by John Ayang
“Sure,” Fr. McCarthy replied. “We give you thanks, Lord God, for bringing bread out of the Earth through human labor…” He continued giving thanks for almost two minutes, and then concluded, “…and now, as we settle down to eat, we pray: bless us, O Lord, and this thy gift which we are about to receive out of thy bounty, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.”
“Ooo!” Jennifer cooed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Dear Lord! He finally remembered to conclude it. He nearly slipped us into Pontifical High Mass.” Everybody laughed, as they pulled out their chairs to sit down. Hannah rolled her eyes in longsuffering and busied herself putting the service spoons in the food pans. Then she went over to Fr. McCarthy’s side to serve him his salad.
“Well, it’s Thanksgiving prayer, I guess,” Trevor said, graciously. “So, you got to count your blessings a little bit longer than usual.”
“Say that again, Mr. Henson,” Fr. McCarthy said, cupping a hand to his ear and cocking his head.
“Don’t celebrate the support. Everyone knows your ‘grace before a meal’ is usually longer than the meal time itself,” Jennifer countered, to the cheery laughter of all.
“My goodness,” Patrick said in between heaves of laughter. “Are you guys always like this, always pulling each other’s leg?”
“Right from the word, ‘Go’,” Emma responded. “I don’t know how my sister manages to endure their constant haggling. It would drive me nuts.”
“They have been that way since they met and grew up together,” Hannah said. “We adopted Fr. Cletus at one week. Jennifer came to live with us when she was seven and he was five. They took an instant liking to each other.”
“Jenny was on and off, though,” said the elder McCarthy.
“Yeah, but she has lived with us more than she has with her mom,” Hannah reminisced. “If she stayed with her mom for one month, she would stay with us for three or four. And that was good for my friend because she was working two jobs then.
“She always came back to live with us because she couldn’t bear to live without me,” Fr. McCarthy teased. “She’s so dependent on me.”
“Oh, give me a break!” Jennifer interjected. “You were the dependent one. Every time I left, you couldn’t bear to see me go. He would always ask, so pitiably, ‘Are you going to come back soon?’” She mimicked his tearful request. “And I would always assure him not to worry.”
“Nah, I didn’t look that pitiable,” Fr. McCarthy countered. “You’re exaggerating. On a few occasions, I might have asked when you would be back. But I don’t think I got all weepy, as you make it sound.”
“Okay, so all this leg pulling is nothing but cloaked sibling love?” Patrick asked. “How cute!”
“They started that gradually, and now, they can’t seem to live without it,” Hannah said, resignedly.
“And then I came along, and they used to tease me mercilessly as I grew up,” Josh said.
“We adopted Josh when Fr. Cletus was almost 12,” Hannah continued her adoption chronology.
“Thirteen,” the elder McCarthy corrected. “Fr. Cletus was already 13.”
“Well, then, 13,” Hannah said, seemingly piqued at being so unceremoniously fact checked. “And he was already…a year old?” she asked, looking at her husband, as if not wanting to be fact checked again.
“Yeah. A day shy of a year to the day he was born.”
“Okay, Josh was adopted, too?” Patrick stated, more as an accepting statement than as a question.
“Yeah. We’re a bunch of adoptees with adoptive parents,” Josh said. “My biological parents died,” he added, somewhat facetiously.
Oh. Sorry about your parents,” Patrick patronized, genuinely.
The conversation veered to, and continued for some time, on the subject of adoption and stories of abandoned babies. Fr. McCarthy did not like the way the conversation was going. He shifted in his seat and fidgeted slightly. The others proceeded, warily though, and it was obvious that they, too, were uneasy talking about what seemed to touch on a sensitive portion of the McCarthy family history. But, for some reason, they could not seem to get off it, either.
“Adoption is good,” Emma Henson said. “I like it. It saves the life of an innocent child who, probably due to circumstances, would otherwise not have a good life. And it saves the life of the adopting parents, too.”
“You’re right, Emma,” her husband concurred. “It’s much better than messing with these new technologies they have, trying to create babies…in vitro. Is that what they call it?
