The Good Shepherd

by Thomas Fleming

  Finally came the discussion of the celibacy statement. Matthew Mahan opened it by declaring that he admired it as a comprehensive survey of the subject - but he could see no point in America’s bishops making a statement now. He had heard from friends in Europe that the Dutch bishops were going to raise the question soon as something that the entire Church should debate. Why not see what the response of the rest of the world’s bishops was before making such a definitive statement?

  One of Cardinal Krol’s suffragan bishops whose name escaped Matthew Mahan took the floor and asked with heavy sarcasm if he was implying that a majority rule should be the determining factor in making such a decision.

  “Of course not,” said Matthew Mahan. “I am suggesting the possibility that new light may be shed on the subject by bishops from other countries and other rites.”

  “Didn’t you just tell us that this was a remarkably comprehensive survey of the subject?” asked his opponent, a stocky middle-aged Irishman with a crewcut. “What has been omitted? Weren’t you a member of the committee? If any aspect of the subject should be developed, why don’t you enlighten us now?”

  “I have no pretense to being an expert on the subject. Nor did I say the report was omniscient,” Matthew Mahan said.

  A California bishop - what was his name, Cassidy? - arose. The same type, stocky, beefy in the neck.

  “It seems to me, Your Eminence, that you are missing the main point. We know where the Holy Father stands on this subject. He has asked us for our support.”

  “I would like to think he has asked us for advice,” Matthew Mahan said.

  A murmur of disapproval ran through the room. Shocked eyes confronted him wherever he looked.

  “I think he has made it clear that this is an issue in which he does not want advice.”

  “He may need it, whether he wants it or not.”

  Bishop Cassidy glowered. “Last spring when you knelt before him, did you feel that way? Did you feel he was a man who needed advice?”

  The sadness in Paul’s eyes burned into Matthew Mahan’s soul once more. Why were they forcing him to make these arrogant statements? “I felt - I felt he was a deeply troubled man.”

  More shock and dismay. “Gentlemen, please remember I am saying this to you in private. I would not dream of discussing this publicly. My feeling for the Holy Father, our feeling for him, is not the issue here. I am only suggesting a delay, not a repudiation of this statement. I don’t know what your young priests are telling you. But the haste with which we are rushing to get this statement on record will strike the ones I know as disheartening. We seem to be more interested in supporting the Pope - who after all does not need support - than we are concerned for their priesthoods.”

  Another member of Krol’s entourage - was it the bishop of Wilmington? - one of those early-middle-age balding types with steel-rimmed glasses and an acne-pitted face, arose to accuse Matthew Mahan of gross sentimentalism. What the younger clergy needed was leadership and not shilly-shallying. This was what Pope Paul was trying to give them on this difficult question, in spite of the slanders and obfuscations of those who, at bottom, were enemies of authority in the Church. Give way on this question, predicted the speaker in a voice that quivered with rage, and there will be a union of priests telling the bishops what to do; marriage, contraception, and abortion laws will be dissolved and the Catholic Church will become indistinguishable from the Unitarians.

  Matthew Mahan looked around the ballroom. Was anyone on his side? Thy will be done, Lord, he prayed. Cardinal Dearden was recognizing someone on the far side of the room. It was a western bishop, a new man, not more than forty. In a Southwest twang, he declared himself very much on Matthew Mahan’s side. There was a great deal of false alarmism being broadcast in the room and in the Church. He did not think the domino theory applied to Catholic theology. Cardinal Mahan was giving them - and Pope Paul - good advice. A bishop from Minnesota rose to agree with the western spokesman. He assured his fellow bishops that the Catholics of Minnesota would not in the least be upset by a married clergy. Matthew Mahan was tempted to add a few more words of his own, summing up his argument. But the mere thought of getting to his feet and speaking sent a shudder of exhaustion through his body and turned the faces around him into a blur. Remember, he told himself wryly, you are the silent brother.

  The opposition insisted on having the last word. From the rear of the room a voice with a New Jersey accent made a ferocious attack on the Dutch Church, and obliquely on Cardinal Mahan for suggesting that the American bishops should even consider the possibility of listening to anything that came out of Holland. Nowhere was the revolt against the Church’s authority more blatant than among the Dutch. Perhaps Cardinal Mahan was misled by the difficulties he was having in his own diocese into imagining that there was a similar revolt against authority across the United States. It simply was not true. Most American bishops had the courage and the conviction to use the authority given them by the Holy Father to preserve a healthy respect for order and obedience in their dioceses.

