The Father Pat Stories

by Patrick Gossage

  “Oh she’s just shocked like my dumb brother. Hurts the family, you know. But I hope she’ll stand by me. She knows it’s a bit of a setup and I think she agrees basically with what I said in the column. But she’s getting tired of me being so involved in controversy.”

  “Look, why don’t I run the column and announce that the Goodfellow guy will be preaching at St. Bart’s next Sunday?” Deirdre was cooking. “That would put it right in the bishop’s face and if you staged it properly everyone else could come out of the thing feeling good. And he’d look like a fool if he disciplined you then. I bet he would be unexpectedly unavailable when the thing broke. How about it? Come on. Either you believe what you wrote or you don’t.”

  Father Pat took a deep breath and agreed. But he persuaded himself and Deirdre that it would be foolish to heat up the issue by announcing the event in advance. The column would run, he would let Goodfellow preach and the Record would be there to cover — but without advance notice.

  The arrangements were not hard to make. Goodfellow was more than willing and asked if Father Pat would mind if a few of his supporters came too. The priest could hardly object. He remembered that there was a parish coffee party after the service. The die was veritably cast.

  Obviously Father Pat was looking at a production of the kind only Terry could help mount. He was slightly reluctant to enlist his professional services, but when he called later that day, he found a friend indeed. Terry had had a rough couple of weeks trying to promote a new cereal for one of his clients and the prospect of taking on the authority of the church appealed to him.

  “We’ll do a celebration of tolerance and love that nobody will ever forget,” he told the worried priest. “Count on it.”

  So, alternating between Terry’s rec room and Father Pat’s study, the two laboured on his sermon and on the whole scenario that hopefully would bring his parish along to an open-minded attitude to homosexuality. It was a tall order, but the two old political pros were determined to milk it for the desired effect, to package up what they started to refer to as a “barn-burner.”

  “I wish to hell someone would pay me my full hourly rate to do this,” Terry confided late one evening. The middle aged PR man was on a roll and his thin, ruddy face lit up as he continued. “You know, this is actually worthwhile.”

  “Should have stayed in seminary, Terry, and you could do this every day!” Father Pat said mockingly.

  “Oh yeah, oh yeah. I know too much, Pat. Don’t give me that guff. I just mean that being good doesn’t pay. You know that.”

  “Touché,” the priest replied, and they turned back to the script that was taking shape on Terry’s battered computer. They both felt good.

  “So Deirdre’s going to have the service covered for sure?” Terry asked after drumming out a few more lines.

  “She promised. And she’s never let me down,” the Priest replied.

  “I haven’t either, old boy, but I know it’s different.” Terry blew a few mock kisses at his old friend.

  “Come on, that’s inappropriate, given the subject matter! But you know, I had to reassure her I wasn’t gay …” Father Pat trailed off.

  “Does it matter?” Terry was serious.

  “No,” Father Pat knew they were one on this. “And thanks.”

  Saturday evening, after a quiet blessing, Father Pat and Brenda started in to a simple meal. Paddy was curled as usual around Father Pat’s stockinged feet. The couple was unusually silent. Father Pat snuck a piece of cold roast beef from his plate and tried to surreptitiously lean down to poke it into Paddy’s waiting mouth.

  “Don’t feed the dog beef, Pat.” Brenda said this in the same resigned way she had said it thousands of times before.

  “It’s just a habit, Brenda.” This was his stock answer. But as Brenda watched her husband nervously pick at his food, she thought of the risky adventure they would both be part of the next day. He had told her his plan and she had nodded silently. She could hardly approve, but she knew she was part of it. She had been part of it and her course with him was set many years ago when she pursued the young would-be priest in his final year at university.

  Reaching for his nearly empty wine glass, Father Pat knocked it over and just caught it with his other hand, managing to drench the end of his sleeve in the well-dressed salad. He drew in his breath and sighed heavily. Watching this, Brenda felt a strange mixture of affection and motherly concern.

  “You’re really worried, aren’t you, Pat?”