“Yes, it’s called in vitro fertilization,” Patrick confirmed. “The male seed and the female egg are put in a test tube and left for fertilization to take place. Then the fertilized egg is transferred into the woman’s womb.”
“So, the woman gets pregnant that way?” Trevor asked, looking curious.
“That seems to be the idea, Mr. Henson,” Jennifer interjected. “Except that it is not always successful unless more than one fertilized egg is transferred into the woman’s womb.”
“What?!” Trevor inquired, alarmed. “So, what happens if all the eggs get implanted?”
“That is not possible, Mr. Henson,” Jennifer replied, warming to what she considered her area of expertise. “Only one gets implanted at a time. But you can have a situation where the fertilized egg gets split in two and you have twins or, even into three or four and you have triplets or quadruplets.”
“That was what happened in the case of the Octomom. Remember?” Patrick put in her line, too. “Unfortunately, her own subdivided into octuplets.”
“Wasn’t that awful?” Emma said, somewhat sneeringly. “I wonder what she was thinking.”
“She was craving for attention. She wanted a celebrity status in society,” the elder McCarthy responded. “And, boy, did she get it!”
“Yeah, but not in the way she bargained for,” John replied. “She got all the negative attention she would have gladly done without. I pitied her, though.”
“I would go for adoption any day, rather than mess with all them fertility drugs,” Trevor said. “There’s lots of babies all over the world waiting to be adopted. And once in a while, we hear or read about some thrown away.”
“There’s lots of reasons, too, Uncle, why people want to have their babies using the new rep techs,” Jennifer came to the defense. “For one, the hoops you have to jump through to adopt a baby can be so daunting that you opt to try having your own. I know Cousin does not agree with me because the Church is against rep tech.”
“The Church is not against reproductive technology, as such, if it does not separate the unitive and procreative intents of marriage,” Fr. McCarthy offered his opinion, defensively. He felt drawn into the conversation because Jennifer implicated him by her remark. “If the scientific community comes up with a technology that leaves those two areas intact, the Church will support it.”
“Cousin, that’s unrealistic,” Jennifer countered. “The very technique and the process of fertilization must happen outside the womb, but the fertilized egg or embryo is put back into the womb. It is not like the child develops outside the womb throughout all nine months.”
“There is a break in the procreative process with mechanical tinkering. That makes the child a product, not a begotten. And, besides, borrowing the male or female gamete from a different person other than the spouse is a violation of the unitive bond that the spouses vowed to each other and a violation of the child’s right to be born in a legitimate union of one father and one mother,” Fr. McCarthy concluded, feeling he needed to give the impromptu lecture to correct what he perceived as a misguided point of view.
“I can see the ethical problem you’re raising, Fr. McCarthy, but is that a legit problem, or a matter of biased perception, if I may ask, with due respect?” Patrick asked, struggling to conceal the edge in her tone.
“I believe it is a
legit ethical problem because, to repeat myself, it entails a violation of human dignity and integrity,” Fr. McCarthy continued patiently.
“I think you’ve lost me, Cousin,” Jennifer replied, with some edge to her voice, too. “Medical science has been mechanically tinkering with the human body since anybody cares to remember. So, why is it suddenly sinful in this case? I mean, for instance, pigs’ valves have been life savers for those with coronary disease, and the Church has not protested inserting animal parts into humans as a deprecation of human dignity and integrity. I fail to see why sperm and egg, both human parts, put together to result in a new life for a couple or an individual in need of a child should be treated as a horrendous evil.”
“Indira Pootanveel, my systems analysis professor, had a kidney transplant a year ago,” Josh added his voice, furtively though, to the growing objection to Fr. McCarthy’s position. “Would that be considered a violation of her integrity? I’m just asking to be enlightened.”
“Family! Family, please. Can we change the topic of the conversation before we spoil an otherwise beautiful Thanksgiving afternoon?” Hannah McCarthy begged for peace, then asked, by way of change to sanitize the conversational atmosphere that was beginning to get putrid, so to speak, “Anybody care for seconds?”