  Who would have thought six months ago, Matthew, that you would have been accused of incompetence, cowardice, and disloyalty before your fellow American bishops? It was logical; it was part of the path for which you seem fated, the way of humiliation and defeat. Yet the gall did not taste any sweeter, for knowing this. It still seared your heart and ravaged your stomach like liquid fire. He told himself he was not the first, nor would he be the last, man to endure such a beating. Two years ago he had watched a dying Paul Hallinan take even more brutal punishment as he led the fight for more liturgical freedom. Sneers about his loyalty to Rome and prophecies of chaos had been used to pound him into silence.

  Cardinal Dearden called for a vote. Did the bishops approve the substance of the document? Only two no votes were recorded on this question. Should the document be released? A two-thirds majority was required. To Matthew Mahan’s amazement, the vote on release was 145 in favor, and 68 opposed. If three bishops had voted the other way, he would have won the debate he thought he had so humiliatingly lost. In agony, he asked himself why he had not risen to reply to the final assault from New Jersey. As he stood up and felt his legs trembling under him, he knew the answer. He was simply too exhausted.

  Up in his room, he flung himself on the bed and wept. There were so many reasons for tears. There was no need to explain them to himself or to God. He wept for the death of that old self, the smoothie whom he still loved, in spite of all his attempts to evade him. He wept for Dennis. He wept for the Church. In his humiliation, he ate dinner alone in his room, telling himself it was the best way to stay on his diet.

  This sacrificial gesture did not seem to satisfy his ulcer. In the middle of the night, he awoke with Brother Pain clawing at him, followed by sudden nausea, which sent him rushing to the bathroom to vomit more blood. When it happened again at 5:00 a.m., he decided that even the mild tension of speaking before his fellow bishops was too much for him to handle in his exhausted state. He skipped the rest of the meeting and flew home.

  Dennis met him at the airport. The celibacy statement had already been released. Dennis had heard a capsule version of it on the midnight news. “I tried to talk them out of it,” Matthew Mahan said, and told him how close the vote on releasing it had been.

  Dennis shrugged. “If you’d won, I’d start believing in miracles.”

  It had been sunny and warm in Washington. But the weather here was cloudy, and the wind was raw. A sliver of icy air struck him in the throat, and he asked Eddie Johnson to close his window. A second later, he was shaken by a terrible premonition of disaster. Whether it was personal or something to do with the Church or with the nation, he did not know. He tried to thrust the feeling away, telling himself it was easy enough to imagine doom was imminent, just from reading the newspapers. As he left Washington, the city had been preparing for a siege. They expected a quarter of a million antiwar demonstrators to rally around the Washington Monument tomorrow. />
  He mentioned this to Dennis, and he barely nodded. It was obvious that he was thinking about more personal problems.

  Two weeks later, Dennis handed him a letter from the vice-secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops, a Monsignor Carlo Dotti. Cardinal Confalonieri, having been rejected on Humanae Vitae, was not risking his dignity with Cardinal Mahan again. The letter informed him that “confidential information” from the Netherlands had forced the Holy Father to reach the grievous conclusion that the Dutch Pastoral Council, which was to meet early this month, would urge the Dutch bishops to adopt optional celibacy for priests. The Holy Father planned to exhort the Dutch bishops to reject this demand. He hoped that bishops from other parts of the world would write their brothers in Holland and urge them to respond to the Pope’s plea.

  Matthew Mahan did not reply to the vice-secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops. “At the very least,” he remarked to Dennis, “I think they ought to know that if they kick a fellow in the teeth, he doesn’t rush to do them favors.”

  He and Dennis began listening to the Vatican on their multiband Italian radio almost every night. As predicted, the Dutch Pastoral Council, composed of both priests and laymen, voted overwhelmingly for optional celibacy. They called on their bishops to support them. The Pope in turn issued a statement exhorting the Dutch bishops to reject the council and defend celibacy with all the power and eloquence at their command. A month later, the Dutch bishops replied. They said that their country would be better off if there was optional celibacy, if married men could be ordained priests, and if priests who had married could return to the ministry. They affirmed that the Pastoral Council had “expressed the opinion of a substantial part of the Dutch community on celibacy and the priesthood.” They asked their fellow bishops around the world to consult with them and with the Pope in order to reach “an understanding of this complicated situation.” Meekly, they said they could do nothing “without consulting the Holy Father and the world Church.”

