Crimes of the Father

by Tom Keneally

  ‘The Church did not want any of that to happen to those five,’ said Callaghan, the capable, dry-humoured but kindly man. ‘It does wring the heart of the Church. I have to say it wrings my heart.’

  ‘The feeling does you credit, Mr Callaghan. By the way, I played cricket with your son and remember him as a nice boy. But back to business. Don’t forget that Guest was prosecuted only because one of the victims was a nephew of a public prosecutor.

  ‘Now, do your notes recount that when at last I told my father about this, he took the matter to the auxiliary bishop, Charlie Modena, in Penrith? Modena told him it would stop. And it did, with me. I was nearly fourteen by then, anyway – I was getting too old for Guest. You know that phrase from the Bible? “We are legion.” Well, Guest’s abused children were legion, but they weren’t the demons. He was the demon. Anyhow, I’m sure you don’t mind my speaking at a little length.’

  ‘No,’ said Callaghan, neither sympathetic nor prohibitive. ‘Within reason. You are a reasonable man, I know, Dr Devitt.’

  Shannon said, ‘We spoke to Bishop Modena, who is retired now. He remembers your father coming to him with a complaint. We do not dispute your case.’

  ‘Obviously he did not report my father’s claims to the police.’

  ‘You have to remember that he was a man of his time. There was no legal requirement to report …’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Devitt. ‘One of those merry men and women some call enablers.’

  ‘Well,’ said Callaghan, ‘that might be a little harsh in Bishop Modena’s case. But we are willing to acknowledge the special circumstances of the damage done to you with an ex gratia payment in this case of seventy-five thousand dollars.’

  Devitt whistled, but there was irony in the sound.

  Callaghan said calmly, looking at his papers to show he did not intend to argue, ‘The sum is not negotiable.’

  ‘And I have to sign that agreement, don’t I?’

  Callaghan passed a copy of the agreement to the monsignor, who reached and groaned a little to get it all the way down the table to Devitt.

  ‘Excuse me if I take a little time. I was not presented with the terms previously.’

  He read the document, making notes on his pad.

  ‘I see,’ he said, raising his eyes at last. ‘I take your … payment, then I must keep silent on all aspects of Guest’s abuse of me, and on the arrangements we make here.’

  ‘As you know,’ Callaghan said, ‘the media is ready to pounce on any vulnerability of the Church and make a carnival out of it. A carnival out of you, too! The victim is useful to them only as a trigger for their story. I don’t have to remind you of that, Doctor.’

  Devitt conceded that with a wave of the hand. ‘But may I be clear? Does signing the agreement mean that my lawyer and I are prohibited from disclosing the amount of the settlement to any person? And, second, if I speak of Guest’s other victims, I do it under pain of prosecution and am required to repay the amount of the settlement, with interest?’

  ‘You understand,’ said Monsignor Shannon, ‘that this is a substantial arrangement we’re making. It must be protected by substantial sanctions.’

  Devitt sat forward. ‘Oh, and I forgot the big one, of course. That if I accept the sum, I am unable hereafter to take any legal action.’

  ‘We would hope that you’d feel your troubles had been allayed and your sense of having been wronged soothed by such an open-handed gesture,’ said the monsignor, falling back on lines that had worked in the past. He knew that Callaghan did not like him saying things like this, and using words like ‘soothed’ and ‘allayed’. Callaghan was, for an experienced lawyer, something of a soft touch, son of a union organiser, raised with a fairly acute sense of social justice. He had always used his air of calm austerity to cow people, but did not like insulting them.

  ‘We would, above all, hope,’ said Callaghan, ‘that the Church’s generosity signals its desire to make amends to you, one of its children, in a pact in which privacy suits all parties.’

  ‘Under pain of excommunication?’ asked Devitt.

  ‘Not by any means,’ Callaghan explained. ‘But under legal sanction.’

  ‘I don’t want to risk excommunication,’ declared Devitt, annoying Shannon by directing his conversation to Callaghan, as if Shannon and Erasmo were of a lesser calibre. ‘Despite everything, I still attend Mass and the sacraments, in the parish of a good, liberal-minded priest whose belief is like mine – that the Church is ours, too. Yet sometimes, I admit, the host is like poison in my mouth. Your confrere, Guest, gave it that taste. Even so, it would be the last blow to face threats from the Church for recounting in the future the details of what Guest did to me.’

