Leaving Ardglass

by William King

  ‘Did John Wayne impress you?’ my bishop friend asks me as we approach the archway leading to the conference room.

  ‘Let priests swing in the wind: isn’t that the gist of it? We’ve come to a sorry pass. I’m not talking about a challenge to the civil law.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is about putting a poor bastard in the stocks who hasn’t been convicted of anything.’

  ‘Precisely, but you see, Tom, nothing has changed. The institution comes first. The institution.’ He gives one of his nervous laughs. ‘For the last forty years, bishops have been casting a blind eye on priests who have offended, in order to save the image of the Church. Now Rome wants to show the world that we are squeaky clean. So, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.’

  ‘And did you hear him? “Sing it from the housetops, My Lords, sing it from the housetops: the Church is not a safe haven” – even though a man is still innocent until proven guilty. Ah no.’

  Other bishops and canon lawyers are passing by; the sound of their laughter deepens when they go through the archway. They smile: ‘So glad to see you. We’ll have to meet for lunch.’ Veneer of good manners to hide what they say behind his back: ‘Should never have been given a diocese. Babbling to those journalists about a married clergy, and how he could live with the ordination of women.’

  When they have gone by, he touches my elbow. ‘Come down this way, we’ve a few more minutes.’ We do another lap of the square. ‘Tom, if I were you, I’d go easy on that; I mean what you’ve been saying there now,’ he says when we are clear of everyone.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re still a front runner for the next vacant see, but that line wouldn’t help your cause, I can assure you. We need people like you, and when you get a diocese, well, then you’ll be better placed to speak out. Take a fool’s advice.’ Behind the rimless glasses, he studies my reaction.

  ‘Even though the reputation of good men may be the issue.’

  ‘They couldn’t give a fiddler’s for the poor bastards in the trenches. A bad sign. If there isn’t trust between priest and bishop …. Did you know that Napoleon attributed his success to his respect for the troops? Ordered trees to be planted along the roads of France to protect them from the summer’s heat. How often was it drummed into us in Propaganda: Roma locutus est, causa finita est? The window design has changed, but in the shop the wares are the same. The Curia will make whatever decisions it likes, and neither you nor I can stop it.’ He glances around again. ‘Power, Tom. Power always wins out in the end. And never forget the Lord’s words, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.’

  ‘You’re hardly the one to talk about caution ….’

  ‘And I pay for it. Make no mistake about that, I pay for it.’

  The Cardinal, Nugent and Plunkett are approaching, so he speaks above a whisper: ‘Don’t forget what I said.’

  We exchange smiles and greetings in the vaulted corridor, and agree that the weather is atrocious as we pass by paintings of proud-looking bishops in purple and fine linen.

  In the conference room, the Cardinal, a hangdog look on his face, sits bent over the top table and opens the discussion for the afternoon. He refers to the excellent keynote speech. When he leafs through a stack of papers, his gold ring catches the watery sun through the high windows. This plenary session is devoted to formalizing the guidelines and procedures for child protection, and also for devising ways of dealing with priests who have offended. Along with other theologians, canon lawyers and advisors, I sit behind the bishops.

  The Cardinal’s opening remarks are about complying with the letter of the civil law in matters that relate to ‘this cancer that must be rooted out of our Church’. A few bishops mutter sympathy. With glasses perched on his nose, he runs his eye over handwritten pages: ‘I have a draft made out by Doctor Nugent here, ably assisted by Father Plunkett. It is a very accurate summary of the recommendations made this morning in the keynote address. I suggest we give them careful consideration in implementing a policy to deal with this scourge that has been visited upon us. It goes without saying that each bishop is the sole authority in his own diocese.’

  He reads:

  Any priest against whom an allegation has been made shall be asked to step aside from his ministry for the duration of the garda inquiry.

  Having been notified about the allegation, he shall be asked to leave his residence forthwith.

  A prepared statement shall be read at all masses in the parish where the accused priest was ministering. The bishop, if he wishes, may visit the parish and explain the priest’s sudden departure.

