The Good Shepherd

by Thomas Fleming

  “He’s averaging twenty points a game.” You would almost swear Murphy was growing perceptibly taller, Dennis McLaughlin thought, as he watched his pinched chest expand, his bony shoulders brace, and his head ride high at the mere mention of his son.

  “Going to your twenty-fifth reunion down at the Prep this spring?” asked Matthew Mahan.

  “Wouldn’t miss it, Your Eminence. No, sir, I wouldn’t,” said Murphy.

  You had to admire the finesse, Dennis McLaughlin thought ruefully. Within Jack Murphy, there now glowed a gratitude that guaranteed that there was not the faintest possibility of Jack asking His Eminence a difficult question. Instead, he would do what he was doing right now, clear his questions in advance.

  “I thought I’d ask you a couple of quick ones about Pope Paul. Nothing that will put you on the spot, don’t worry. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, Jack,” said Matthew Mahan, “it wouldn’t hurt to mention the annual fund drive. It’ll be starting in about two weeks. You might ask me something about what we hope to do with the extra million we’re trying to raise. We want to expand the psychiatric social services, to set up mental health clinics in local neighborhoods. The federal government will match us dollar for dollar. And then there’s the old-age center that I’m hoping to build. Without a single step in the whole building. Inclines, elevators, everywhere. A specially equipped movie theater to help the hard of hearing enjoy films again. Marital counseling services. Old people have marital problems, too. In the basement, a modern machine shop and hobby craft center.”

  “Fantastic, Your Eminence, fantastic,” Jack Murphy said, scribbling notes on an index card in his hand.

  “It’d be nice if you gave me a chance to talk a little about what we’ve been doing in the spirit of Pope John’s aggiorruimento - you know, updating the church here in the archdiocese. About 75 percent of our parishes now have parish councils. We’ve got a functioning priests’ senate, and we’re doing wonderful things liturgically. Particularly at the cathedral, where we’ve got some of the finest young liturgists in the country. It isn’t just a case of saying the mass in English, Jack, as you well know. It’s getting the people to participate in the act of worship. In fact, that sums up what we’re trying to do with all levels, get the people involved with the government of the church. They’re helping to run their local parishes. We’ve got five laymen and five laywomen on our diocesan board of education. Participation, Jack, that’s what the life of the spirit is all about, a sense of being part of a genuinely loving community. We’re working at it. We’re making progress on all levels. We might even mention the catechism. We’ve changed that completely. No more rote memorizing of answers kids can’t understand. No, now we try to encourage reverence, awe, a sense of the mystery of God, a questioning, searching spirit.”

  Listening, Dennis had to admit with his usual bitter reluctance that His Eminence was a magnificent salesman. He was even forced to admit that some of these things were actually happening. They were producing creative liturgical experiments at the cathedral; the new catechism was an enormous advance over the old catechism. On the other hand, too many of the parish councils were handpicked by the pastors, the priests’ senate was totally controlled by Mahan loyalists. But Jack Murphy had no interest in discovering the dark shadows in the sunny story of local reform that the Cardinal was telling him. Nor would Jack ask any difficult questions about the war in Vietnam or why the city’s construction unions, which were about 90 percent Catholic, did not have a single black member.

  “Another thing, Your Eminence. Would you like to say a few words about General Eisenhower? What you thought of him, that sort of thing?”

  “I’d like to do that very much, Jack. I was hoping you’d give me a chance.”

  A technician thrust a microphone into Jack Murphy s hand. “Quiet, everybody,” somebody yelled through the door, where the newspaper reporters were still milling around. The red light on the TV camera announced that its omnipotent eye was now open.

  “First of all, Your Eminence, let me say that this is the best news this city has heard in a long time. . . .”

  A hand seized Dennis McLaughlin’s arm. He turned and stared into a face that distinctly resembled his own. It had the same freckled skin and bony contours and was topped by an even more unruly mass of reddish-brown hair. The one difference was the angle of vision. There was another eight or nine inches of torso between the chin and the floor.

  “Hello, Big Brother,” the newcomer said, the grin on his lips making it clear that he enjoyed the phrase.

