No Greater Love

by William Kienzle

  Patty nodded. “Cyril and Methodius does offer the M.Div courses to women—as do many other seminaries in this country. But that’s like, before the civil rights movement, telling an African-American that there’s a water fountain down the street so she doesn’t have to try to get a drink at this fountain here that’s reserved for whites.

  “The point is, Andy: All the water fountains should be available to everyone, no matter what their skin color. And all the seminaries should have to offer M.Div courses to everyone, male and female alike.”

  Andrea, lost in thought, did not respond. Patty was content to let her argument sink in.

  “I’ve got to admit you make a convincing case,” Andrea said after a time. “And I can see parallels with the civil rights struggles—at least as far as I’ve read about them and watched the TV documentaries. But the civil rights struggle has one very important advantage over women’s ordination …” She did not pursue the thought.

  “So?” Patty said. “And that is?”

  “They—the African-Americans—had friends in high places.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Granted, in the beginning all they had was truth as a weapon. They didn’t have law court victories. They didn’t have the backing of leaders in Congress, business, or industry. With the exception of the best of the best—like Jackie Robinson or Bill Russell—they were forced to play in their own sports leagues.”

  Patty looked puzzled. “Jackie Robinson? Bill Russell?”

  “You could look it up. Anyway, it wasn’t till Martin Luther King and his nonviolent crusade that black Americans began to get doors opened to schools, jobs, and all sports. Court decisions began to go in their direction. They got recognition and help from two Kennedys—one President, the other, Attorney General. Then Lyndon Johnson—a good ol’ boy from Texas—pushed civil rights bills through a mostly cooperative Congress. That’s what I mean by getting friends in high places. See?”

  “Okay,” Patty admitted, “suppose I agree with everything you’ve said. They had to have friends in high places. What’s the point?”

  “You haven’t!”

  “Haven’t what?”

  “You haven’t got friends in high places.”

  Patty shrugged. “The Pope?”

  “Him and all his buddies. Like Cardinals and bishops and priests—and just about every M.Div student in this place.”

  Patty made an expansive, palms-up gesture. “Haven’t you heard? We are the Church. And there’s a lot more of Us than there are of Them. So what do we need with friends in high places?”

  “Pat, it’s not just that you don’t have friends in high places: The people in high places are your enemies. The possibility of ordaining women priests now is like the predicament of the blacks before Martin Luther King, Johnson, the courts, and the civil rights movement: Southerners didn’t mind how close blacks got as long as they didn’t get uppity. Northerners didn’t mind how uppity blacks got as long as they didn’t get close.”

  “Andy, you just don’t understand. We are the Church! We don’t need friends in high places.”

  “I know, I know. I read the documents of Vatican II. I know it says in there that The People of God are the Church. But I’ve got eyes and I’ve kept them open. Not only do all directives come from Rome, the Pope has done a splendid job of stacking the College of Cardinals, as well as filling most of the bishoprics with men after his own mind.

  “The Pope has taken on the clout of Infallibility. Even if he hasn’t really used it, it’s there as the ultimate threat. One Pope says women can’t be priests because they don’t look like Jesus—which, by the way, would disqualify most of the bishops and priests we’ve got. A Pope says women can’t be priests because Jesus didn’t make any women Apostles. And, finally, a Pope said that women never were, are not, never will be priests. End of discussion! There will be no more talk of it. Period!” The very words seemed to leave a bad taste in Andrea’s mouth.

  “But, don’t you see, Andy: The talk goes on. That’s part of my argument. Sure the Pope wants to run everything. He wants to be ‘The Church.’ And he certainly said there could be no more talk of women as priests. But—and here’s the point—the debate goes on as if the Pope had never issued that edict. We will overcome, Andy.”

  “I’d give you a very weak ‘maybe’ on that.”

  “Your problem, Andy, is that you’ve never wanted something you should but can’t have. You haven’t walked in my moccasins.”

  Oh, yeah? thought Andrea.

