The Hounds of Rome - Mystery of a Fugitive Priest

by Tom Clancy

  Over two hundred priests and monks knelt in prayer in their coarse gray monastic robes. The men were so tightly packed together the scene resembled a congealed mass of gray rounded lumps like egg cartons turned upside down. The service was conducted by one of the priests in the dark church that was lighted only by candles. The aroma of incense filled the air. Steve imagined the priests probably performed the evening service on a rotating basis.

  After the service, as he left the church, Steve managed to glance through the open door of an adjoining building that held a bank of small altars arranged in the form of a cross. This, apparently, was where the resident priests said morning Mass, perhaps as many as or fifteen or twenty at a time. Another production line, he thought, remembering the basement of the Shrine church.

  After some prodding, Steve again followed the shuffling crowd of gray-robed figures as they silently moved back to their respective areas and disappeared one-by-one into the cell-like rooms lined up along the adobe buildings. On entering his cell, he was surprised to find the clothes he had hung on the wall hook were gone. Even his suitcase and shoes were missing. The suitcase had been opened and his chalice case had been removed. It was left standing on the table. His worldly possessions now consisted simply of the gray monastic robe, ill-fitting sandals, his stole, his chalice case, silver crucifix, breviary, his small flashlight, a few sets of underwear and around his neck, a scapular in which he had hidden a tiny picture of Janet.

  He rummaged around in the hidden compartment in the bottom of his chalice case. The cigarettes and money were still there. He pulled out a sheet of writing paper and a pen. He sat at his table to write a note to Janet, although he had no idea how he would get it to her. But at least, the act of writing would calm him, remind him of the good times they had enjoyed together. Halfway through the note, the table lamp suddenly went out. He first thought it had blown a bulb, then he remembered from the instruction sheet that the power was turned off promptly at nine P.M. Since he had no watch and no bell sounded, he had to assume it was actually nine P.M. Electric power, supplied by diesel generator, would remain off until 5 A.M.

  He stretched out on the cot. He lay on his back in the blackness with his arms folded behind his head. In former times, he had always knelt by his bedside to say nighttime prayers but he dispensed with them because the thought of kneeling on a scorpion in the dark made his spine tingle. He satisfied himself that the evening service in the church and a few prayers said while lying in bed sufficed for his nighttime prayers.

  Janet was close to him. She was leaning over to kiss him. He felt her warm sweet breath on his face as she smiled at him. He peered into her blue eyes as he imagined their lips meeting. They had never before kissed on the lips. Never before had there been anything more than her kiss on his cheek and a friendly embrace. He wondered if he would ever see her again. As he relived their few brief months together he knew that eventually the memories would, by constant repetition in his brain, lose their sharpness, their pleasurable excitement like a scratched and worn video of an old movie that has been played too often. His only hope then would be to fantasize new memories—things they hadn’t done but for his part, wished they had. The reality however, was that she might, after a time, wind up falling in love with someone else.

  As he lay in bed, he wondered about the problem of human love as related to the love of God. He remembered that Thomas Merton, the famous Trappist monk, author of the bestselling, Seven Story Mountain, told of the same paradoxes when he admitted that as an ordained priest, he had fallen head over heels in love with a student nurse named Maria. Steve wasn’t sure if the Merton-Maria incident ever developed into a full-blown affair, but eventually Maria went on to marry a doctor and raise a family. Steve, partly to assuage his guilt over thinking of Janet, recalled that Thomas Merton, in his early years, had been a hell-raiser surrounded by girlfriends, whereas he, Steve, studious and dedicated to his faith from the beginning, had never even dated a girl, and only found love when he met Janet. As he drifted off to sleep he knew that despite what might happen to him or to her in the future, he would always be in love with her. His love would stay alive if nourished only through his memories and fantasies.

  11

  “Bless me Father for I have sinned. My last confession was three weeks ago. I took the Lord’s name in vain four times. I have been angry.”

  “How many times?”

  “Almost all the time, Father. Anger mixed with fear. I don’t understand why I was sent here to this monastery. I’m scared, and don’t understand what the church’s future plans are for me.”

  “You must understand, this is a confessional, not a place for discussion of the motives of Holy Mother Church. I ask you again, how many times have you been angry since your last confession?”

  Steve had a feeling the priest who was hearing his confession had been either scared or brainwashed by the brothers into keeping it simple, short and to the point. It was two or three minutes and out. In a way it was a blessing because the uneven boards he was kneeling on had begun to cut into his knees. Steve had received counseling and emotional support in the confessional before, but it would not be an ingredient in confession here at the monastery. “Good grief,” he said to himself, “he wants a number. It’s only a venial sin, so make up a number.” At several times a day, it would make well over a hundred times. “One hundred and five times,” he said almost sarcastically into the darkened screen between him and his confessor. The ridiculous assumption that he could count the exact number of times he had been angry almost made him walk out. But he stayed because he wanted absolution.

  “Anything else? Any impure thoughts?”

  He thought of Janet. Was love impure? Certainly not. “No, he answered, that’s all.”

  “For your penance say twenty ‘Our Fathers’ and make a good act of contrition.”