  Erasmo frowned. ‘You’re overstating it, Dr Devitt. There’ll be no such melodrama.’

  Callaghan said, ‘Yes, you’re speaking speculatively, Dr Devitt.’

  ‘Are you sure that such a secrecy clause would survive a court challenge?’ Devitt asked.

  ‘Well, it has to this hour,’ Callaghan murmured.

  ‘You see,’ Shannon said, ‘in the end you can’t have it both ways.’

  Devitt moved his gaze to Shannon and said, ‘I’m afraid, then, I would find it very hard to sign such a restriction on my freedom of speech. Or on my right to take further action, if I see fit. Now, you gentlemen seemed impressed by the offer of seventy-five thousand dollars. Let me tell you that it is a fragment of the damage Guest, under your protection, has done me, and the inroads he has made upon my career. For the rest of my career I’ll need to contend with the stories that came out of my crack-up. There will be no post I apply for in the future in which my behaviour to the team in the laser lab will not figure. But, putting that aside, it’s a matter of principle, you see, not necessarily of intent to take action. I do not see why I should have to give up these options – freedom of speech and a legal recourse.’

  Callaghan pursed his lips, again with a sort of unconscious professionalism, and declared, ‘You do enunciate splendid principles. But are you sure that in continuing to pursue the Guest matter, you will help your career? Are you sure you’re not going to false extremes? Now, I know from our psychologist’s report that you’re under stress in your marriage. I know you and your wife recently separated.’

  ‘Leave my wife out of this, please,’ said Devitt, but like a request, not a command. He still seemed tightly determined not to waste his anger here.

  ‘I do apologise,’ Callaghan told him. ‘But we know there is a high divorce rate in cases such as these. The question is – and I’m sure you are dispassionate enough to consider this – can the total sum of a victim’s misery be sheeted home to the Church? I simply ask this, Dr Devitt, because the mistakes and follies of my life have been of my own making and I was never abused by a priest.’

  Devitt cast his eyes up in authentic contemplation. ‘It is true,’ he was willing to concede, ‘that I was inhibited from extending trust to my wife. My psychologist’s report, which you have in your bundles there, confirms that, and lays it at the door of Father Guest. But if I thought myself entirely to blame, I would not have considered legal options or any form of mediated settlement.’

  Callaghan said, ‘Well, we’re at a point where I must tell you that this is the only form of mediated settlement in which In Compassion’s Name engages.’

  At once Shannon was uneasy at this unexpected application of the spur by his colleague. And Devitt took up the challenge.

  ‘So you are saying, Mr Callaghan, that it’s either this forum or the court system?’

  Shannon decided now too, however, that it was indeed time to tap down the problem. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Once again, you can’t have it both ways.’

  ‘And I must emphasise, it would be very difficult for you to undertake court action,’ said Callaghan. ‘The great benefit of this system is that strict tests of evidence do not apply. Whereas in a court case you would be challenged; your very pain would be challenged and, reg
rettably, mocked. In any case, a jury might decide, Father Guest is dead and has already been punished for his sins. And if you think the Church would settle out of court … Well, the Church’s policy is not to settle before the verdict. You speak of expense – this would get very expensive for you. I don’t believe that court proceedings would be a good experience for you. In the meantime, the Church offers In Compassion’s Name. That is its settlement.’

  They watched Devitt absorb and weigh all this. He rose. ‘Thank you, Mr Callaghan and gentlemen. I’m sure there’s a great deal of truth to what you say, and it will be a severe test. But, you see, I can’t take your offer on terms of stygian confidentiality.’

  Erasmo and Monsignor Shannon exchanged glances at this pretentious adjective. ‘Stygian?’

  ‘I can only seek a form of justice that’s visible,’ Devitt announced, ‘and brings the Church to account.’

  ‘It’s moot,’ Callaghan warned him. ‘Father Guest is an individual. He is not the Church.’