  “I guess I am. This time it’s my career, such as it is. It’s a lot easier getting mixed up in others’ problems than trying to solve your own. That’s for sure.”

  “Could I make a suggestion?” This kind of Brenda politesse usually preceded a fairly harsh evaluation of a major upcoming problem or impending disaster. Father Pat braced for it.

  “Well, it seems to me that I’m about as well placed as anyone to know that if you were a homosexual, I’d have left you long ago. Don’t you agree? So. Well, I thought tomorrow we might stick together a bit more than usual. Particularly at the coffee party, if you know what I mean. You know, as you used to say in Ottawa, perception is reality.”

  Father Pat was not amazed by Brenda’s forthright approach and honesty. That was her enduring quality. But he was taken aback by her readiness to really pitch in when he was, as so often, in a predicament of his own manufacture. In fact, she always had. But he would not have asked.

  He reached across the round oak table and awkwardly put his hand on the back of hers. After what seemed like an eternity, she turned her hand over and clasped his gently. They looked at each other briefly but with more affection than they had for many months.

  “It will be alright. I guess it has to be,” she said softly, stressing the will.

  The morning broke windy with a hint of winter in the late October air. Dead leaves were being whipped around his feet as he walked with Brenda the fifty yards that separated the rectory from the church. The lawn in front of the church was a carpet of yellow oak and red maple leaves and Paddy, who always accompanied Father Pat as far as the church, bounded about chasing leaves caught and lifted by the wind.

  They were early, as Father Pat had promised to go over the scenario with Terry and John Goodfellow well before anyone else arrived. Brenda wanted to stay by his side and he found this more comforting than he might have imagined. They easily threaded their arms together as they walked up the front steps of the church, through the big main entrance and through the small, unmarked door to the right into his tiny office off the vestry.

  Just as they were going into the office a loud, “Ho, Father, wait a jiff!” came from the main doors. It was Goodfellow, tall, effete, red-faced and tousle-headed, blowing in like the October wind. He rushed into the little office filling it up with breezy confidence and warm greetings, including big hugs for Father Pat, then Brenda.

  “Well, so we’re really going to do it today. I love the plan. Your friend Terry called last night to go over a few details. He should be a priest! We’ll really stick it to the Bishop. And to think that God is most definitely on our side in this!” and he roared with mirth.

  “Well,” Goodfellow added wickedly, catching Brenda’s confused look, “Christ did not marry a woman, did he?” and he laughed infectiously again. Father Pat and Brenda couldn’t help chuckling.

  “Glad to see your ordeal hasn’t affected your sense of humour, John,” Father Pat said.

  “Why would it? The whole thing’s a crock and everyone knows it. I’ve got a soft job at the diocesan centre for my sins. And nobody’s going to stop me from speaking out now. And they aren’t going to stop you, are they, Pat?” and he looked down straight at Pat with his clear, grey eyes. Father Pat felt pudgy, awkward and dull beside this tall charismatic.

  “No, they’re not,” Father Pat said as firmly as he could.

  Terry was not far behind. There was another round of warm physical greetings as two of Goodfellow’s gay friends swept
in closely behind. Terry had a few changes to make to Father Pat’s text and set to work hand writing them in while Goodfellow and his comrades argued over words and made suggestions. Father Pat retired to the vestry next door to “suit up” as he called it. Emerging into the crowded office to get his text, which he folded in his hymnal, he was greeted with a mocking wolf whistle from Goodfellow.

  “You look absolutely dee-vine,” Goodfellow shouted. They all laughed.

  “Hope you still like me when this is all over, John,” Father Pat said with a hint of flirting in his voice. At this Brenda, who had been sitting quietly in a corner quickly got up. “Come on Pat, you’re supposed to be flirting with me …” and she grabbed his arm and pulled him out to meet the choir at the back of the church. Both the choirmaster and the warden, both of whom Father Pat suspected as complainants to the bishop noted the unusual occurrence of Father Pat giving his wife a nice kiss as he ushered her into a pew at the rear of the church.