  The priest closed the rickety door between them as Steve, knees aching, stood up and pushed his way through the curtain of the confessional. Outside, a long line of priests and monks waited for their turn to rapidly blurt out their sins and receive absolution.

  *****

  On his fourth day at the monastery, Steve returned to his cell after saying morning Mass and eating breakfast to find that someone had been in his cell again. The few things he had on his desk had been moved slightly. One drawer of the table was slightly ajar. It irritated him that he had no privacy. Everything was subject to inspection. Luckily, he had been carrying his letter to Janet tucked inside his robe. His hope was that he might persuade Jeremy—the driver who had brought him to the monastery, to mail it in Tucson. But, there had been no sign of Jeremy and that strange vehicle since Steve’s arrival on the first day.

  Walking out onto the portico near the door to his cell, Steve saw that the posted therapy sheets still had blanks after his number, so there would be another morning spent walking in the compound and praying in the mission church. On another list he did see his number listed for afternoon field work. He was pleased with the assignment to field work. It would give him a chance to exercise his muscles.

  On one visit to the church, as he knelt alone in the first pew, he was puzzled by a piece of plywood covering a hole in the floor in front of the altar rail. Why hadn’t someone repaired the hole? He also noted a few reddish brown stains on the floor. Could they be blood?

  As he set foot on a morning walk, his first stop was at the clinic where he spent a few minutes praying with the dying priest. As he continued to explore his new home he found he could pick up some of the rhythm of the monastery—noting particularly where the monks went in the morning and where the priests went after Mass and breakfast. He strolled to the far end of the compound where a dozen large rooms filled with folding chairs were set up for meetings. Groups of fifteen to twenty priests were meeting in each room. A few glimpses through open doors seemed to indicate that the moderator in each case was one of the Passion Brothers. As Steve passed by the open door to one room, holding his breviary up
close to his face so that observers would think he was concentrating on his daily office, he distinctly heard one of the priests say something about being an alcoholic. From what little he heard as he walked by the rooms, the tone of the speakers sounded as if they were making open confessions, along the lines of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

  *****

  It must have been around midnight when Steve heard a faint tapping on the door to his cell. He sat up in bed. A few thin threads of moonlight spread down from the small window high up in the wall of his cell. On opening the door, as the bright moonlight flooded into the room, he recognized the face of a priest who occupied the cell next door to his.

  “What do you want?” Steve whispered, shocked at having a visitor.

  “Let me in. I want to talk to you,” the priest whispered back as Steve ushered him into the room, quietly closing the door behind his visitor.

  They sat on the cot in the dark. For a moment, Steve was worried. Was his nocturnal visitor responding to some dark homosexual urge?

  “My name’s Elmer,” he said. “I saw you arrive a few days ago, and I’ve seen you here and there around the compound. How are things going?”

  “OK, I suppose. My name’s Steve. Don’t you adhere to the rule of silence?”

  “Only when the monks are within earshot. It’s just another one of those oppressive rules laid down by the monks here. These guys are not priests, by the way. They call themselves ‘brothers’ like some of the orders of teaching brothers. Remember, from our standpoint, their rules are strictly that—rules not vows, there is no sin for us in breaking them.”

  “This is a weird place,” Steve said. “One for the book. What’s going on here?”

  “I’ll explain. One of the priests helped me when I arrived about a year ago, and you look like you could use some help. I’m an alcoholic. Surprised? It’s no secret, I tell it to my therapy group every other day. I saw you pass by the door of our meeting room this morning. You’ve probably figured out we have a therapy session each morning, after which we go to assigned work in the afternoon. By the way, why were you sent here?”

  “I don’t know,” Steve replied.

  “Now that’s a bit hard to believe! Don’t be reticent about it, we’re all sinners here.”

  “I really don’t know. What else can I say?”

  “Absolutely everyone here that I know of has been accused, diagnosed, initially sent to other places and failing elsewhere, finally got assigned here. What’s different about you?”

  “I know it’s hard to believe, but I can’t remember doing anything that would cause me to be kicked out of my parish and eventually sent here. Unless someone has made a false accusation.”

  “Well, let’s suppose someone did, wouldn’t your bishop have confronted you with the accusation? Allowed you to defend yourself? Or maybe just quietly transferred you to another parish?”

  “I was transferred to a temporary teaching job at Catholic U. But it didn’t last long. Elmer, you may not believe this, but I’ve been wracking my brains over this for months. I did ask for a hearing in my archdiocese in Washington. It was turned down. I was at Catholic U. for less than one semester and then sent here. So, now I drift along day after day, thinking something will happen to clear this up. What else can I do? Can’t we just drop it?”

  “Whatever you say. Do you smoke?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “You know, I’m dying for a cigarette but I don’t suppose you have any. They must have taken away any packs you had when you checked in here.”

  Steve laughed. “Well, they did and they didn’t.” He showed Elmer the compartment in his chalice case. “I bought a carton from that kid Jeremy on the way here. He charged an arm and a leg. I can let you have a couple of packs but where would you hide them?”

  “It’s not too difficult. I can double wrap them in plastic and hide them in the dirt out back.”