  ‘I intend to make a point that he was abetted and assisted by the Church.’

  ‘But as you must realise, Dr Devitt,’ Callaghan said, frowning but avuncular, ‘the Church’s assets are held by a trust, and it’s from the resources of that trust you are now to be paid. It’s axiomatic, however, that since a trust is not a legal person it cannot sue or be sued.’

  ‘Look,’ said Devitt, ‘I know you’re a decent fellow, Mr Callaghan, and no doubt you’re convinced you’re helping your Church out of a corner. I know you believe this confidentiality agreement should best suit all parties. But it doesn’t suit me. Thank you.’

  Devitt rose and walked to the door, then turned to them and said impeccably, ‘Goodbye to you, too, Monsignor, and Mr Erasmo. Thank you.’

  He went out and they sat inhaling and reviewing what had happened. The monsignor laughed drily. ‘A studied irony in his use of monsignor,’ he said.

  ‘Well, you don’t have a son he could have played cricket with,’ said Erasmo. ‘He never addressed a sentence my way.’

  They gathered their papers. ‘I hope he might be back,’ sighed Callaghan. ‘Once he’s had a further talk to his lawyers.’

  7

  Docherty Becomes a Priest

  1960

  Frank Docherty was a sensitive boy, attracted at sixteen to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who had imbued the world with spirituality by such sentiments as ‘Glory be to God for dappled things’.

  Docherty had begun his studies for the priesthood at a time when, despite pretensions to torpor and stability, Australia was transforming itself from a white dominion into something more complex. Until then there had been largely one kind of Catholic – Irish – with a few Italians and Lebanese to leaven the mix. In the five years Docherty had spent in the Sydney seminary of the Congregatio Caritatis Divini, Czechs, Poles, people from the Baltic states, many Calabrians and Sicilians, and – so letters from home assured him – half the population of the Greek Islands, had arrived in White Australia, that Anglo-Celtic fortress whose citizens consoled themselves that at least the line was being held against Asians.

  During his last three years at the seminary, Docherty finished an external degree with the University of New England, where the Order kept a monastic house in which he and other seminarians could stay during the brief periods they were required to attend courses. So when his years of study were over, he had a baccalaureate, a diploma of education and a certificate that awarded him a distinction pass in psychology.

  He left the monastery to live with his mother two weeks before his ordination back in Sydney in St Mary’s Cathedral. At home, he devoured the newspapers – everything from cricket to the glamorous young Irish-Catholic politician about to make his run for the US presidency. Travelling by train and bus Docherty saw faces that had not been in his country eight years before, and they excited him. He was a democrat by nature. His progressive, Labor-voting family combined membership of an authoritarian Church with a passionate belief in equity within society. And not merely as a political hope but as a moral duty. His father and uncle had retained the democratic impulse implanted in the Irish in the nineteenth century by the Liberator, Daniel O’Connell, who had politicised the Mass-going peasantry by allowing them to contribute pennies to his Irish party in the parliament of Westminster, the ultimate dream being his country’s self-government.

  Docherty was a virgin innocent when he was ordinated. A young man who had been encouraged to believe he knew more than he did, he went to the altar and lay prostrate with the others, like fallen who had died and were to be raised up as new beings. When his turn came, his palms were anointed with oil and bound together with a linen cloth − the sacramental powers, the powers of counsel and judgement not yet unleashed from them. His hands unbound, he knelt before the cardinal archbishop and felt the man’s hands firm on his skull as he pronounced the words of ordination. Then Docherty concelebrated Mass with the cardinal and the other seminarians, who were mainly from the archdiocese. He felt, that day, enlarged in a way that was, he later saw, in part to do with vanity, in part with noble but naïve hopes; and he had never quite lost this sense of exultation, a suspicion of possible transcendence, whenever he approached the altar in vestments.

  Later in the century it would prove hard to explain to young people the sense of potency that the priesthood carried then. Young Docherty was astonished and humbled by what lay ready to his hand. On ordination day, all the weird and cranky members of the priesthood one had ever known were forgotten, and the ideal of the priest – champion of his people, teller of the truth, dispenser of mercy – glimmered above the cathedral’s high altar. Docherty was aware of holding great treasures, of being entrusted. His demeanour was pleasing, humble, because his mother had raised him in those terms and was watching him with her characteristic irony, ready to intrude if he developed too much priestly hubris.

