by Anne Emery
The man shambled away, back to the statue of St. Bernadette. An intriguing sort of fellow, without a cent to his name but a mind full of mystic idealism and love for those who were young and adrift. The words of Oscar Wilde came to Brennan’s mind: “We are all in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars.”
“That Podgis isn’t fit to tie your shoes!” a short, wide woman shouted to Brennan from across the parking lot. “Give him hell, Father!”
“That’s a hell of a way to talk to a priest, Ida!” another woman admonished her.
Well, however it went tonight on the talk show, Brennan knew he had a team of supporters cheering him on.
Monty
It was TV night again on Dresden Row, as Monty and Maura headed downstairs to watch the Pike Podgis Show on Wednesday night. Monty cracked open two beer, handed one to Maura, and they sat down side by side in front of the television.
“I’ve seen white-knuckled passengers on a plane, but never in a comfy chair in front of the tube,” he said to her.
“I know, I know, but I just can’t imagine it. Burke, of all people, on a freak show like this. Here it comes.”
They were treated to the bang-crash-smash theme music, the hyped-up introduction of Pike Podgis as the fearless voice of truth, and something about tonight’s guests going at each other’s throats, the bloody battle between the God of religion and the god of science. Then Podgis’s enormous mouth filled the screen.
“My guests this evening are Father Brennan Burke of St. Bernadette’s church here in Halifax, site of the supposedly miraculous visions of the Virgin Mary, and Professor Robert Thornhill, who teaches sociology at Dalhousie University.”
Burke was in his black clerical suit with Roman collar. Thornhill was trim and bespectacled with a close-cropped salt and pepper beard; he was dressed in a brown tweed sports jacket and dark green tie.
Podgis leaned towards the professor and thrust his head far into his personal space. “Professor Thornhill, what do you make of all this talk of visions and saints who supposedly do miracle cures?”
“Well, these claims, like the claims of religion generally, cannot be verified by science, so — ”
“So. Science! Religion! In mortal combat!”
“No, not necessarily. It’s just that science can only — ”
Podgis butted in again. “Science geeks have been looking through telescopes and microscopes for donkey’s years. It’s now 1992 and not one of them’s seen God. Am I right, Professor Thornhill?”
Podgis turned to Burke, who reared back as subtly as he could from the giant mouth that was close enough to kiss or devour him. “Way it is, Father. Sorry to tell you.”
“It’s not surprising that so many scientists are skeptical,” Burke agreed. “From something as tiny as a bottom quark to the immensity of the universe with galaxies nine billion light years away from us — ”
“Whoa! What are you talking about? Did you say ‘bottom quark’? Sure you don’t mean ‘bottom quirk’? Talking dirty to us, Father? That’s next week’s show!”
The audience squealed.
“A quark is a subatomic particle, Mr. Podgis. One of the fundamental constituents of matter. As I was saying, nobody has seen God, or at least recognized Him, through a microscope or a telescope, because God is not a material part of the material universe. ‘Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain.’”
“Well, I haven’t picked up my Bible lately, but that verse sounds like a cop-out to me.”
“Not the Bible. Poetry. By Christina Rossetti.”
“Sounds like a babe. Gimme her phone number after the show. I’m a sensitive nineties kinda guy. I can write poetry. How about this? Roses are red, violets are blue, God don’t exist, so I guess it’s F you.”
This was greeted by uncertain tittering from the audience.
“I guess it is,” said Burke.
“Huh?” Podgis’s eyes were glued to Burke. The TV man’s face betrayed him just for an instant. A hunger for approval, a look of vulnerability. Then it was gone. “Guess what?”
“Guess it’s ‘F you.’ I’d never have taken you for a moral philosopher, Mr. Podgis, but you’re right.” That needy look again on Podgis’s face. “Your poem pretty well sums up where we would be in a Godless universe.”
There were a couple of seconds of silence, then Podgis reverted to form. “All right, let’s get back on topic. Father Burke. Science and religion. Engaged in eternal combat!”