  The room darkens and a shower of hailstones crashes against the high windows so that it now becomes difficult to hear the Cardinal’s doleful voice. My Roman classmate rubs his eyes; without his glasses, he is a tired old man.

  Despite the way Nugent had falsely laid the blame at my door for the mishandled abuse cases, and the fact that he holds meetings without my knowledge, I still remain firm in my resolve to accept a diocese if such an offer is made. So every morning after saying Mass in the cathedral, or in a convent nearby, I leave my rooms in All Saints, and walk up the cypress-lined driveway to my office in the palazzo. And yet, despite my resolve and the encouragement I get from priests on the golf course, or during a chance meeting at the Veritas bookshop – how my style of leadership is needed in these awful times – I know my desire is waning.

  Nugent’s scowl deepens with each new revelation of what the newspapers call clerical scandal: his clothes hang off him; now and again, at meetings, he gives out a heavy sigh, causing his slouched shoulders to rise and then collapse beneath the avalanche. ‘What’s happening? What’s happening to my Church?’ he keeps repeating, and searches the broad leaf of the gleaming table for an answer. His despair seeps through the house and worms its way out into the diocese where it infects priests like a poison. Some lash out at the newspapers. They hate us because they know we have the truth, a young priest informs me at a deanery meeting. Others throw in the towel: they no longer visit schools, or help to coach football teams, and will not hear of having altar servers in their parish. They limp along: provide Mass and the sacraments, visit the housebound with communion, nod and make pitiful sounds when some old woman deplores what the newspapers are doing to ‘our lovely Church’.

  Journalists and photographers hide behind the trees that line the driveway and watch every visitor who drives up to the front door of the bishop’s house. Inside, Nugent disappears for hours; priests who are working on diocesan projects, women from the marriage tribunal, the staff in the chancellery – all of us tiptoe around the grey corridors, and, until we hear his beautiful rendering of Bach sonatas on the baby grand, we are whisperers in a wake house.

  The allegations of child abuse continue to be a torment. We take depositions and summon the accused priests to All Saints. And in a futile effort to lighten the threat hanging over them, priests invent a catchphrase: You’re only a phone call away from doomsday. We sit behind a table. Flanked by Plunkett, who takes notes, and myself, Nugent in full robes presides. The child protection officer for the diocese sits next to me. Our backs are to the light from the stained-glass windows. Vinny Lynch meets the accused at the front door, ushers him in, and then disappears into the silence of the house. On the wall behind the accused priest’s head is a print showing the compassionate father embracing The Prodigal Son: hands of forgiveness on the son’s shoulders, one shapely, the other powerful – male and female incarnations of divine pardon. At the far end of the room, over the marble fireplace, is a tall photograph of an incandescent Pope in the Phoenix Park; he is holding high a rose and waving to the crowd from the popemobile.

  The first interview after the Maynooth conference is with a man who was only a year away from ordination when I was a first-year student in All Saints. Every June, he won the Victor Ludorum prize at the inter-seminary sports, and even made the Tipperary hurling panel, but the dean of discipline invok
ed the ban on all such activities for seminarians.

  ‘Before God, My Lord, I can tell you, I have failed many times to keep the rules.’ His face is pinched, his eyes are red-rimmed, but he looks straight at Nugent. ‘Interfering with children was never one of them.’

  ‘That may be so, but we have to carry out the requirements of the law, Father.’

  ‘I’m being thrown out of my house. I’m disgraced in front of the people.’

  ‘You are entitled to legal representation from now on, and, of course, it is a convention of the diocese to defray legal costs unless a case goes to the High Court,’ says the child protection officer, a former hospital matron. ‘And if you wish, Father, you have the right to remain silent.’