  “Where’ve you been?” snapped Dennis. “The press conference is over. TV now -”

  “Goddammit, I could have sworn -”

  Leo McLaughlin looked at his wristwatch and groaned. “Oh hell, it’s stopped again.”

  Three years younger than Dennis, Leo was the managing editor of the diocesan newspaper, the Beacon. How much longer he would retain that title was questionable. To hear him tell it, he was locked in ideological combat with the editor in chief, Monsignor Joseph Cohane, day and night. In the early sixties the Beacon had won numerous awards from the Catholic Press Association for its crisp writing, professional layouts, and often daring objectivity in covering issues that too many Catholic papers carefully avoided - integration, North and South, the need for more public housing, for a public defender system in the courts. But according to Leo, those halcyon days of high courage were over. All his attempts to report on liturgical experiments by young priests, the ferment of revolutionary thoughts and feelings in the archdiocese’s Catholic colleges, or resistance to the draft or criticism of the Vietnam War had gone into ex-liberal Cohane’s wastebasket.

  Monsignor C. had also politely refused to raise Leo McLaughlin’s salary from $125 a week, in spite of the fact that his wife had given birth to their second child in two years. It had been painful watching Leo and his wife, Grace, struggling to live decently within their financial straitjacket. More than once, Dennis had heard Grace suggest rather strongly that it was time for Leo to abandon his crusade to move the Catholic press out of the nineteenth century. But his effervescent idealism, plus Chianti and a joint or two, usually persuaded her to postpone an ultimatum.

  “Christ,” said Leo, “how am I going to explain this one to Jerky Joe? It’s like missing God’s birthday.”

  “Calm down, I’ll give you the standard press release. Maybe you can pick up a few things from the vidiots.”

  A wave of hot air enveloped them as they stepped to the door of the television room. The Cardinal was now talking to Carl Magnum, the stocky, gravel-voiced roving reporter of station KPOM. Magnum was not a Catholic, and he made no secret of his far-out (on local terms) attitudes on war, race, and other potentially explosive topics. But Matthew Mahan seemed to be handling him as easily as he had dealt with Jack Murphy.

  “I’m always ready to admit I’m not infallible, Carl.”

  “Does that mean you’ll never be Pope?”

  Perhaps Magnum thought this was a difficult question. If so, it only proved his imbecility, Dennis McLaughlin thought gloomily. Incredible, how little so many supposed sophisticates knew about the Church.

  Gravely smiling, Matthew Mahan corrected Magnum like a benevolent pastor talking to an altar boy. “The Holy Father’s infallibility is a theological gift, and it only applies to matters of faith or morals. As a human being, the Pope can make mistakes just like I can. But I’m sure I make a lot more than the Holy Father.”

  What could Magnum say now? Confronted by this confession, he could only change the subject. “Do you approve the idea of married priesthood, Your Eminence?”

  “For an old man like me, the question is rather irrelevant. Let me say this. I don’t approve of it, but I don’t oppose it, either. If married priests can make the Church more effective, I’m for it. But I’d like to see some real evidence before I make that judgment. The tradition of a celibate clergy is a 1,000 years old. Y
ou don’t throw that sort of thing away like a wrapper on a candy bar.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean,” said Magnum, outdistanced once more.

  Why, Dennis McLaughlin wondered moodily, why did they all put him on a pedestal? Why couldn’t someone talk to him as one human being to another human being? When would he (and his brother bishops) face a jury of their peers?

  “The whole thing bores me,” Leo said, collapsing into a leather chair beside Dennis’s desk. He waved a copy of the Hard Times Herald at his brother. “Here’s what I really should be writing for. They want some more stuff from me.”

  Under the transparent pseudonym Leo the Great, Leo had done a number of articles for the Herald, diatribes on the Church’s failure to condemn war and join the revolution, the sort of journalistic trash that was ruining the underground press, in Dennis’s opinion.

  “I hope you put some facts into your next effort,” he said.

  “I thought you were going to stop playing Big Brother-Ph.D.–Jesuit-Junior Jesus,” Leo said.