“No. Science and religion are not opposed to one another. They operate in two different spheres, and they seek to explain two different aspects of reality. Science tells us about the behaviour of matter, about the workings of the universe, about the evolutionary process — ”
“Whoa! Did you say evolution? What’s your name again? Is it Burke or is it Darwin? Are you saying you believe in evolution?”
Burke looked at the man as if he was a simpleton. “Why would I not? That’s how God’s creatures came to be. Look at the fossil record. And it may be of interest to remind ourselves of the man whose theories filled a great gap in Darwin’s work. Darwin had his theory of natural selection, but there was something missing.”
“Oh yeah? Like what? A fossil of a big hairy baboon getting it on with one of the Dallas Cowgirls in the back of a pickup truck?” Podgis grinned. Wolf whistles and the stamping of feet signified the audience’s approval of the image. “Is that it?”
There was a little smile on the lips of Robert Thornhill. He knew what was coming, whatever it was.
“What was missing,” Burke said, “was an explanation of inheritance. How were traits passed down? Darwin didn’t know, because he had not read the work of Gregor Mendel. Mendel had solved the problem in the mid-1800s but his work was not rediscovered until early this century.”
“Yeah? So what did this Mendel guy do?” Podgis leaned towards his audience. “Even the name Gregor Mendel sounds like a brain. The guy in class who had all the answers, but never got the girl!” The audience giggled at that.
“Right on both counts, Mr. Podgis,” Burke said. “Mendel was indeed a brain, a brilliant scientist who is now recognized as the father of genetics. He discovered the gene, although he did not give it that name. And he didn’t get the girl because he was an Augustinian monk. A priest of the Catholic Church.”
First they had heard of it in the audience by the sound of things.
Burke continued, “There are over thirty craters on the moon named after Jesuit scientists. And it was another Catholic priest — he was a mathematician and a scientist — who came up with the Big Bang theory before anybody else. He published a paper on it in 1931. Didn’t call it the Big Bang. That was actually a sarcastic name given to it by a very prominent scientist who had not yet accepted it. It took a long time for the rest of the scientific world to catch up, to abandon the idea of a steady-state universe, to accept that there was a big bang nearly fourteen billion years ago, followed by the development of subatomic particles, then the elements and matter, and here we are today.”
“He’s right,” Thornhill agreed with a smile, “we are stardust.”
“Or, to put it less kindly,” Burke said, “we are thermonuclear waste.” This got a laugh from the audience. “Anyway, as I was saying, Monsignor Georges Lemaître of Belgium was way ahead of the pack on this. And much of his work was affirmed with the discovery of cosmic background radiation in the 1960s, which got two scientists the Nobel Prize in physics.”
This too was news to Podgis’s fans in the audience.
“Is he making it up about these priests?” Podgis demanded of Professor Thornhill.
“Of course not,” Thornhill replied, “it’s the gospel truth.”
Burke looked directly into the camera for the first time and said, “If you want to see a bit of that cosmic microwave radiation for yourself, turn your television dial off
the channel, find some ‘static,’ and those are microwaves still coming in.”
“Jesus!” Maura squawked. “He’s telling everybody to turn off the show!”
“That’ll be the highlight of the evening for him.”
But Burke had gamely returned to the debate. “We have a saying in the Church that truth cannot contradict truth. The Pope says theologians have a duty to keep themselves up to date with science. And, if necessary, to change their teaching.”
Podgis made his eyes bulge in the direction of the audience and bellowed: “Who knew? Gotta wonder. Are these guys in bed with each other, or what? Or has somebody been paid off? Put a few thousand gold coins in the Vatican coffers and they’ll say real nice things about science. Like that we all came from chimps. Even the Virgin Mary. The Virgin Monkey. Is that it?” This was rewarded with shrieking and the pounding of feet by the audience.
“What do you think of them apples, Professor Thornhill, the Church onside with the monkey gang?”