  ‘Silent? Am I being tried already then? Can I not trust my own bishop any more? My Lord, you have to follow the law, I know that. I’ve no argument there. But, putting my name up on Sunday morning as a child molester ….’ He leans towards Nugent and appeals with raised hands, ‘I could swear to you now on my knees, on a Bible – right now – I never did such a thing. Not in all my born days.’ He turns to me: ‘Get a Bible, Monsignor Galvin, and I’ll swear right here and now.’

  ‘No, Father,’ says Nugent, his eye fixed somewhere on ‘The Prodigal Son’. ‘The law has to take its course. But I’ll appoint a good priest of the diocese to help you over this period, and may the Lord support you.’

  ‘Do you have to make it so public, My Lord?’ His knuckles turn white when he grips the armrests. ‘I always worked honestly; never gave you any trouble, did I?’

  ‘Then, Father, I’m asking you to see this as another way of serving our Church in these trying times, and I’m also asking you to unite your suffering with that of our Saviour.’

  To indicate that the interview is over, Nugent begins to tidy up the priest’s file, and when the ordeal grinds to a halt, I, like the chaplain who walks a condemned man to the gallows, accompany the accused priest along the wide corridor to the front door.

  ‘Remember now, this is just at the level of allegation,’ I try to reassure him. The big clock chimes the hour of four, and breaks the silence of the hallway. ‘Take every day as it comes.’ I watch him descend the limestone steps, and call out to him: ‘I’ll see you on Sunday.’

  ‘Yes, to blacken my name forever.’ He throws me a look of contempt.

  ‘Lord no. No, not at all. Just to give you a hand and help you in any way I can.’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks ever so much.’

  That Sunday I do Nugent’s dirty work for the last time. I announce to the parishioners that their priest has been accused of improper behaviour and the police are investigating the case; that he is innocent until proven guilty, and that he will be leaving the parish the following week until this matter has been cleared up.

  Like the day when Deano fell out of the sky, I get sick in the toilet of the sacristy after Mass, refuse cups of tea, and without even thinking of lunch, drive across country to Clogher Head. There I pace the strand until darkness is falling and the lights beyond the village are defining the contours of the hillside. All day I rehearse my challenge to Nugent; all day my anger rages against this inhuman way of treating someone who is still innocent before the law. And on that Sunday strand, I erase forever any wish for the crozier.

  When the priest opens the door the following Wednesday, his stubbled face is lined with worry; his clerical shirt is open at the neck, the plastic band that is a Roman collar hangs loose.

  ‘Tea?’ he asks, and turns towards the open door of the kitchen without waiting for an answer.

  ‘Sure, I’ll have a cup.’

  Following him into the kitchen, I notice a photograph of a hurling team in the hallway; behind the team is a sea of flags and sunny faces. I recognize the Hogan Stand. ‘Anyone to help you move out?’

  ‘Anyone? A lot you fellows care.’

  ‘Your family. Do they know?’

  ‘Haven’t been near them.’

  ‘Only a matter of time before they find out. Better to ….’

  ‘I’m going over tonight to my brother.’

  Wagging its tail, a collie dog appears from the living-room, looks at me and licks his master’s hand while the priest is filling the kettle. In front of the washing machine is a heap of clothes; the table is strewn with the remains of a pizza still in a cardboard box, a carton of milk, unwashed cutlery and plates. In the cold air, dog smell mingles with stale food.

  The priest brushes aside an empty Panadol box, an ashtray loaded with cigarette ends, and takes cups and saucers, and a biscuit tin from a cupboard. Every gesture is ponderous.

  In the living-room, we sip tea beneath a picture on the mantel that shows him raising a hand in blessing over a middle-aged woman. She is kneeling on a prie-dieu in front of the sun-drenched chapel at All Saints. In the background are girls in summer frocks, children squinting up at the camera, a man with a peaked cap, braces showing over his white shirt.

  He notices my interest. ‘At least she – God rest both of them – they won’t have to put up with this. Aren’t they better off dead?’ He rubs the collie’s back. ‘Better off dead.’

