow, there might be a Catholic bishop, perhaps retired—as were the four Episcopal bishops who had ordained the original eleven women priests—who would do the same for Catholic women.

  But even should that happen, Patty knew the fight would by no means be over. Even if a validly ordained—not under the pressure of an oppressive Communist regime—Catholic bishop were to ordain women who had no impediment to ordination except their femininity, the Vatican Church would fight it with everything in its power. Of this she was certain.

  Patty had entertained these thoughts so often that now they passed through her mind in just a few moments.

  Andrea could not have known the stream of consciousness her observation had triggered. To her it seemed Patty responded immediately.


  “I’ve wanted to be a priest too long? Andy, isn’t that like telling an astronaut she spends too much time thinking about flying? Or a writer that he’s reading too many books? What’s wrong with wanting to be a priest?”

  “Nothing—on the face of it. But let me offer you a couple of analogies. Your wanting to be a priest is like a kid who wants to be an Olympic runner but she’s paraplegic. Or she wants to sing for the Met, but she’s tone deaf.

  “Bottom line for all of you: It’s not going to happen.”

  “Maybe it could. Maybe it will. What if we find a bishop who’s willing to ordain us? What about Bishop McNiff?”

  “Whoever it is, it’s got to be someone who’s willing to spend his remaining days picking buckshot out of his hide. And even in the unlikely event—as they say on planes—you do find such a dauntless martyr, Rome would not sit still for it. My guess is the Vatican would simply declare the ordination invalid, have some vino, and call it a day.”

  “Even then,” Patty pressed on, “we would just carry the battle to a higher level.

  “Those of us who were ordained would push on ahead to exercise our priesthood. We’d preside at the eucharistic liturgy. We’d absolve. We’d bless. We’d do everything priests do.

  “The struggle would go on, as it does now.”

  “Now? Here?”

  “Certainly. Here and now we want to be admitted to the M.Div courses.”

  “Again, why? Even if you’re admitted and you pass them all, where does that get you? You’re all dressed up with a degree and you’ve got no place to go.”

  “Not so. When we find our bishop we’ll be ready to go. We won’t be forced to say, ‘Thanks very much for the call to orders, Bishop, but we’ll have to take a few courses’—so a lack of preparation won’t be thrown in our faces along with everything else.”

  “But, Pat, you can take these courses just a few miles from here at Orchard Lake Seminary. Why bang your head against the wall here?”