Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  A week later the priest received instructions from his superior, accompanied by a clipped letter of confirmation from the archbishop’s office, informing him that he must proceed immediately to a place in California called “The Aquarius Spiritual Paradigm Center” for a prolonged period of “rest and renewal”. He read the order over and over. Aquinas? No, Aquarius! The priest knew that this center had been established for the purpose of rehabilitating troubled priests who had not adapted to “the spirit of Vatican II”. A friend of his had been processed there a few years back and during his internment had been invited to describe his most degrading sex fantasies in group therapy. A nun dressed only in a black body-suit, wearing a medallion of a silver moon goddess around her neck, had “facilitated” the session. When he told her that he didn’t have any degrading sex fantasies, and in fact never gave into the slightest urge to entertain any kind of sex fantasies such fantasies being expressly forbidden by Christ and the teachings of the Church, she gave him a pitying look. She did not believe him.

  “I do like whiskey”, he had offered timidly. “Perhaps even a little too much.”

  Smith’s friend had gone along with some of it, but only in order to get a passing grade, so to speak. He had hoped to be released back to his diocese as soon as possible. No longer “dysfunctional”, he would live out the remainder of his years quietly—very quietly—ministering to a poor, inner-city parish. When he was introduced to a therapy called christo-kundalini yoga that supposedly would help him get in touch with the serpent spirit coiled at the base of his spine, he ignored his instinctive fears. He obeyed like a lamb, but he began to feel a darkness growing in his inner life, and he lost the taste for prayer. When eventually he felt a revulsion for the Mass—a reaction he had never before experienced—he grew more confused and wondered if there really was something seriously wrong with his mind, something that demanded more intensive therapy. After that he threw himself into all the programs. One night he and his fellow priests were ordered to prance around a bonfire while dressed only in minuscule bathing suits, deer antlers strapped to their heads. They were encouraged to let fly with atavistic cries from the base of their spines. Smith’s friend held back. When he observed his brother clerics trumpeting and bellowing beneath the stars, something snapped in him. He tore off the antlers, went to his room, packed his bag, and walked three hours through the desert night to the nearest bus station. He went home to his parents, slept around the clock, drank several quarts of whiskey one after another, and when his head cleared, he went out to look for a job. He had not yet returned to active ministry.

  Smith telephoned the archbishop and had a heated exchange with him over the phone—again quite uncharacteristic behavior for this mild-mannered cleric. He begged him to reconsider the command.

  The archbishop refused.

  Smith described the ridiculous antics the priests were being forced to endure.

  The archbishop replied that the ASP was highly regarded by many bishops. If such a preposterous event had occurred it was surely an isolated incident and probably was being blown out of proportion by Smith’s friend, who after all was obviously a troubled priest, considering his subsequent activities, or lack thereof.

  Even so, Smith refused to comply.

  The archbishop demurred but offered an alternative. There was another retreat center in the northeastern United States where the approach was not quite so “creative”—the archbishop’s word—which offered a more classical approach to psychological counseling. It was staffed by competent professionals, “very solid people”. Would Smith comply to that?

  Smith asked for time to consider.

  “You have twenty-four hours”, said the archbishop.

  “Twenty-four hours!” Smith erupted. “Can’t you give me more time than that? Why, even the Vatican gives heretics and schismatics years to reconsider their errors.”

  “Twenty-four hours”, said the archbishop and hung up.

  Smith hastily contacted a writer he knew in a city near the “classical” retreat center, a woman who had been jettisoned from the paper some months before. She was the mother of eight children and gifted with uncommon sense.

  “What can you tell me about the place?” he asked.

  “It’s a holding tank for pedophiles, drug addicts, and various ecclesial psychopaths”, she informed him. “Go there, Father, and you’re marked for life.”

  “The archbishop says it’s totally confidential, utterly discreet.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m sure it is. Tell me why I know so many people who have made a little visit there?”

  “I don’t know. The company you keep?”

  “This is no laughing matter. You can do what you think best, Father, but I’m telling you, it’s one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, nunnish version. Depth analysis, Jungian style, pseudo-liturgies, self-revelation, and self-obsession, ‘new-church’ thinking woven with genuine insights. In the process, you get to strip your psyche down like an old motorcycle and put it back together again, under the guidance of the sisters. They’ve got university degrees coming out their ears. They know all about fellahs like you. They’ve got sweet voices and penetrating eyes. They speak in hushes. They’re even religious after a fashion. No one will make you jump through hoops or regress you to the anal stage. But I’m warning you, you won’t come out the same guy you went in.”

  “That’s not very reassuring.”

  “It’s not intended to be.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “I think you should come and spend a few months with Boh and me and the kids. If the diapers and macaroni don’t drive you crazy, we’ll declare you a genuinely sane human being and send you back to your archbishop fit as a fiddle.”

  “I’m already fit as a fiddle”, he said humorlessly.

  “I know, I know. I was just joking.”

  “It’s not a laughing matter.”

  Thus, Smith knew what he was in for. He called Elijah.

