September Song

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I had shouted in protest on arrival. I would stay only if my husband and I slept in the same bed. The other married couples had joined, somewhat hesitantly, in my protest. My husband had beamed his approval but remained silent.

  “You didn’t need me,” he had argued when at last we were in our cramped sticky room, one with a bed designed at best for a large male retreatant. Or prisoner.

  “Shut up, O’Malley,” I had told him. “If you think I went to all that trouble to get you in the same bed with me and then would let you escape without making love you’re crazy!”

  I had pushed him back on the bed and fallen on top of him.

  “I can’t remember,” he giggled, “that I had expressed any intention of denying you the marriage debt.”

  There were wide differences of opinion about what the commission was for. Some of the folks from the Vatican suggested that it was merely to confirm the existing Church policy on birth control. That’s what commissions did in the Church. They told the Pope what he wanted to hear, certainly not what he needed to know. Others argued that, like Pope John, Pope Paul wanted a way out of the birth control crisis in the Church and the commission was supposed to find the way out for him.

  Most of the theologians and bishops and cardinals on the commission were conservatives on the issue. The Church could not change its teaching on birth control, because it was the teaching of Jesus. When I asked them where Jesus had said anything on the subject, they mumbled nonsense about the “deposit of faith” and the “sacred tradition” and “the Pope as infallible teacher.”

  A few people, however, thought that the conservative tilt of the commission was a typical Pope Paul strategy. If those in favor of change could persuade men like London’s Cardinal John Carmel Heenan that change was possible, then we would have persuaded everyone.

  Chuck and I were in Bonn when Vatican Council II began. At first we were astonished by the headlines on the front page of the Paris Herald Tribune. What was happening to the Catholic Church? Were cardinals and bishops from around the world actually taking power away from the creeps in the Roman Curia? While we were living in Oak Park, we were involved in something called the Christian Family Movement, a moderately liberal (you couldn’t be anything more in Oak Park in those days) Catholic discussion group which seemed to hint very vaguely that the laity might actually be the Church and should have something to say about what the Church taught, especially about marriage.

  “Rank heresy,” my husband muttered as we walked home on a chilly November evening from such a meeting. “What do the lay people know about marriage?”

  “Or theology,” I agreed, going along with his gag.

  “Or anything else.”

  “All they should do is contribute money and obey the orders of their pastor, right?”

  “Keep their mouths shut,” he continued, “and their wallets open. It doesn’t matter how much education they have, right?”

  “Chucky Ducky, they really think that way, don’t they?”

  “I’m afraid so, Rosemarie my darling. They’re going to have a lot of trouble in the years ahead if they don’t change their minds.”

  It would turn out that there would be a lot more trouble than anyone could have imagined back in the days when Eisenhower was still President and Pius XII was still Pope.

  For the laity, the big question was not an English Mass or making nice-nice with Protestants or how to interpret the Bible, but married sex since it happened at least once a week and sometimes (as in our case) more often. We really didn’t expect a change. I had made up my mind that the Pope didn’t understand anything about marriage but God did. I loved all five of my kids. I loved the fifth one especially, though there was so much to do that I could not find time to love the elfin little redhead the way I wanted. And I had help around the house, which is more than most young Catholic mothers with five kids had. I could not imagine that God wanted Chuck and me to give up love. So I said to him. “I’m with you and not with them.” I assumed that he would understand. Most of the couples in our CFM group assumed, one way or another, the same thing, especially after The PILL went on the market.

  Anyway, when we were in Bonn and Jack Kennedy was still alive, we read that one of those eastern Patriarchs in the funny clothes had said something like that on the floor of the Council and then some of the bishops, mostly from the third world countries, agreed. My husband and I decided to take a long weekend and sneak down from Bonn incognito to see what the hell was going on.

  We arrived at St. Peter’s at noon just as the session of the Council was breaking up. Under a clear blue sky a great crimson wave seemed to pour out of the Basilica as the bishops of the world, men of every hue and color under heaven emerged from the big, ugly church. Occasionally someone in a strange oriental robe would be swept along by the tide. It was quite an impressive show, the world leadership of the Church careening into the Piazza. My husband typically pulled a camera out of his jacket pocket and began to blaze away-in this case the Kodak I had given him when he left for the Army of Occupation in Germany, which he used for colored film.

  I removed from my purse Trudi’s Leica, rewound the Tri-X film, and replaced it with Agfachrome. When he had finished with the Kodak, he extended it in my direction without looking at me. I exchanged it with the Leica. He continued to fire away, not for a moment doubting that I had put in color film.

  Since I had more or less conned him into his photographer’s role, it was appropriate that I be his assistant.

  “Marvelous!” he exclaimed, as the scarlet wave ebbed. “Someday I’ll do a book on priests.”

  “If anyone up at that Vatican palace knew what you were up to,” I told him, “they’d send out the Swiss Guard to confiscate that camera.”

  Puzzled, he glanced at me as he rewound the Kodak. “You think those guys looked funny?”