  It was a normal morning service. No mass or communion, just the time-honoured Morning Prayer. Father Pat had found the Epistle for that day a good takeoff point for the carefully planned twenty minutes on which hung, in many respects, his whole career in the church.

  After the somewhat off key final strains of the offertory hymn, Father Pat was on his feet for the walk across the transept to the raised pulpit. He carefully spread out the notes he and Terry had worked on so carefully, and feeling like a race driver accepting the green flag and committing his vehicle, he plunged into a text from which there was no turning back:

  My friends. As you know this has been a difficult week. Not surprisingly, and feeling not a little self-pity, I took refuge in the Bible. And after much searching found both comfort and my text in today’s Epistle. It came like a message and I want to read those parts of it that helped me. Perhaps they will help you.

  And he paused, looked up and caught Father Goodfellow in the third pew giving him a very subtle thumbs up.

  … put on the new manhood, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one with another. Be ye angry, and yet sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath … be ye kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.

  “I was angry earlier this week. I felt I had opened myself up on an issue and was being punished for it. I felt I was only asking of my church, of our people, a level of kindness, tenderheartedness and understanding that could be expected given teachings like the ringing passage of St. Paul I have just quoted.

  “Yet I forgot how much what I did would demand of you, my parishioners. My friends. I was expecting you to fully share in my experience, an experience the vast majority of you have no need, no desire, no taste for. Yet our attitudes, our poorly thought-out perceptions, our revulsion for things we don’t know or even try to understand put our neighbour in jeopardy. Make him lie. Force him or her to live a double life. Shrink his or her abilities to live fully, to contribute fully.

  “Homosexuality is a reality we wish we didn’t have to deal with. When I was exposed as a young man, I treated a fellow human being for no other reason with a horrible mixture of pity and revulsion.

  “I am ashamed to this day.”

  Then with as much drama as he could muster, he repeated almost word for word the text of his article. He delivered it with great emotion, aware that most of his parishioners had read it the day before in the Record, many for the second time.

  I am even more ashamed that thirty years later the same treatment is being meted out to homosexuals — even if they are themselves priests. In my own diocese, my bishop, following a lengthy so called “trial,” stripped Father John Goodfellow of his parish for making the same mistake my friend did years ago — admitting he was gay.

  At this point a tall figure got up from the third pew and made his way up into the nave and crossing himself turned.

  How do we really treat homosexuals in our workplaces, in our churches, in our communities? Some of us know that it is still damaging to even talk about homosexuals or to admit we know one, or see one socially.

  What a waste. What a shame. It is we who are to be pitied. It is we who need forgiveness.

  At this point, right on cue, Father Goodfellow stood beside Father Pat in the pulpit. Father Pat turned to him.

  “Father Goodfellow, will you forgive us?”

  There was a deathly silence and shock as the faithful realized this was Goodfellow, the homosexual who had been stripped of his parish. Father Goodfellow took Father Pat’s two hands, looked at him intently, then turned to face the congregation. Then with great dignity, his voice rising, he said, “God have mercy upon us all. God confirm and strengthen us all in all goodness. God pardon and deliver us all from all our sins.”

  He clasped his slender hands in prayer, bowing his head to meet them. Again a long and powerful silence. At this moment Father Pat withdrew and sat out of sight in a choir stall behind the pulpit. Goodfellow moved to the pulpit and continued.

  “I also ask for your forgiveness today. I have forced the establishment of our church to react to change. I have caused dissension. I pray constantly that the unity and fellowship we all seek in Christ is not fractured by who I am. For I believe — deeply — that I am the same man of belief I was before my private choices became public.

  “Since indeed we are members one of another, I too humbly ask for your forgiveness. Please. Can I come down among you and make this real for all of us?”

  And with that he moved gracefully down into the congregation, reaching out to an older man. As the rest of the congregation looked on stunned he grasped his hand and said with overpowering honesty.

  “Sir, I forgive you, and I feel at one with you. Do you forgive me. Do you feel at one with me. Please say you do!