  Eight

  Andrea Zawalich and Patty Donnelly were both a couple of inches over five feet. Each was of slender build yet amply endowed—one might say curvy. Their posture was straight, their oval faces attractive; both had blue eyes spaced widely apart. Each was in her early twenties.

  About the only marked difference was their hair. Andrea’s Cleopatra-style bangs were brunette; Patty’s no-nonsense short bob was blond.

  Except for that, they could easily have passed for sisters.

  But it was not always so.

  Andrea’s father was Polish, her mother Irish.

  Andrea was an only child, though her parents had hoped for many more children.

  Her early life could best be described as ordinary. Much treasured by her parents, she tried to compensate for having no siblings by making and keeping friends easily. She was, in short, a happy, well-adjusted little girl.

  She attended St. Hedwig school in the parish where her family lived. All was well—until sometime during the third grade.

  Andrea began to gain weight—a noticeable amount. The gain necessitated fairly frequent wardrobe changes as the girl progressed through one size after another. Clearly, there was a problem.

  The doctor found nothing physically wrong. He suggested that it was a phase some children go through, that in time it would take care of itself.

  Bolstered by this diagnosis, the Zawalichs went home determined to weather the storm. It was all a matter of time. But time passed so very slowly. Day after day they approached their daughter apprehensively, expectantly. Still, Andrea grew heavier. Not as rapidly as in the beginning, but, heavier, nonetheless.

  Andrea was consuming a lot of food. Perhaps, thought her parents, it was as simple as that: She was just overeating.

  They restricted her menu. That slowed her gain, but didn’t halt it.

  They accused her of snacking when she was away from home. She denied it. It was a comforting defense for the parents. It wasn’t their fault; it was her fault. She was responsible for her condition. The parents absolved themselves.

  Both teachers and parents noted a pattern of indolence setting in. Never had Andrea had any problem with either schoolwork or chores at home. Now she was shirking both.

  It was as if she were some sort of engine slowing down, running on fumes. Home was becoming a hell on earth.

  Andrea’s life was changing most depressingly in her relationship with her classmates and friends. In the school of hard knocks she was learning the truth of that old maxim: Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone.

  Andrea cried—alone—frequently.

  Her schoolmates were of the age when children can be brutally cruel. With Andrea they had plenty of opportunity.

  She grew too large to share the double school desk. She more waddled than ran. Races were over before she had taken ten steps. Even after her weight gain slowed, her face continued to bloat.

  Her former friends invented names to call her. She was Kong—for King Kong. She was Moby—for Moby Dick. She was Ellie—for elephant, Dino—for dinosaur.

  In the playground during recess, somebody would take something of hers—a scarf, a hat—and play keep-away. She could barely turn, let alone run after her tormentors to try to regain the swiped item.

  Over and above all, Andrea was terrified. She knew she wasn’t overeating. If anything, she was eating less than she ever had. Something was going on inside her body that was blowing her up like a b
alloon.

  She had no one to whom she could turn.

  The doctor had dismissed her symptoms as something time would take care of. Her parents eventually became convinced that she wasn’t overeating or snacking behind their back. Desperate, they debated sending her off to some sort of sanatorium or fat farm for the duration. But would that be in perpetuity?

  Meanwhile, the harassment by her peers continued unrelentingly.

  One evening her mother bundled her up and carted her off to St. Hedwig’s rectory. She told the young priest who answered the door all about Andrea and her hitherto normal, now afflicted young life.

  She asked the priest to exorcise her daughter. Mrs. Zawalich could come to no other conclusion than that the girl was possessed by the devil.

  The mother had just read The Exorcist. She saw in that book a young girl not unlike Andrea. The child in the novel had a very normal life until, out of the blue, strange things began to happen.

  Granted, Andrea was not projectile vomiting. Her head did not turn 360 degrees. Indeed, none of the preternatural events that plagued the fictional girl had been evidenced in Andrea. But, Mrs. Zawalich reasoned, theirs was a very religious home; it seemed only natural that Andrea’s torment was the devil’s work.