  “It’s beautiful, too beautiful,” Dennis said as Matthew Mahan turned off the radio. “They have old Paul up against the wall.”

  Matthew Mahan nodded mournfully. “If he meant what he said about cooperation with his brother bishops -”

  “There should be a consultation.”

  Matthew Mahan felt guilty for a moment. In the dim study, he suddenly saw Pope Paul’s face as he knelt before him last May. The man’s extraordinary sadness penetrated his heart once more. “I don’t envy him.”

  “He deserves it,” Dennis said.

  The heartlessness of the young. But Davey Cronin would have said the same thing if he were sitting there. Perhaps the young and the old only seem pitiless. They tell the truth. For them, reality is not fogged by the peculiar sympathy of middle age. We who have failed and cannot swallow our failure, who perpetually pray for an opportunity to regurgitate, we are the flinchers from the truth. But isn’t charity another word for it?

  At 2:00 a.m., Matthew Mahan was still awake, wrestling with these painful thoughts. The telephone rang. The night watchman at the chancery office was very apologetic. “Your Eminence, this fellow says he’s a very close personal friend and he’s got some very important personal news for you. His name is Furia.”

  “Put him through.”

  “Hello, Padre.”

  “Mike. Where are you?”

  “San Francisco. Have you seen Mary?”

  “No. Why should I? Isn’t she with you?”

  “I thought she might stop - she left me, Matt. She went back to Rome.”

  There was anguish in Mike’s voice. “We got into an argument about the Church. I started giving her the usual line - that it was crock. All of a sudden she burst into tears. I didn’t know what was happening. The next morning - she left. She wrote a note - saying she loved me - but she didn’t have the strength - to be worthy of me. Did you ever hear anything crazier than that? Her worthy of me? What the hell should I do, Matt?”

  “The first thing you’d better do is cable Father Guilio Mirante. Tell him to find her and make sure she doesn’t do something serious.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like killing herself.”

  “You think that’s possible?”

  “From what Mirante told me, yes. The second thing -” He hesitated, unsure whether to say it. “This will make you sore, Mike.”

  “Tell me, the hell with that.”

  “Start taking the Church seriously. Whether you believe in it or not, take it seriously. Stop talking as if the Pope and the bishops were just another bunch of businessmen. Our business is caring for souls, Mike. Now maybe it’s yours. Caring - for one soul.”

  “I get the message, Matt. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve let that Roman cynicism about the Church eat into my brain. Say a prayer for her - and me, will you, Matt? Because if I lose her - I think I’ll get drunk for life.”

  “I’m praying right now, Mike.”

  Matthew Mahan went down to his private chapel and knelt there for the rest of the night. His knowledge of what else was happening added to his torment. Mary in Rome now when Paul was about to commit another blunder. There was no doubt in his mind that the Pope was going to blunder on celibacy as he had blundered on every other sexual problem in his papacy.

  Surely this was a kind of climax, a moment of truth the whole world would recognize. Or was it only his personal moment, created by the peculiar dimensions of his fate?

  The following morning, Dennis handed him a letter from the apostolic delegate. Why had he failed to answer the letter from the vice-secretary of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops? Surely Cardinal Mahan must know that the Holy Father had special reasons for depending upon him. Could he possibly fail to come to the support of the man who had raised him to the Sacred College of Cardinals and so forth and so forth? Matthew Mahan flipped the letter to the edge of his desk. He looked up and saw Dennis studying him. What was he searching for? A sign that there was something here beside an automaton, a greedy collector of clerical honors who had played the game all the way up to the red hat and now would pay his debt like a good little politician? What else will he see if you humbly capitulate?

  Something had to be done, something had to be done, a voice drummed in his head. Pain began to gnaw in his stomach. A pulse throbbed in his forehead.

  “Let’s let him stew a little longer,” Matthew Mahan said.

  Dennis trudged back to his office. The slump of his shoulders, the droop of his head, wrenched Matthew Mahan’s heart. He got up, fought off the by now familiar wave of weakness that assailed him almost every time he rose from a chair and went downstairs to the chapel. Kneeling on his familiar prie-dieu, he contemplated the cheap crucifix above the tabernacle. When the choice is between love and obedience, what is the answer, Lord? he asked. Does the time come when the Shepherd’s words are not enough, when he must risk himself to prove his love? Answer me, Lord, answer me.