  “I’m not sure Jesus would have approved of the successors of the Apostles parading around in those gaudy clothes.”

  Before he could answer, a young American priest joined us. “Ambassador O’Malley.”

  Chuck went through his act of glancing around to see if there was someone else to whom the priest might be talking.

  “How could anyone think, Father,” I said to the priest, “that a little redhead with a camera in his hand could be an incognito Ambassador of the United States of America.”

  “Father Regan from the Catholic Conference in Washington,” the priest put out his hand. “Good to meet you Mr. Ambassador. Welcome to Rome.”

  “You don’t work for the Swiss Guard, do you?” Chuck said with fake anxiety as he shook hands with the priest.

  “Hardly, sir. I’m a peritus, an adviser at the Council.”

  “What are you guys doing in there to our Church?” I asked with my most appealing smile. “Tearing it apart and remaking it, I hope?”

  “Not exactly, Mrs. O’Malley. To quote Pope John we’re just letting in a little fresh air.”

  “I’m Rosemarie and he’s Chuck because we’re both incognitio. If we buy you a cup of espresso, maybe you could tell us about it.”

  We found ourselves an open table at one of the sidewalk cafés along the Via Concilliazione, the wide street which ran from the Piazza down to the Tiber. There was a lot of heavy conversation going on among journalists and priests at the cafés.

  “This is a really big deal, isn’t it?” My husband began our conversation. “Are the bishops really pushing out the Curia?”

  “Biggest deal in five hundred, maybe a thousand years,” the young priest said, his face glowing. “We’re updating the Church. The Pope calls it an aggiornamento because modernization might scare some people. The bishops are overwhelmingly in favor of change. As long as they’re in Rome, the Curia can only play crooked games behind the scenes. The bishops are running things. When they go home …”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “What will the Church look like in five years?” I asked.

  “Different. The Mass
will be in English, we’ll be on good terms with the Protestants and the Jews, we’ll endorse religious freedom and the new ways of studying the Bible. Local bishops will have a lot more power. We’ll look a little more like a democracy. Priests might be permitted to marry. There’s even some talk of women priests.”

  “They already run the Church now,” Chuck insisted, “especially if they’re Irish. Might as well ordain them. It wouldn’t add much to their power.”

  “Chucky!” I protested in vain.

  “Birth control?” I asked lightly.

  Father Regan hesitated.

  “I’d say that there’s a general sense around here that there’s likely to be a change on the Pill. The Pope has set up a commission of advisers to look into it. Everyone says he wants to find a way to change.”

  “Father Regan,” my husband asked, “do they sell chocolate ice cream in these stores?”

  Chuck knew they did. He had told me often that when he was in Rome after the war the Italians had already produced the best gelato chocolato in the world. I went to buy us some.

  “It’s extremely exciting here now,” Father Regan continued when I returned. “Nothing is certain. Every day the Curia tries some new trick. So far they’ve been beaten back, but everyone is worried about the Pope’s health. He’s a great old man … Would you like to meet him?”

  Would we ever!

  Father Regan must have lots of clout. Two days later we were in the Pope’s office. Only Monsignore Capavilo, his secretary, and Father Regan were with us. The Embassy in Bonn, with considerable protest, had sent us a copy of Chuck’s book on Germany after the war. (They hinted that we were engaging in unauthorized diplomacy with a man who was reputed to have pro-Russian, even Communist sympathies.)

  Since I hadn’t brought any black clothes from Bonn, I had to go on a shopping spree the day before, lest I violate Vatican protocol. I was strongly tempted to do that, but shopping overcame ideology.

  The Pope was like Santa Claus, a jolly little old man, with a happy face and simple charm. He leafed slowly through the book.

  “Very great talent, Excellency,” he said, raising his fingers and rubbing them back and forth. “God has been good to you.”

  “That’s what my wife tells me, Holy Father!”

  Always Chucky Ducky!

  The Pope laughed and smiled at me.

  Then he turned to the picture that was captioned “Fidelity.” It was a picture of a grieving woman waiting at the train station in Bamberg for her husband to return from Russia.

  The Pope muttered something in Italian.

  “Poor woman,” Monsignore Capavilo translated for us. “One presumes he did not return?”

  “Some stories have happy endings, Holy Father,” Chuck said, suddenly dead serious. “He did come back. He is now the rector of the University in Bamberg.”

  There was a lot more to that story, one of Chucky’s more gracious adventures.

  The Pope smiled happily.

  “So,” he said, “you want to take my picture too?”

  “If I may.”

  “Of course … Though I am not as good a model as that woman.”

  He glanced again at the pathos of the picture of Brigita and closed the book.

  We shot with available light, only a half roll of Tri-X. The result is one of the most famous pictures of the Pope, one in which he looks very much like Santa Claus.

  As we were walking out into the Belvedere Courtyard, Father Regan asked, “Could you do us a favor?”

  “Name it,” Chuck said in the best Chicago political style.

  “Could you send a private note to your friend JFK and tell him that the Pope is not a crypto-Communist like some of his foreign service people are telling him.”