  The doctor had found no physical cause. The condition had not resolved itself as he had suggested it would. To the mother there was no answer other than the supernatural. And it wasn’t the sort of supernatural manifestation that could be laid at God’s door.

  What else? The devil!

  And the cure? Exorcism!

  The young priest was tempted to laugh. Fortunately he could detect the terror in the little girl’s demeanor.

  How would I react, the priest reflected, if my mother or father presented me as a child to a parish priest to have Satan knocked out of me? I would be terror-stricken—just as Andrea was.

  The priest asked Mrs. Zawalich to tell him in the greatest possible detail just how this phenomenon had developed. He listened carefully.

  The priest was not a physician, nor had he any medical training. But he couldn’t help returning to some sort of physical cause for Andrea’s distress—this despite the family doctor’s diagnosis.

  The priest had a friend, a young doctor in whom he had a lot of confidence. With great difficulty, he finally persuaded Mrs. Zawalich to take Andrea to this doctor, if for no other reason than to get a second opinion. A second opinion before they could consider an exorcism. The priest himself phoned the doctor and set up the appointment.

  The new physician examined Andrea. He was sure of his diagnosis, but in view of the circumstances, he referred Andrea to an endocrinologist for corroboration.

  The endocrinologist confirmed the GP’s finding: hypothyroidism—an underactive thyroid gland.

  Treatment was relatively simple. Andrea would take a replacement thyroid hormone, probably for the rest of her life.

  After all that misery, anxiety, fear, confusion, depression, apprehension, self-rejection—not to mention the harassment from her peer group and her parents’ unhappiness with her—the resolution of Andrea’s problem was almost anticlimactic: a textbook case.

  Their family physician had made an error that was rectified by another family practitioner and confirmed by a specialist.

  From that time on, Andrea tried to make her thyroid imbalance relevant to her life as well as to the lives of others who needed her understanding.

  The family doctor took the news of his misdiagnosis in stride. Mr. and Mrs. Zawalich returned to him with renewed if unearned confidence.

  Andrea became again that pretty little girl she had been before her thyroid gland had betrayed her.

  But the scars were there. She now knew what it was to be a leper, an outcast, an object of scorn. She had tasted both worlds, the accepted and the rejected, and she would never forget.

  Unlike Patty Donnelly, Andrea had never wished to be a priest. Partly that was because of her experience in trying to become an altar minister (in the days when—as far back as anyone could remember—they were known as altar boys). When her parish priest refused her request to be an altar boy—or altar girl—she asked why. The response was: “You are unworthy.”

  Patty Donnelly had reacted differently to a similar experience; in her case it simply added fuel to her desire to fight on to the priesthood.

  Andrea Zawalich knew, from the school of hard knocks, that there were worse things in life than not being permitted to be a priest, or even an altar boy.

  Andrea knew what it was to want something she couldn’t have. She knew what it was to want her entire personality returned after it had been buried under layers of unwelcome and undeserved fatty tissue. She knew what it was to want her tormentors to be her friends again. She knew what it was to have her respected and revered parents believe she was possessed by the devil. She knew what it was to prefer death to life in an alien body.

  Andrea was quite sure Patty Donnelly did not know what she knew. It wasn’t that Andrea had not walked in Patty’s moccasins; it was vice versa. But, true to their friendship, Andrea would do her utmost to see that Patty would never have to walk in those moccasins.

  Nine

  Andrea blew across the surface of her coffee, then sipped. She had done well in brewing this batch and she was pleased. “You’re right, Patty: I haven’t walked in your moccasins.” She looked across the room in thought. “I wonder if anyone can do that. None of our experiences can be totally identical.

  “But I think I know where you’re coming from. I think I might have wanted to be ordained almost as much as you do if it hadn’t been for that crazy priest.”

  “Which crazy priest?”