“I’m not surprised. Although there is resistance to the theory of evolution among some biblical fundamentalists, particularly in the U.S., which is lamentable, they are only one segment of the population of religious believers. Those are not the people I am interested in debating. It is much more important to engage those who — ”
Podgis cut Thornhill off again and swung around to Burke, who again drew back from his leer.
“How do you know there’s a God? Visions from the sky, or what?”
“Signs that have been thoroughly investigated are one way of knowing, yes. But we can use our reason. Aristotle teaches us that — ”
“Sounds like you’re taking us back to school, Padre. I don’t know about you guys — ” he jerked his head in the direction of the audience “ — but this all sounds like too much work to me! Can you say it in thirty seconds before we go to commercial? I love commercial breaks. I got a personal itch and I get a chance to scratch myself raw during the break.” Hoots from the audience. “Here’s a question for you, Padre. If God is good — ” Podgis made a big show of gouging at his crotch “ — why did he create jock itch? Or maybe it’s something worse. Thinking about the scrag I was with last night, maybe it’s genital warts!”
“Imagine what Brennan — look at him!” Maura exclaimed.
Burke was out of his seat, leaning across Podgis, and offering his hand to Robert Thornhill. Thornhill looked at him uncertainly, took his hand, and shook it. “Rob,” Burke said, “it’s a shame we couldn’t have had our discussion in an atmosphere of civility. Maybe another time.” Then Burke took the microphone off his lapel, opened his fingers, let the mike drop to the floor, and walked out.
“What!?” Podgis bleated. “You cannot do this to me!” Anger flared in his face, followed by something that looked like panic.
The scene switched from host to audience. Some of the people watched Burke’s exit with their mouths hanging open. Some stared straight ahead. Others looked embarrassed.
“Well!” Podgis’s voice was heard again. “Looks like he’s taking his marbles and going home. Whaddya say, folks? Sore loser?” A rhythmic clapping started up. The camera caught a man standing in the aisle, clapping his hands and trying to provoke a chant. “Loser! Loser!” A few in the audience took it up; others looked away.
The scene switched back to Podgis, who appeared to be enraged. He made a less-than-successful attempt at a grin and turned to Thornhill. “Looks like a knockout for you in the first round, Professor. Exit one sore loser!”
“I think not, Mr. Podgis. There’s been no winner and no loser, because there’s been no debate. Father Burke was evidently frustrated by — ”
“No debate? Let’s have one now. You guys out there. Who wants to get up here and debate miracles with Professor Thornhill? Who’s gonna come up and get your face on national TV?” Podgis looked into the camera and said, “The war of words continues, right after these messages.”
There was a break for commercials and then the camera zoomed in on Father Burke’s replacement. The poor devil Podgis brought up to the stage would not have known where or when in history Christ was crucified, let alone what Aristotle taught or what a subatomic particle was. He identified himself as Del Snooks and wasted no time declaiming into the camera that we know God exists because the Bible tells us so, and if that is not good enough for some people they will find out on their deathbed when the fires of hell will be leaping at their feet. Then they’ll be howling for a miracle.
Rob Thornhill looked as if he would have traded his tenured professorship, and perhaps his first-born child, for a miracle that would get him out of there, but good manners kept him in his seat. He offered a few half-hearted comments about what science looks for in terms of proof but did nothing to add to Del Snooks’s self-immolation. That task fell to certain braying members of the audience who took up the argument for a Godless universe with about the same level of intelligence and effect as Snooks was able to muster for a loving creator.
“May I?” Monty picked up the remote and pointed it at the screen.
“Please do,” Maura urged him, and the television blinked off.
“Well!” he said, at a loss for anything else to say.
Maura weighed the evidence. “I’d say the ‘no’ side has it. I was a believer while it was Burke and Thornhill, both of them bearers of the divine spark of intelligence and dignity. But once the show was turned over to Snooks and his antagonists from the audience, and Podgis egging them on . . . well, could any of them be the handiwork of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God? As Burke said of our physical bodies, I say of these poor schmucks in their entirety: thermonuclear waste.”