  There was a celebratory ordination breakfast at which his Uncle Tim gave as eloquent and whimsical a speech as everyone expected. Docherty was reminded by him of the devilish, precocious, earthy deeds and utterances he had been guilty of as an infant.

  As people left, he sat with his uncle, who had been drinking whisky since before noon as if he believed that the new potency Docherty brought to the clan would moderate his blood pressure.

  ‘Feeling pleased, are you, Tiger?’

  ‘Happy enough,’ said Docherty.

  ‘And I didn’t disgrace you, did I?’

  ‘Yes. But that’s what I needed, Uncle Tim.’

  His uncle laughed gutturally. ‘Of course, all that guff was for the edification of the faithful – how I beheld a divine light in your little blackguard eyes when you were thirteen. I can’t remember if I did or not. I wouldn’t be surprised. How good you were at cricket – that was true. “Australia lost a fine leg spinner and middle-order batsman when you entered the seminary,” et cetera, et cetera. Well, it did, of course.’

  ‘So, no divine light that you can remember?’ asked Docherty.

  ‘You sure you don’t want a drop?’ his uncle asked him. ‘In my experience, it’s mother’s milk to the clergy.’

  Uncle Tim was the sort of man to whom a whisky-drinking priest was an honestly fallible and humane person. Docherty said no, without making a fuss of it.

  ‘What I wanted to say to you, as a fellow man, is that celibacy … Well, it’s a bugger of a sacrifice. But then marriage … marriage can turn out pretty much like celibacy anyhow. That’s the lot of many people. And, contradictorily, given the realities of these things, we have more sex drive than we need. If God is an intelligent designer, why did he hand out enough to send us insane? He could have kept the species plodding along on somewhat less of the old electricity. Meanwhile, don’t idealise marriage, will you? Take my marriage.’

  His wife, Glenda, was talking enthusiastically at the other end of the room and laughing with Docherty’s mother.

  ‘You fall for a wholesome girl like Glenda, and you’re attracted
by the wholesomeness, but by something else too. By something demonic – and you don’t have to be told what it is. So you take this amiable creature as your partner, and you make things so hard for her, without even trying – just by being a bloke – that you bring misery she’s never before known into her life. And all along she has a subtle hunger for something a man can’t give her, something bigger and broader than we’re designed for, and that brings misery as well. This happens in every marriage. In every marriage, believe me. So it’s a strange business, and I don’t have much to say to elucidate it, and I’m damn sure no priest has. But the secret is … the priest should know that. He should know not to pontificate.’

  Docherty said, ‘But surely the usual politeness and kindness between people – that’s even more important in marriage.’

  ‘With the rightful diddly-aidle-day,’ said Uncle Tim, as if singing the last line of ‘Whiskey in the Jar’. ‘That’s something about marriage they don’t tell us. It’s easier to be polite towards a stranger on the tram than it is to be polite to someone you’ve vowed to love for life. Glenda is a wonderful woman, and I am opined to be a charming bullshit artist and a fair businessman. Is that sufficient for a civilised marriage? Only if we’re lucky, or saintly, or both. I say all this, of course, in the full admission that your Aunt Glenda might well have been better marrying Prawn Carey, the accountant.’

  This genial lecture on matrimony meant a considerable amount to Docherty. His uncle was still his uncle and had not been overcome by reverence, and could not be expected to be. Nonetheless, the newly ordained Docherty thought the older man was overstating for effect.

  At the time of Docherty’s seminary training, there were no public debates and no private ones nor any debate in the soul of the individual seminarian about the validity of celibacy. It was a given.

  Docherty was little troubled until near his ordination by his sexuality: he would later believe he had been a late developer, whether for psychological or physical reasons, or both. He had been attracted occasionally, in a confused, chivalrous way, to certain girls he’d known at the convent schools near his Brothers school. He had no sisters. Were any of these, or only some of them, factors in what he thought of as his late maturation, despite his unrealistic youthful infatuations?