  “Oh, I know I’ve told you about when I tried to become an altar server and the dear Father told me that, as a girl, I was ‘unworthy.’ Unworthy! He didn’t know me well enough to pronounce me—specifically—unworthy. But it’s really something when your entire sex is unworthy.”

  “You know what they say,” Patty reminded. “If a priest is a jackass, there isn’t a Roman collar in the world big enough to hide his ears.”

  “I’ve heard that—from you … frequently.”

  “It deserves repetition.” Patty paused for a moment, enjoying her coffee. “But you know, Andy, I’ve thought of that experience you had … being called ‘unworthy’ Isn’t that a classic incident? I mean somebody has dealings with a clerical weirdo and he or she takes this to mean that the whole Catholic Church is reflected in this guy’s behavior. And it isn’t, you know.”

  Andrea grinned. “Pat! Are you trying to entice me to get behind you in a line that’s going nowhere?”

  Patty returned the smile, though not as enthusiastically. “Why not? The only way you’re gonna know that this line is moving is if you join it. I mean, forget the silly priest who claimed you’re unworthy. If he hadn’t said that, wouldn’t you want to be a priest … or, at least, be thinking about it seriously?”

  Andrea warmed her hands by rotating the coffee mug between them. “I think, maybe, some years ago I might have. But it’s too late now.”

  “Even if nobody’s standing in your way?”

  Andrea was sensitive to Patty’s tone. Patty seemed to be seeking encouragement to continue her so-far discouraging pursuit of the priesthood. Andrea could understand Pat’s need for reassurance. Pat needed Andrea’s backing, reinforcement, moral support—something that testified to the worthiness of her goal and the possibility of attaining it, be that possibility ever so remote.

  “Yes,” Andrea replied. “If the M.C.P. priest hadn’t thrown me out of the altar servers well before I could even get in. And if no one were able to block my equal opportunity … yes, I think I’d be with you.”

  Patty looked relieved.

  “But, as it is,” Andrea concluded, “I’m going to be in pastoral ministry in a parish where you’re the pastor.”

  Both laughed equally heartily.

  Their gaiety disgruntled Deacon Bill Page. “Damn!
Damn! Damn! That Polack broad has spoiled everything. Here we had Donnelly on the verge of tears and now Mary Poppins comes along delivering sweetness and light.”

  Deacon Al Cody said nothing. He said nothing because he didn’t know what to say. His relationship with Page was as a lackey.

  Cody considered Page a man of the world. Page had had a life, a career, out there. Cody admired Page’s sacrifice in giving up all that to dedicate himself to God’s service.

  Cody had no way of knowing that Page was using the priesthood as a flotation device. Page had been slowly sinking, financially, socially, and almost every other way. He had been about to go under before a burst of inspiration suddenly led him to the seminary.

  But Cody had no way of knowing that Page was not what he affected to be.

  Among other things, Page was capable of sexual, ethnic, and every other sort of slur. Never in the presence of faculty members or seminary authorities, of course, but freely among his fellow students.

  So Cody was not unduly surprised when Page referred to Andrea Zawalich as a Polack. Cody wished his idol wouldn’t do that. But he was willing to make allowances for one who was sacrificing so much to serve as a priest.

  Thus, although Cody was somewhat offended by much of what Page said, as well as by his general attitude, the younger man attributed it to Page’s worldly years; he forgave and somehow managed to keep his idol on the pedestal.

  “Still and all,” Page said with a lecherous grin, “you’ve got to admire their bods.”

  “What?”

  “C’mon, Al baby, you want me to believe you haven’t noticed? They may be harpies, but they’re built. They’re stacked. Just look at those”—his elbow delivered a jab to Cody’s ribs—“tits and asses.”

  Cody was embarrassed and he showed it. He simply did not know how to deal with such remarks, so he chuckled.

  Page saw through it. “C’mon, Al, let yourself go, won’t you? Those”—he made a gesture toward the women—“are two very sexy fillies. Not gorgeous, mind you; not to die for … but sexy. And I’ll bet they don’t even know it.”