“I think giving away one’s body part, doesn’t matter which—internal or external—to benefit another person is an act of charity, from the bigger picture perspective,” the elder McCarthy said, as though to resurrect the unpopular conversation. “I believe the Church can be somewhat flexible on some of these matters and God will not frown too much.”
“Well, Dad! Thank you very much! That’s very supportive and very complimentary,” Fr. McCarthy interjected with sarcastic ire.
“My apologies, Fr. Cletus,” the elder McCarthy quickly offered. “I didn’t mean that as a barb, and certainly not one directed at you. I just hope as medical science and technology progress, the Church does not, one day, find herself trapped in her own ethical maze of dos and don’ts.”
“Anybody for seconds?” Hannah interjected again, a shade too loud, after trying in vain to catch her husband’s eye and the latter studiously avoiding her glare, a ruse unmistakably obvious to others at the table. He kept his gaze on his plate to avoid her scowl.
“I’ll have seconds,” Trevor announced, struggling to get up.
“I’ll have seconds, too,” Emma announced and tried getting up, too.
“I’ll have seconds, also,” the elder McCarthy announced too loudly to the laughter of everyone, now looking straight at his wife and wearing a mischievous toothless smile while pushing back his chair and making as though he was getting up. A longsuffering Hannah rolled her eyes exasperatingly at her husband, getting up to serve him as the dutiful wife she was and loved playing.
Fr. McCarthy was not laughing, though he wasn’t scowling, either. He was somewhat piqued at the way the others at the table seemed to gang up on him, but he studiously kept a straight face. It would not do to let them think he was taking it personal. He wished he had an opportunity, a forum where his family wasn’t antagonistic, but eager to learn, so he could expound the Church’s ethical teaching on the new reproduction technologies that were springing up by the day. Then they would understand. They would not be so defensive. He wondered why Church moral teaching on any topic concerning human sexuality always seemed to touch nerves, even among Catholics themselves. He remembered reading an article by a so-called feminist lady lecturer at a university and coming across a sentence that was undisguisedly vitriolic. She had referred to Church hierarchy as ‘clueless male celibates’ with no families or children of their own, who pretend to know how families should be run and children reared, and who, arrogating themselves the status of ‘experts’ on women’s reproductive life, relish handing down chauvinistic and sexist moral dictates to subjugate women. She called this the new slavery and condemned it as unworthy of a twenty-first-century Church. Fr. McCarthy thought that was too intense and indicative of someone who, perhaps, had a bone to pick over a past hurt. He had made a mental note to write a rejoinder for publication in the same Journal, but, for some reason, had not yet gotten around to doing it. And what did his father mean by hoping the Church would not, one day, be trapped in her own maze of ethical dos and don’ts? His train of thought was interrupted by his mother putting a saucer of brownies in front of him. He declined and asked for a bowl of fruit instead, a gesture of which Jennifer approved, though still contriving to do that by way of a teaser dart.
“Yeah. Thank God, my efforts have paid off. Cousin is beginning to practice healthy eating style,” she said, glancing at Fr. McCarthy from the corner of her eye. The latter kept a straight face and refused to indulge the remark. John and Patrick smiled coyly into the crook of their arms. Jennifer knew Fr. McCarthy was sore from their earlier barrage of disagreements with his moral views, and she decided it was time to ease off teasing him.
The family dinner continued for another one hour with small talk here and there and a discussion of the season’s games. Fr. McCarthy was not particularly interested in either football or basketball and didn’t watch enough of them to have ample material to immerse himself in the conversation. So, he withdrew with his uncle and Josh to the veranda for a different type of conversation. The elder McCarthy, Trevor, Patrick, and Jennifer retired to the sitting area to continue arguing about touch downs, quarter-backs, and referees’ mistaken calls, as well as boast over their favorite teams. Hannah and Emma busied themselves by clearing the table, washing and wiping the dishes while catching up on what new recipes they had discovered or learned since their last discussion about cooking.
Fr. McCarthy glanced at his watch, noticing that the sun had gone down and the evening was getting cooler. It was that time of year when the days began to get shorter while the nights became longer. He knew darkness would soon set in. He excused himself from John and Josh and went back inside to find his mom and instead bumped into Jennifer. He was about to say something when the latter placed a finger over his mouth and spoke first.