  Of course, there was no answer. Why should He look upon this caricature of a shepherd, this utterly worthless bishop, this pseudo-suffering servant whose service was so consistently lousy?

  As he came out of the chapel, he almost collided with Dennis.

  “A cable from Rome. Just arrived,” he said, handing him the yellow envelope.

  He opened it. It was from Cardinal Confalonieri, head of the Sacred Congregation of Bishops.

  WE WISH TO INFORM YOU THAT HIS HOLINESS PLANS TO RESPOND TO THE DEFIANT AND UNAUTHORIZED STATEMENT OF THE DUTCH BISHOPS ON CLERICAL CELIBACY ON OR ABOUT FEBRUARY FIRST. WE URGE YOU TO HAVE PREPARED FOR PUBLICATION IN YOUR DIOCESE AN ENTHUSIASTIC STATEMENT SUPPORTING HIS HOLINESS. THE BISHOP OF ROME, THE HEIR OF PETER, INTENDS TO MAKE NO COMPROMISE ON THE GREAT PRINCIPLE AT STAKE. HE WILL MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THERE WILL BE NO CONSULTATION, NO DISCUSSION OF CELIBACY TOLERATED WITHIN HIS CHURCH. THE PRINCIPLE WILL BE AFFIRMED ONCE AND FOR ALL.

  “My God,” Dennis said, who was reading the words over his shoulder.

  Something had to be don
e. Something had to be done. Anguish throbbed in Matthew Mahan’s mind and body. Dennis’s sad face dropped before him. In Rome, he saw Mary’s suffering mouth and leaden eyes beside that greasy river, in the ominous shadow of that huge inhuman dome. She and Dennis had to know, they had to see, that love existed for them, love unto the limits of risk. “Dennis,” he said. “Make arrangements for us to go to Rome as soon as possible.”

  Give me strength, give me strength, Matthew Mahan prayed as the jet thundered skyward. Whom was he talking to? Obscurely, he sensed it was Pope John. But would he approve of this trip? The man who chose as his episcopal motto “Obedience and Peace.”

  It was insane, this sudden assumption of the role of a latter-day Cardinal Gibbons. Wasn’t it a kind of diseased reaction to Davey Cronin’s bizarre lectures and months of patent brain-washing by Davey’s spiritual heir, Dennis McLaughlin? Gibbons had been the leader of the American Church. He had behind him the solid support of almost every bishop and the vast majority of the laity when he had rushed to Rome to prevent Leo XIII from denouncing trade unionism as a pact with the devil. Who is supporting you, Cardinal Mahan? Only the voiceless generation, Your Holiness, the younger priests and the voiceless legions of the divorced and the voiceless multitude of unwanted, unloved children and their mothers and fathers broken in health and spirit.

  Wouldn’t that be a lovely answer. He took out of his briefcase the letter he had written to the Pope and reread it for the twentieth or twenty-fifth time.

  Your Holiness:

  A brother bishop, a brother in Christ, writes to you out of the fullness of a heart that shares a shepherd’s concern for the flock of the people of God. I must tell you, Your Holiness, speaking with a directness that I like to think is American, that the Church in my nation - and since we have within our borders the descendants of so many nations, that must mean the Church in many parts of the world - is in grave danger. Never before in the history of the Church, Your Holiness, have we, the shepherds, set ourselves against the great mass of the faithful. Even when we enforced what we believed to be the law of God with the utmost severity, with fire and sword, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, we were really chastizing only a few. But now, Your Holiness, we are alienating the many. Your encyclical on birth control has for the first time turned the women of the Church against us. This is truly new. Even in nations like Italy and Spain and France, where great numbers of men turned against the Church for political reasons, most of the women remained faithful. This is no longer true in America, because in their deepest hearts, our women no longer feel that you have any right or power to tell them how many children they should have. As for the divorced, there is scarcely a family in America without at least one relative who has suffered this tragedy. What can they think of our Church, when we treat these unfortunate people like pariahs, while other Christian churches are glad to embrace them, when they come to them seeking forgiveness? Now you are threatening to lose your priests, by insisting that they adhere to a rule which no longer makes any sense to them. They have been taught to regard their fellow Christian ministers in other churches as brothers, equals. They see them supported and enriched by happy marriages. They see their congregations uplifted by the example of genuine love in their midst. Why, they ask, can we not have the same opportunity to experience love and to shine it forth to others?