  “They’ve got me over a barrel, Father”, he said without a trace of British accent. “If I go to either of the rehab centers here’s no telling what will happen to me. I might end up like my friend, or worse. Maybe I won’t even feel like throwing away the antlers. Maybe I’ll like them. And if I go classical, as they call it, I could spend the rest of my life analyzing my every mood. At the very least, I’ll become a permanent neurotic. On the other hand, if I refuse to go to either place they can use me as propaganda. They’ll say, ‘You see what these so-called orthodox priests are really like. They can’t even obey.’ They’ll use it to justify how they’ve handled this whole mess.”

  “Don’t move. Don’t do a thing just yet”, said Elijah. “The superior general of your order lives here in Rome. I will try to get an appointment with him. In the meantime, I want you to pray as you have never prayed before.”

  “All right”, said Smith dispirited. “But I doubt it will do any good. He’s a straight arrow, but he’s also a super-nice guy. And super-nice guys don’t want confrontation. He wouldn’t want to go against the archbishop, and he especially wouldn’t want to undercut his own regional underlings. Delegation of authority, you know.”

  “Then we must pray.”

  Elijah met with the general the following day, explained the situation, and obtained from him an assurance that he would investigate the matter.

  In mid-July, Elijah received a call from Smith.

  “You did it!” he cried. “You’re a miracle worker! The general told my superior that he wants to find me a rehab center in Italy. I’m arriving next week.”

  “Where will they send you?”

  “Here’s the best part: I’m going to be rehabilitated right in the head office in Rome. The general wants me to work on the order’s international magazine. It’s all hush-hush, of course. I’m too political for a visible role, he thinks, but he wants me to be his assistant editor, without the title. I’m supposed to see a psychiatrist, too, but the general told me, confidentially, that he thinks
we can dispense with that. It’s his way of getting me off the hook without throwing the order into an uproar. He’s a smart guy.”

  “You see, prayer can accomplish anything.”

  “Prayer and a certain Father Elijah! Bless you, my friend. Bless you.”

  But Elijah thought it might be a pyrrhic victory. Smith had been rescued, but he was also safely dispatched from the North American scene. The interim editor had been appointed editor-in-chief and co-publisher. In the ensuing months, The Catholic Times had shifted the attention of its readership to a new, and seemingly “more open”, worldview. Step after relentless step, it led them toward a new concept of the Church. At first, it was careful to pack each issue with a plethora of the usual homely pieces about local events, which reassured everyone except the most discerning that nothing whatsoever had changed in the day-today life of the parishes. Gradually, it introduced reports of meetings, media events, press conferences, that gave a public platform for dissent. Each issue turned up the heat a notch. Reading The Catholic Times, one would likely conclude that Catholics everywhere were boiling with the urgency to recreate the Church from root to branch. The paper grew heavy with the utterances of theological societies. In mild, objective tones, its reporters described their criticisms of the Pope and Vatican departments, as if these were news items of major proportions. The column that reported the words of the Holy Father, and had once occupied an entire page of each issue, shrank steadily until it was an eighth of a page, buried deep in the middle, wedged between advertisements for glow-in-the-dark statues and package tours to the Holy Land. Much space was devoted to proclamations by various bishops’ conferences and their staffs and to a luxuriant growth of organizations that all seemed to press for “reform of the church”.

  Within eight months of taking control, the new editor had turned one of the largest Catholic weeklies in the Western hemisphere into a powerful instrument of indoctrination, with hardly anyone aware that he had done so. Hundreds of thousands of loyal Catholics were now being imbued with his concept of the Church. It was impressionism on a grand scale and it was a resounding success.

  From the onset of Smith’s crisis, Elijah had followed the changes closely. In early August, he noted the headlines in the latest issue:

  Rome Rejects Bible Used in English-Speaking Countries; World Conference on Religious Life Demands Greater Involvement by Women in Church Legislation; Despite Rome’s Condemnation of New Lectionary, It Remains in Use Pending Clarification, Says Bishops’ Conference; Catholic Education Must Become Sensitized to Inclusive Issues; Stop Discriminating against Women, Archbishop Tells Synod; German Bishops Protest Vatican’s Refusal to Grant Communion to Divorced Couples; New Spiritualities Needed in Western Church, Says Visiting Animator; Dealing with Sex Abuse by Priests; Democracy Needed in Church, Says Conference of Lay Leaders. . . .

  And so forth. In that single issue, there were thirteen articles that put the universal Church in a bad light and demonstrated the supposed vitality of the regional churches. There were five articles that might be interpreted remotely as orthodox. They were short and bland. Plainly, they were being used as space-fillers, or worse, as tokens. There were also two snippets from the “pope’s” (lower case p) public talks. Elijah had read these particular speeches; he knew that they were prophetic and infused with clarity of language, moral dynamism, and passion. The newspaper had ignored the substance and extracted the driest possible scrap, practically meaningless when reprinted out of context Technically speaking, the newspaper could not be faulted for disloyalty; yet in reality, it was at the forefront of revolt.