“Shsh! I need to apologize to you, Cousin,” she began, sort of sweetly. “It wasn’t fair the way we ganged up on you. You have a duty to be what you were called to be: an official of the Church. I respect you for being loyal to the Church. That’s what you should be…”
“Jennifer, wait,” Fr. McCarthy interrupted. “It’s not about being an official of the Church. I didn’t say those things to be loyal to the Church. I was expressing my convictions, otherwise, that would make me a kind of public relations officer for the Church.”
“I didn’t say you are a PRO for the Church,” Jennifer replied, defensively.
“Not directly,” Fr. McCarthy replied. “You probably didn’t imply it, either. I’m the one reading it into your statement. Look, I’m just trying to make my point clear that I am convinced about the moral teachings of the Church as far as artificial contraception, in vitro fertilization, preimplantation testing, and intra-fallopian gamete transfers go. All these things are forbidden by the Church because of their moral implications. Our duty as loyal Catholics is to agree with what the Church teaches.”
“That’s why I apologize, Cousin. Our attitude during that conversation was less than catholic,” Jennifer replied, somewhat contrite. Then she quickly remembered to be Jennifer, “But don’t expect me to come to you for confession over that, because I won’t.”
“Too late,” Fr. McCarthy said with a tinge of gusto. “You’ve already confessed. Only I’m denying you absolution until you show evidence of true regret.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were hearing confession,” Hannah cooed, having just then run into the tail end of Fr. McCarthy’s statement.
“Auntie! Give me a little more credit than that,” Jennifer feigned hurt. “You wouldn’t expect me to confess to a hardhearted priest like Cousin? I was just letting him know that in spite of our seemingly
antagonistic stance during our conversation at dinner, we’re very supportive of him. And, by the way, Cousin,” she addressed Fr. McCarthy directly. “Let me know when they fix the trial. I intend to be there in court to lend moral support.”
“Just what I was going to talk to you about, Fr. Cletus,” Hannah said, grateful for the cue. “But, first, could you let Jenny out? That’s her car you blocked in the driveway.”
Fr. McCarthy turned around, beaming like he had just won the Kentucky Derby. “What did you say, Mom?”
“I said you’re blocking Jenny in. Can you let her out?”
“Mom, Jennifer can speak for herself,” Fr. McCarthy said, spoiling for a fight with Jennifer. He smiled mischievously at the opportunity to win the battle of the cousins for the evening by making her beg to be let out. “She knows the magic word to utter for me to let her out. Don’t you, Jennifer?”
“Oh, sure, Cousin. I’ll utter the magic word promptly,” Jennifer said with a cocky smile of her own. “At 7:30 tomorrow morning when I’ll be leaving for work.”
“Oh, goodness! Fr. Cletus, I forgot,” Hannah said, contritely. “Jennifer’s staying the night. She fixed her old room first thing when she arrived this afternoon,” Hannah said to her son, barely holding from laughing, noticing that Fr. McCarthy’s mischievous smile faded like light at the realization that he’d have to leave before Jennifer and wouldn’t be able to exact a plea from her. “Can I speak to you now, before you go? I know you have to say Mass in the morning.”
“You’re bluffing, aren’t you?” Fr. McCarthy said, feigning disbelief.
“No, Son. I really want to talk to you about your impending court case,” Hannah replied.
“No, I meant about Jennifer not going tonight,” he corrected.
“Could you, please, sheathe your sword, Son, and let Jennifer win the battle this once?” Hannah pleaded with mock exasperation. “Hmm! Battle of the cousins! I think I’m beginning to get a little tired of it. This way, Fr. Cletus.” She led the way as Fr. McCarthy, scratching his head in defeat, followed, pretending chagrin at being made to let go his quarry. Jennifer grinned mischievously, whistled a song, and waltzed a dance step to celebrate her victory, which further piqued him. He had no choice but to follow his mother out to the back of the house where she stopped to have a private conversation with him.