  Last year they had had a bitter argument about Dennis’s fondness for giving Leo large amounts of unwanted advice. Dennis had been shocked by the bitterness of Leo’s resentment and had tried to abandon the role. But Leo’s headstrong tendencies did not make it easier. Nor did his recent inclination to attack his older brother and put him on the defensive in almost every conversation.

  “Sorry,” Dennis said.

  Leo tried to restore their earlier cheer. “I thought old Pope Placebo was going to let the title of Cardinal wither away. What the hell are they but glorified flunkies?”

  “Andy Goggin calls it the godfather complex. You don’t see Luciano or Luchese dismissing his capos. Why should you expect more from a Montini?”

  “How’s old Gog? Enjoying Rome?”

  “Moderately.”

  “You could be there with him. Any regrets?”

  “An occasional twinge.”

  Leo laughed mockingly. “Poor old brother Dennis. He quits the Jesuits, turns his back on intellectual prestige to become a priest of the people. Two months later, he finds himself handing out episcopal press releases. The tragedy of a would-be saint. It happens every day all over this lousy country. Guys start out like you, determined to make the organization go straight. You generate some attention, and they decide you’re brilliant. The next thing you know, you’re running the goddamn show. Or helping to run it. So bye-bye idealism.”

  “Maybe I’m more interested in finding out where idealism ends and realism begins,” Dennis said a little testily. “Maybe you ought to get interested in the same thing.”

  “Now, now, Big Brother, no lectures,” Leo said with a mocking grin. His eyes grew wild and he pulled a pad and pen out of the pocket of his khaki jacket, threw one denimed leg over another, revealing that he was wearing no socks with his army hiking boots, and said, “I’ve got a better idea. I’ll interview you. An off-the-record with one of the Cardinal’s intimate deputies. Confidentially, what was His almost-Eminence doing when he heard the news?”

  “He was about to have a scotch and soda nightcap and go to bed,” said Matthew Mahan. He was standing in the doorway, a not quite believable smile on his face. “The phone rang. It was the apostolic delegate calling from Washington, D.C. He sounded us surprised as I was.”

  “Your Eminence. This is my brother Leo,” Dennis McLaughlin said, feeling painfully foolish.

  “I know him. I know him,” said Matthew Mahan. “I like what he writes, too, most of the time.”

  “I skipped your press conference, Your Eminence,” said Leo. “I thought I’d rely on a little nepotism to get a story with some new journalism feel. You know, personal details.”

  “Let’s see,” said Matthew Mahan with pseudo-solemnity. “I drank my scotch and soda and decided it might be better to keep the news a secret until the next morning. Then about ten o’clock I realized I was being silly. I wasn’t important enough to play the secrecy game. I decided to have a little celebration with the people who are working their heads off for me, day in, day out. So I called in Chancellor Malone and Vicar-General Petrie and the rest of the chancery crowd, and we hoisted a few.”

  “Usquebaugh - the water of life. Do you think that’s what Jesus meant when he said, ‘I am the good shepherd. I come that you may have life and have it more abundantly’?”

  “Somehow I doubt it,” Matthew Mahan said. “But I’m sure we could find a theologian at Catholic University who’d agree with you.”

  “Give me his name, rank, and serial number,” Leo said.

  Matthew Mahan’s laugh was a little forced. He patted Leo on the back and said, “I’m glad you don’t write the way you talk. We’d have to change the name of the paper to the Asylum. Dennis, would you be a good fellow and call Dr. Bill Reed for me? Tell him I’d like to stop by his office tonight. I’m going to lie down for a while. I’m not feeling very well.”

  “I’m sorry, terribly sorry. Can we - I do anything?”

  “No. If Bill asks what’s wrong, tell him I’ve got an awful pain in my belly.”

  With another forced smile, he wagged a finger under Leo’s nose and said, “That’s off the record, you understand?”

  “Credo ut intelligam,” said Leo.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the Cardinal.

  “St. Anselm,” said Leo. “I believe, in order to understand.” His brother’s cockeyed grin was close to derisive, Dennis thought nervously, but His Eminence did not seem to be offended.