†
Bruce MacKinnon’s cartoon in the Herald the next day showed Podgis with a black eye, sprawled on the floor, but clinging to the leg of a departing man: “Baby, please don’t go!” And early morning radio hosts and disc jockeys made Podgis the butt of their jokes. Judging from the expression on Podgis’s face when Burke walked out on him, Monty figured he was not a man who would enjoy the role of laughingstock.
But the humour was short-lived. Monty heard the news on CBC Radio while driving to work that morning.
“Halifax residents were shocked this morning to learn that a young woman was found dead on the property of St. Bernadette’s church in downtown Halifax in the early hours of the morning. And that controversial television personality Perry ‘Pike’ Podgis has been taken into custody in connection with the death. Hugh Donaldson is on the scene. What can you tell us, Hugh?”
“Bill, all of Byrne Street, the church, choir school, and rectory, are cordoned off today, as police comb the area for evidence in the death of nineteen-year-old Jordyn Snider. Her body was found at the site where some people say the Virgin Mary has appeared in recent weeks. Jordyn’s face will be familiar to people following the story of claimed apparitions at the statue of St. Bernadette. Well, now there is blood on the face of the saint, and the churchyard is a crime scene. And if all this was not enough to give people a jolt as they start their day, talk show guerrilla Pike Podgis is in custody and is expected to make an appearance in court this morning. Police won’t confirm it, but sources tell CBC News that Podgis is going to be arraigned on a charge of murder.
“Podgis was in town to do a live show on the so-called miracles at the church. Bill, I don’t know whether you caught the show last night, but Podgis hosted a debate between an atheist, Professor Rob Thornhill of Dalhousie University, and Father Brennan Burke, priest at St. Bernadette’s. It was quite a scene. The cool, cerebral priest, the always-courteous Professor Thornhill, and Pike, the rabid controversialist. Twenty minutes into the show, Father Burke got up and walked out. An enraged Podgis invited a member of the audience to replace him, but it wasn’t much of a debate after that. Pike Podgis was his usual inflammatory self. An autopsy will be held later today.”
“Thank you, Hugh.
We’ll check in with you later on to see how things are developing. In other news . . .”
Monty was not interested in other news. A girl killed at St. Bernadette’s, and Pike Podgis being questioned — possibly charged — in the murder. Instead of going to the office, he made a detour to St. Bernadette’s.
As anticipated, the place had been overrun by police vehicles, television crews, yellow tape, crime scene investigators, and groups of onlookers outside the tape. Some of the pilgrims, preachers, and hawkers of miracle souvenirs were on hand as well, as was Monsignor Michael O’Flaherty. O’Flaherty, Monty knew, had just returned from the peace of a monastic retreat. From cloister to crime scene. It was said of O’Flaherty that, if he had not been called to the priesthood, he would have been a cop. An avid reader of detective fiction, he was occasionally tagged with the moniker Sergeant O’Flaherty. The monsignor was slight of build and white of hair. He spoke in a soft, lilting Irish voice. “Monty! Come round this way!”
Monty skirted the police tape and joined O’Flaherty at the door to the rectory.
“That man Podgis is in jail for the murder of a young girl. And it happened right here!”
“What have you heard, Michael?”
“Just that she was found here on the grounds, the life bled out of her.”
“Who found her?”
“I don’t know. Somebody called the police, but I don’t know who. I was awakened in the middle of the night by the sirens. I got myself dressed, and the police arrived at the door.”
“What did they say to you?”
“Oh, they were cagey at first. Said there’d been an incident in the churchyard. Asked me if I knew anything. I guess I had the look of innocence, because they proceeded to ask me whether I’d heard any noises, people about the place, and all that.”
If anyone on the planet had the look of innocence, it was the mild, early seventies, sweet-faced Monsignor O’Flaherty. He still had that look, even after a close encounter with the Troubles in Ireland on a recent visit. Violence there, violence here in his own backyard. But Monty stayed focused on the present.