  “Consider it done. I’ll send him a copy of the best of my shots.”

  And so it was done.

  The good old man died in the spring. The next Pope, Paul VI, was more timid; my Hamlet, Pope John had called him. The Church unwisely began a slow retreat from the excitement of the Council, one that continues as I write this collection of memories.

  Anyway four years later we were back in Rome to meet with the papal commission on birth control. I don’t know how we got on the list of participants. Whoever made that mistake doubtless paid for it.

  I wrote Peg a letter before my big explosion, which explains my mood at the time. A paper saver like her brother, she saved it and lent it to me.

  Dearest Peg,

  This is a terrible place, sticky, stuffy, humid, and uncomfortable besides. Most of the people here are priests, only a few laity around to represent those who are most likely to be affected by the decision. You don’t want laypeople to decide about their own marriages, do you? Priests, bishops, and cardinals decide for them.

  No one is wearing purple buttons, not even the creeps from the Curia. You can tell who the creeps are, however, because their body odor is worse than that of the rest of them. They are also the ones who looked the most shocked when I show up in a blouse with short sleeves.

  Your brother, the man I sleep with, is up to something. So what else is new? He is buttering up the bishops and the theologians like he used to butter up the nuns at St. Ursula and the priests at Fenwick and, I suppose, the officers when he was in Bamberg. His eyes are shining with mischief. I’m glad he’s having a good time. I’m the one who has to carry on the fight. I don’t understand the language much though one of the nuns around here translates for me sometimes. It’s pretty clear that she disapproves of me.

  Even when I understand the words, I usually don’t know what the words mean. There is great concern about whether the marriage act is completed naturally, whatever that means. Apparently these men who have probably never completed a marriage act in their lives and probably couldn’t if they had to think they know what is natural.

  I gather that they have now decided that the Pill is just another form of contraception, as if that is going to change the minds of any of us. Those who favor change in the birth control teaching itself think that it is strategically wise not to settle for merely a victory on the Pill. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. But what do I know about married love? One of these meetings I’m going to explode.

  I wish I knew what Chucky Ducky is up to!

  Love to Vince and the kids.

  Rosie.

  At the next session, I went into my tirade

  “I hear some of you saying that we must beware of the danger of unbridled sex!” I ranted on. “Don’t you know that the real problem for us married folk is too much bridled sex. Sexual pleasure is necessary to heal the hurts and the pains of living together. It renews and strengthens the love between man and woman. Can’t you get it through you’re heads that we’re not libertines, but simply people trying to keep our love alive!”

  I would have gone on but my ineffable husband began to applaud. The whole conference room joined in, except of course for the smelly creeps from the Curia, many of whom were sound asleep anyway.

  Apparently the people there who wanted to argue that a change in the birth control teaching was possible were waiting for an opening. They promptly took control of the meeting and began to outline the reasons for a change—the experience of the married laity, the world population problems, the health of women and children, the decline of infant mortality rates. Astonishingly the votes seemed to flow to their side. The Curia creeps shut up completely, figuring I guess that there was no point in fighting in this venue. They would save their arguments for the Pope himself.

  Cardinal Heenan, good and pious man without much intelligence, kept worrying about how shocked the laity might be if there were a change. I told him that the men and women I knew would be shocked if there wasn’t a change. He didn’t get my point.

  Meanwhile, the explanation for Chucky Ducky’s game became clear. He was now scurrying around taking pictures. No one seemed to notice. He was such a sweet boy married to such a terrible woman, why not let him take a few pictures? Even
the Curial creeps were happy to pose for him.

  “So that’s been the scheme, has it?” I accused him as we were strolling in the cool of the evening with the sickly strong scent of flowers all around us, the smell I thought, wrongly as it turned out of the old Church, which was dying all round us.

  “I’m going to do a book someday called Priests. These guys are wonderful models.”

  “For a book of horrors?”

  “We’ll find some other types too. Actually some of those theologians are rather impressive-looking guys.”

  “If only they’d take showers more often!”

  “Besides you don’t need me to change their minds,” he said in mock innocence. “I thought I would try to do something useful.”

  “I think I know what Dr. Frankenstein felt like.”

  The “majority” as it now called itself produced a very strong report. If Pope Paul wanted excuses which would legitimate a change in the birth control teaching, now he had them.

  “Did we win, Chuck?” I asked him as we drove back to Rome and the swimming pool of the Rome Hilton up on the Monte Mario.

  “We won the battle all right, with a lot of help from your lowering the boom. The war? I dunno. Some of those guys who never said anything, like that white-haired American Jesuit, reminded me of our friends on the West Side.”

  Which in Chicago talk meant the Boys, the Outfit, the Mob.

  “They had the look of men who had decided to fight elsewhere, didn’t they? Why are they so interested in dominating the sexual lives of people like us?”

  “What’s the point of having power unless you use it to control others?”

  “Do they really think they can keep our report secret?”

  Only the majority had submitted a report. Cardinal Heenan had not signed it. He told everyone, however, that he was in sympathy with it but worried about shocking the laity.