  The dog wags its tail, yawns and nestles its head against the priest’s arm. ‘The other evening I was mooching around the house, trying to make sense of all this,’ he says to the empty grate. ‘When I spotted a bunch of schoolchildren out there. I could hear them talking. “He lives there,” says the ringleader. “What’d he do?” a little boy asks. “He likes kissing young fellas like you and doing other things to them.” “Ring the doorbell. Go on,” says the little boy. “No, you go and ring the doorbell.” The ringleader pushed the little boy, “I can see him, look he’s coming for us. Run.” “Where?” “Look, see there, he’s hiding in that hedge.” They scampered up the road, shouting: “He’s after you.”’

  The priest draws deeply on a cigarette. ‘I’m now a bogeyman. Tom, I’ve made my share of mistakes. Women, yes, but what priest hasn’t? Never children. Never, and I could swear that in any court in the land. And now.’ He rubs the dog’s head. ‘How can I ever? You can’t clear your name. They’ll always say – you know, no smoke without fire.’

  ‘As a citizen you have your rights. Due process.’

  He looks at me.

  ‘I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but the law courts are there to protect people’s privacy until a judgment is handed down.’

  ‘Take the bishop to court?’ He draws on the cigarette.

  ‘It’s an option.’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Priests are caught there.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The skeleton in the closet. Many priests – well – a woman somewhere, or a man maybe, unless he hasn’t grown up, or he likes dressing up in silk and waltzing around with bishops in Rome. Fear of the skeleton popping out with publicity. That’s why.’

  About a month later, the sergeant in charge of the investigation tells me that the Director of Public Prosecutions is going to throw out the case; they have some more work to do, but it seems almost certain that the priest is innocent. The complainant is a woman who, a few years before, had gashed her arm, gone into a hardware store and claimed she had stumbled against the edge of a saw.

  ‘As I say, Monsignor, we’ve nearly finished, and from where I stand, and more importantly, the DPP, he’s a free man.’

  Two weeks later the same sergeant comes to tell me that the charges are without substance. When he has gone from the bishop’s house, I sit at my desk staring out at the grey sky and the larches dripping with rain in the front garden. What rankles most is that other innocent priests have been put through the same misery. A couple of whiskeys in my room that night sharpen my resolve to confront Nugent at a meeting the following day.

  In the morning, I say the seven o’clock Mass at the cathedral; a scent of incense lingers in the big sacristy after the previous day’s funeral. I glance at the age-darkened oak of the vesting bench, and at the throne, once in the sanctuary, where
the bishop presided for Holy Week and Christmas. While the sacristan is lighting the candles on the high altar, I put on the garments of preaching and healing, and catch a glimpse of myself in the long mirror. Suddenly, an urge to fling off each vestment flashes across my mind: throw them on the throne, and be done with cathedrals and bishops, and priests jockeying for position. Instead, I rest my elbows on the vesting bench and stare at the liturgical calendar. Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart, the great Catholic symbol of love. Love, always love.

  Swift as a shooting star, Lucy invades my head, and a chance meeting in Grafton Street the previous Christmas Eve comes winging back to me. I hadn’t seen her since she’d sung ‘Pie Jesu’ and ‘In Paradisum’ at the Cardinal’s funeral. Ronan and their two daughters wrapped in Christmas colours stand beside her: in mock-desperation, Ronan asks my advice on how to cope with three women who are on a spending spree. Lucy gives him a playful thump on the arm. Carol singers in front of Bewley’s are belting out ‘Have Yourself a Merry, Merry Christmas’. ‘Great meeting you again.’ She smiles. ‘And you’ll have to come around for dinner,’ but she is buttoning up her coat, and shifting from one foot to the other.

  ‘Indeed. And great meeting you all.’

  The reverie has such force that I whisper her name.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Monsignor. Did you say “Lucy”?’

  Caught out, I swing around to see a look of concern on the sacristan’s face. ‘Oh yes, yes of course,’ I say. ‘Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart. What was I thinking? Sure, St Lucy’s feast day is in December. Let’s go in God’s name.’