  The man stood up and shook his hand effusively. “I do forgive you,” he said.

  “Let us all forgive and embrace our neighbours. Let us reaffirm we are members one of another, now, in this congregation,” Goodfellow said.

  With that the congregation started to move together, shaking hands, embracing, saying words of love, forgiveness and encouragement to one another. Father Pat had scurried around to the back of the church as this was playing out, grabbed Brenda by the hand and was moving up the aisle greeting and encouraging his congregation. A small group gathered around Goodfellow, who rose above the crowd like an elegant beacon. They shook his hand warmly, some embraced him. The whole drama lasted a good ten minutes. The catharsis was tactile, tangible as Father Pat and Brenda, now with Father Goodfellow between them, hand in hand moved to the steps up to the sanctuary. As he passed the first pew, father Pat noticed a young woman at the far end writing madly in a notebook. The Record reporter. Father Pat fumbled for the cards he and Terry had prepared, then spoke: “Now I’d like to welcome a few special guests of ours to St. Bart’s today.

  I’d ask them to come forward, so you will know who they are and be able to talk to them later at coffee. It’s important for all of us.

  “First, Samuel Beckwith. Sam is from the parish of St. Jude’s where he runs the shelter in the winter. He’s up three nights a week with the homeless. In the daytime he’s a supervisor on the dock at Direct Transport. He lost his last job because he is gay. Sam?”

  And with a rustle a shy giant of a man in an ill-fitting suit came forward to a murmur from the congregation.

  “Next is Janet Widnener. She is from All Saints downtown, where she is head of the altar guild and does volunteer work twice a week with battered women. She herself was beaten up one night coming out of a bar frequented by her friends in the lesbian community. Janet?”

  And a very plain but well made up woman in her early thirties came from a pew at the back of the church. Someone in the congregation started to applaud and after a breath the church rang with general clapping. St. Bart’s was loosening up, coming alive, f
eeling it was part of something vital and right.

  “Finally John, another John, John Wroskowski, a student at the University of Toronto and the treasurer of the Christian Fellowship there. He writes on social issues for the campus paper. For his troubles explaining the problems of being gay in a university setting, John’s room was ransacked twice. He came ‘out of the closet,’ as we straights like to say, in first year university. Please welcome John to St. Bart’s.”

  This time the applause was deafening and lasting. Several parishioners even reached out to shake the shy young man’s hand as he came forward. The three guests lined up hand in hand below Father Pat. Announcing the recessional hymn he said as planned. “I know you want to meet these people who, while different, are also your neighbours, your friends in Christ. We’ll all see you at coffee.”

  At the coffee party Father Pat remembered not so much the trio of gays and Father Goodfellow and the stir they created as somehow celebrities in the little parish of St. Bart’s, but his own wife and companion’s untiring support as he himself moved through some interesting minefields — not that there were any trip wires he passed through — Brenda saw to that But the perception that she created of a demonstrably heterosexual couple, the absolute and convincing counterbalance to the whispering that itself was almost audible in that bare basement room that rang so happily with a whole new community narrative — the narrative as Father Pat was to hear in weeks to come from just about every parishioner that he met of how the “homos” were not so bad after all and that really we all wondered what we were so upset about. “Have you ever met a lesbian, Margery? You know, I did, and she was actually nice, and quite pretty!”

  But that Sunday, by 1:30 p.m. or so, all goodbyes were finally finished, John Goodfellow and his handpicked friends had been embraced by the last at least well-meaning parishioners, and had proclaimed dramatic au revoirs to Pat and Brenda. Even a slightly bedraggled Terry, who could not tolerate the tension of seeing his own carefully scripted drama unfold and had gone home to have a quick “nooner,” had returned to check out the results and had left with a knowing look for his old friend. Father Pat had seen the young female reporter from the Record doing a brief interview with the warden and had overheard him saying with great apparent candour “case closed.” She had not talked long to him but had sat for a good ten minutes in a corner with Goodfellow. Father Pat had no doubt she had been charmed.