  Elijah wondered what would come next. The answer came in the form of a highly agitated Father Smith standing on the doorstep of the college, waving the most recent issue. His eyes were snapping.

  “Where can we go to talk?” he growled. “Privately”, he added.

  “Not here”, said Elijah.

  Seated across from each other at an outdoor café near the Tiber, with black coffee, the two priests read the banner headlines: “Doctors Declare Pope Incompetent”.

  “That is ridiculous”, whispered Elijah.

  “I know. Read on.”

  The article was written by a panel of physicians, two in the United States, one in Holland, and another in Great Britain, who had studied the recent speeches of the Holy Father, his executive decisions during the past year, and video presentations of his public appearances. There was consensus among the doctors that the Pope exhibited symptoms of a decline into mild paranoia. Citing his mistrust of loyal bishops and his thinly veiled apocalyptic musings as evidence, they suggested that a prolonged period of rest for the pontiff was in order. His physical health had a seriously deteriorated, they said. There was the chronic shaking of his hands and a recurrent trembling of his head, which could very well indicate Parkinson’s disease. In addition, he displayed what were almost certainly the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Then there was his reputed short temper with Vatican staffers, his inability to tolerate dissent, his growing distance from the voice of the people. Vox populi, Vox Dei, the doctors concluded, and the voice of the people was overwhelmingly in favor of an entire rethinking of the papal charism. Was it not reasonable in the postconciliar age to expect from the bishop of Rome the same accountability that was demanded of the world’s bishops? “I don’t believe this”, said Elijah.

  “And well you shouldn’t”, said Smith. “It’s a put-up job from start to finish. The Pope is an elderly man, but I hope to have one-half of his faculties when I reach his age.”

  “Do his personal physicians have anything to say about this?”

  “They deny it. The Vatican press secretary denies it too. They say it’s groundless speculation and untrue.”

  “The article referred to their statements. That seems fair enough.”

  “Oh, yes, that’s journalistic cosmetics, to prop up the illusion of objectivity. Now they can say they have given all sides to the story, but what they have really accomplished is the planting of colossal doubt in the minds of the faithful. It’s a classic case of gradualism.”

  “Culminating in a lie.”

  “Exactly. It’s diabolical.”

  “Perhaps. It is also quite human.”

  “Elijah, I tell you I have just about had it. I want to go away somewhere and find a nice quiet monastery, but sure as shootin’, the abbot would turn out to be a closet modernist. God, I’m so sick of this!”

  “How are things at the general’s office?”

  “He’s keeping pretty close-mouthed. You can tell he’s disturbed by it all, but he doesn’t want to make waves. He keeps smiling and smiling to everyone who comes along, and he mutters little nostrums about keeping the peace and not getting anxious. Hell, I’m anxious!”

  “You mustn’t be.”

  “What?” Smith growled. “Don’t tell me you’ve been bit by the bug!”

  “Not in the least, but I do know that if the enemy cannot trap us into error he can achieve another kind of victory by making us lose our peace. If he can provoke us to rage, he has drawn us into his schemes.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Recover your equilibrium. Pray for the Holy Father. Forgive our enemies, speak the truth sincerely and calmly whenever an opportunity arises. But guard the gates of your heart, Father. Guard them carefully.”

  The priest looked down. “You’re right”, he said.

  Elijah reached out and tapped the other man’s chest: “Your pain becomes a powerful prayer when it is united to the Cross of Christ. He is suffering in His Church.”

  Smith said nothing. His eyes grew damp.

  “Well, it probably won’t be long anyway. The general thinks he’s made a mistake bringing me here. I’m sure of it. My name appears on no official documents. They hide me like an embarrassment. I’m tucked away in a basement office all day long, editing the most innocuous little submissions. I’ve been directed to cut out any bit of text that even hints at controversy. The resul
t is a custard pudding that’s so utterly bland and stripped of nutrients that it doesn’t deserve the name Catholic journalism. I sit there day after day pruning away every note of masculinity in those articles. We’ve been neutered, Elijah, and I don’t like it. Not one little bit.”

  “You are angry.”

  “Of course I’m angry! Shouldn’t I be?”

  “I think it is a healthy thing to be angry about what is happening. The real question is what we do with our anger.”

  “Very wise”, said Smith sarcastically, his gentle face contorted with bitterness.

  “Can you take that anger and turn it into prayer? Can you take the enemy’s blows and turn them against him?”

  “Put it that way, I suppose there’s some merit in staying in the basement.”

  “Think of it as a catacomb.”

  Smith’s face relaxed for the first time, and he offered a grudging smile.

  “You monks. You’re incredible.”

  “Do you think I don’t wrestle with anger?”

  “You? My spiritual director and mentor? Don’t tell me that beneath your unflappable exterior there beats an unruly heart.”

  “There does.”

  Smith’s humor improved visibly.

  “That’s good news. Now tell me, what do you do with your unruly impulses?”

  “Just what I suggested. I try to convert them. The fuel of prayer.”