  As they both lit up, Elmer took a deep inhale. “Steve,” he said, “I know you’re not happy you were sent here, but, believe me, I am. I can use a friend—especially one who has cigarettes,” he said with a chuckle. “But a word of caution—when you finish a cigarette, hide the butt and flush it down the john later.”

  “But these packs won’t hold out long. How do you get more around here?”

  “If you have some money, which I don’t, it turns out that there is a hole in the wall out back where you can leave some dough and a note, and when Jeremy comes by, about a week later, Voila, your number is on a carton. But it’s expensive.”

  “Will Jeremy take a letter?”

  “Yes, but in the confusion of bouncing around on the desert some letters just get blown away. I’ve sent out a few letters but since I never got a response I assumed they never reached a post office.”

  “Elmer, you have found a friend. I have a lot of money hidden in my chalice case. Just tell me when the time is right to order us some more cigarettes or anything else. Now, tell me more about this place. This morning, as I passed the doors to the meeting rooms, it seemed as if the brothers were moderating meetings of the priests. Some of the things I heard sounded like the stuff you’d hear at an AA meeting.”

  “We have meetings of recovering alcoholics. Three meeting rooms on that. I’m in one of those. Also two meeting rooms with pedophile priests grouped with homosexuals, and one for embezzlers. Oh yes, and rooms for priests who are guilty of disobedience, heretical writings, and so forth.”

  “Tell me about these Passion Brothers and this monastery. I never knew places like this existed in the church.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of the ancient monastic order of Cistercians, dating back a thousand years. Organized by St. Benedict. These brothers are a recent off-shoot of the Cistercians. The whole nine yards—contemplative, penitent, vows of poverty and silence, living in the desert to get away from the evils of everyday life.”

  “Yes I heard that from Brother Berard when I arrived. But what do they live on? I saw a farm and a cowshed. How do they feed and house a couple of hundred priests and also the monks?”

  “If you’ve seen the meals, and I know you have, you can see they don’t spend much on food. And they skimp on electricity, water and everything else.”

  “But still it costs something to run this place.”

  “From what I understand,” Elmer continued, “when your bishop sent you here from your diocese, he also began providing a monthly amount for your support.”

  Steve thought a moment. “So Rhinehart,” he said to himself, “is paying the hotel bill.”

  “By the way, you mentioned Washington and Catholic U. Where was your parish?”

  “In Maryland… Rockville, Maryland.”

  “I’ve been to Maryland. In fact, my sister lives in Brunswick—not far from Harpers Ferry.”

  “Are you still in touch with her? Does she know you’re here?”

  “No. She got fed up with my drinking. And it was embarrassing in front of her kids. My parish was in York, Pennsylvania; that is, until the bishop started moving me around. After two other parishes and a stint in a rehab center, I got sent here.”

  “Elmer, are these Passion Brothers qualified to do therapy? I find it hard to believe because every one I’ve come across seemed either like a former pro boxer or football player. Some could pass for thugs. But having said that, I’m not against lay people realizing they have vocations and embracing the religious life. But these guys don’t seem like the type.”

  “As I understand it,” Elmer replied, “a lot of Catholic colleges have schools of Social Work where they educate therapists. Maybe these guys have had some training. But from what I’ve seen, it couldn’t have been much. About the therapy—the sessions are conducted in groups. The group you get assigned to depends on your particular problem. The sessions run along the lines of open confessions. No Seal of the Confessional in the meetings, I might add. The other priests try to offer helpful suggestions. The brothers don’t do a damn thing but sit up the
re and listen, then report back to Brother Berard. The sad fact is they’re not trying to help us recover from our problems. The way I see it, we were sent here because the church has given up on us, and all they want us to do is quit the priesthood. They want us to get lost. The therapy is a sham.”

  “Once a priest, always a priest,” Steve said in disagreement. “Ordination is a sacrament that can’t be revoked. Brothers and nuns can renounce their vows, but priests can’t.”

  “That’s not quite true. The Second Vatican Council brought about some changes as I’m sure you know. There are ex-priests who admittedly can’t perform priestly functions, but are still in the church as lay Catholics without any ecclesiastic penalties. In fact, some are married with children.”

  “Receiving the sacraments?”

  “Yes. Where have you been? In Timbuktu?”

  “I spent night and day raising money and supervising the building of a new church. I never had cause to get involved in any of the problems you’re talking about.”

  “Well, a lot has to do with the diocese you’re in and your particular bishop and I expect you know, or maybe you don’t know, the American bishops have become a lot looser about some of the rules, especially when they see the whopping shortage of priests. The dropouts typically become very active lay people. They still have the stamp of the vocation on their souls. Many parishes out in the boondocks don’t have priests or not enough priests and the bishops are aware that ex-priests can fill in on some of the non-eucharistic pastoral chores. God knows, they’d rather have that than women on the altar. In fact, in some parishes, former priests—now deacons, can distribute communion”

  “But what about the priests here? I’ve heard them called three-time losers. Don’t take offense— it’s just something I’ve heard.”

  “You heard right. The church wants them out. Wants us out.”

  “Why doesn’t the church defrock? Isn’t that the most direct way to get rid of priests?”