  “Oh yes. Oh yes,” he said. “I haven’t heard that for a long time. Sometimes I wish you intellectuals would remember that most bishops are just parish priests who got lucky. We’re working stiffs, like the rest of the troops.”

  There was an awkward moment of silence. Leo obviously did not know what to say. Matthew Mahan took his silence as agreement and turned with a weary smile to Dennis McLaughlin. “Tell Mrs. Norton I won’t be down to dinner tonight.”

  Dennis nodded and watched the Cardinal walk out of the room with the plodding step of a very tired man. Why was he continually noticing these details, he asked himself angrily, details that seemed to lure sympathy out of the recesses of his mind, no matter how harshly he ordered it to keep its distance? He told himself to remember the angry rebuke in the car at Mount St. Monica’s and was forced to recall that Matthew Mahan had apologized to him at lunch. “I’m off my feed today,” he had said, and as if to prove it had eaten only a few bites of his ham and potato salad.

  Leo McLaughlin watched the Cardinal-designate’s departure with a very different emotion. “So much for the hierarchy’s opinion of the intellectuals. Who needs to think when you’re a working stiff?”

  Dennis McLaughlin eyed the doorway. “Lower your voice a little, will you?”

  This only made more mockery dance in Leo’s blue eyes. “Have you heard the latest from the Vatican? Or have you been too busy grinding out your own propaganda here? The Pope has announced an enormous step forward, a massive reform.”

  “What now? Antibiotics in the holy water?”

  “Nothing quite that drastic. They’ve replaced ‘I do’ with full marriage vows, just like the Protestants use. They even adopted some of the Protestants’ service, word for word, as - I quote - ‘an expression of Christian brotherhood.’ However, non-Catholics are still required to swear by all the angels in heaven that they will raise the offspring as devout R.C.s.”

  “That’s what I call statesmanship,” Dennis said.

  “Which is another word for crap.” Leo peered at his non-working watch and untangled his elongated legs. “Listen,” he said, “it’s almost five o’clock. Five o’clock, Saturday. You must be off duty. Let’s have a few beers.”

  “I’ll have to get out of uniform.”

  “So?”

  “All right. Give me ten minutes.”

  Dennis McLaughlin trotted up another flight of stairs to his room on the third floor. Quickly he snatched a navy blue turtleneck shirt out of a drawer, t
hrew off his tight white collar, black coat, and rabat, stepped out of his sweaty pants, and pulled on a pair of dark blue gabardine slacks. On went a bluish-green tweed sports coat, and he stood before the bureau mirror transformed from cleric to civilian. If only it were as easy to change the inside as it was the outside of your persona, Father McLaughlin.

  “Does that hurt?”

  Bill Reed’s stubby fingers pressed down on Matthew Mahan’s abdomen. The pain lolling drowsily beneath his flesh leaped into angry life again. “Yes,” he said.

  It seemed to hurt almost everywhere Dr. Reed’s fingers probed. Matthew Mahan was lying on the leather-covered examination table in Bill Reed’s office. He looked past him at the gleaming instruments on the white cupboard in the corner, the shiny aluminum sterilizer beside it. The white walls beneath the glaring overhead light, Bill Reed in his white coat, all this whiteness in contrast to the somber black of his coat and pants, hanging from a hook on the back of the door. His mind roved in unexpected directions, as in a dream.

  Why this humiliation, this reduction by pain to the status of a child on this day of all days? Perhaps God was trying to tell him something, perhaps the pain was a coded message, warning him against the most obvious sin that might tempt him now - pride, complacent self-satisfaction. But did he really need the warning? The way things were going in this archdiocese, every day seemed to send him a similar message. Still, there was a distinction between pride of office and a purely personal pride, and perhaps the pain was intended to demolish the latter. Matthew Mahan was not conscious of this offense, either. Perhaps that was not an acquittal but an indictment. He would listen. He would watch himself more closely for evidence of this all too common flaw. Thy will be done, he prayed as Bill Reed finished his probing and told him to sit up. Bill took the stethoscope around his neck, put the spokes in his ears, and listened for a moment to Matthew Mahan’s heart. Then he told him to breathe in and out, in and out, while the cold metal disk moved up and down his back.