Prince of Peace
Page 16
At first Maguire thought that O'Mally was responding to his remark about Cronkite, but in fact he'd ignored it. Michael couldn't imagine that Gene-o really wanted to go on about this. There was nothing new to be said on the subject. In recreation and in every class for days now the Consistory had been the only topic. If they all talked about it compulsively it was surely because the interregnum was implicitly threatening. Where was Holy Mother the Church without her Father figure? "I hope it's Triozzi," Maguire said. "At least he knows the U.S. I think a lot of those Italians think we're all Baptists over here."
"He doesn't have a chance. Too young."
"That's true. Only sixty-three."
They both laughed.
"When we're sixty-three," Maguire said, "It'll be nineteen ninety-five."
"Speak for yourself, old man."
"That's right, I keep forgetting. I'm a delayed vocation."
They stopped at Maguire's door. The pause there should have been the briefest possible, like one of them getting off a moving sidewalk. They were discouraged from talking at each other's doors, and absolutely forbidden, for the usual reason, to cross the threshold of another seminarian's room.
"Actually, Won," O'Mally said awkwardly, "I wanted to ask you something."
"What's that, Gene-o?" Michael waited. It could have been anything from switching a dishwashing assignment to help with his Canon Law notes.
"You probably know the team isn't doing that hot."
"Hey, the season's early, Gene-o. It'll pick up."
"It's a third over, Mike, and we haven't won a game. And we haven't played the toughest teams yet. Even the Capuchins beat us. Talk about mortification! Lord!" O'Mally fingered the row of cassock buttons that bisected him as neatly as a shrimp's vein.
Michael liked O'Mally. When he'd first come to TC, O'Mally had called on him somewhat formally to say welcome. It was a studied act of kindness—he repeated it for all the first-year men—but Michael appreciated it nonetheless. Later he understood about O'Mally's preoccupation with the basketball team and realized he was in fact scouting the new class, but that didn't seem to take from the gesture's sincerity. O'Mally was the kind who could talk with feeling and a pseudo-Freudian erudition about the importance of athletic competition as a sublimation of the sexual drive. Not that he would credit Freud, of course, who was still regarded as an enemy of religion, or for that matter, not that he would even know that the theory he was parroting originated with the notorious psychoanalyst.
"Losing is one thing," Michael sympathized, "but getting murdered is another. It's enough to make you want to quit, I'll bet."
"That's why I wanted to talk to you. We can't quit, of course. I mean, jeez, what a disgrace that would be. And imagine how that would look in my file. Farley would love it."
If seminarians were obsessed with Farley's opinion of them it was because no one got ordained without his recommendation. Students at TC were rarely fired, but the culture of seminary life required a constant insecurity. The rector and faculty nurtured it and students—remember, these were all men in their twenties—played into it. It was another of the ways in which the slave-master mentality of priests was inculcated. By the time a man makes bishop he has spent a lifetime cooperating in his own humiliation, and he can't understand, now that he's in a position to humiliate others, why they don't cooperate too.
"Anyway, quitting isn't what I wanted to talk to you about. I was hoping you might reconsider and come out." O'Mally leaned against the door jam.
Maguire snapped on his desklamp, then sat on the edge of his perfectly made bed. "I know it's not easy for you to ask me, Gene-o."
O'Mally smiled. "It's not so bad."
"I'm not the easiest guy in the world to approach."
"That's true."
"I'd really like to help you out, but..."
"Hey, it's not me I'm asking for, Mike. It's the other guys. Jeez, talk about demoralized. You know what I'm saying to you? Your brothers need you. I mean it's that simple. Your brothers need you. Not because you're so terrific yourself." He smiled winningly. "But God happens to have given you certain gifts. You're taller than any of us. You can shoot. And you're tough. And why did God give you those gifts? Not so you could hang out with the litniks in the sacristy. God's favorite people are the jocks, everybody knows that. And you're a ten-talent guy if there ever was one. But you're just burying your talents like the fellow in the gospel."
"'Well done, good and faithful servant,'" Maguire laughed. "'You have been faithful over a little. I will put you over much.'"
"Just put me over tomorrow when we play the Paulists." O'Mally's face darkened. "You're probably better than I am, Mike. I think you probably ought to be captain."
"Don't be ridiculous. The guys elected you captain. What's my being captain have to do with it?"
"I thought maybe you'd come out if you were captain."
Michael stared at O'Mally. "'You wicked and slothful servant'!" he said good-naturedly, disguising the insult he felt. Why didn't this son of a bitch take a hint? Michael simply didn't want to play. Think of it as an act of independence, one of the few he allowed himself in that world where conformity and dependence were the great virtues. It wasn't only the faculty you had to please, finally, but all your peers too. Everyone's opinion counted but your own. Here was O'Mally saying that in his opinion Maguire was a vain, arrogant showboat who could be bought off with the measly honor of being team captain.
"It would look good on your record if you were captain," O'Mally pressed.
"My record looks okay, Gene-o."
"Not if they think you're a loner, Mike. This is your chance to do something for the community."
How had such a small thing become so big? How could Michael's not playing basketball reflect badly on him? But O'Mally's thrust had struck home and Michael felt a moment's panic. Did they think him a loner? If his fellow seminarians so regarded him, wouldn't the faculty learn of it? Wouldn't Farley?
"Look, Gene-o, I'd appreciate it if you didn't press me on this." What Michael meant was, "Please don't tell on me." He knew that his act of autonomy was an offense, but there was little enough autonomy left to him and he had instinctively to protect it. How ironic that a last pathetic defense of his balls should have required the rejection of sport.
O'Mally shrugged and opened his hands. He was about to say a final word.
"Mister O'Mally!" a voice boomed down the corridor. It was Father Farley. "Get to your room!"
O'Mally flashed a stricken look, then disappeared.
The next morning Michael woke feeling a fresh insecurity about his status, and so he resolved that during theology class, at his first opportunity, he would dispel any possible impression that he considered himself apart from the others or, God forbid, better, by joining in the discussion with unusual energy. Class participation was one of the things you were judged on.
De Ecclesia, Ecclesiology; the subject of the class was the Church itself, and the ongoing Consistory had led the professor to focus for some weeks on the concept of Apostolic Succession. On that notion—that the bishops and popes of the Church are linked in an unbroken line to Peter and the Apostles themselves—rested both the legitimacy of Catholic Orders and the Catholic claim to spiritual and juridical superiority to the Protestant denominations. For days the professor had been displaying the charts of the historical record, the conclusive if mechanical evidence that Catholic claims were true. It was like an endless relay race with each bishop a runner taking the baton—God's Grace—and handing it on to the next. No matter that, far from sleek, ascetic athletes, most of them were like the characters Orson Welles portrays, pampered, self-indulgent, dictatorial and vain. The idea of Apostolic Succession was as central to the Church as the idea of the Balance of Powers was to the U.S. Constitution. From it derived the basic Catholic doctrine that the authority of bishops and pope came not from the people, but through the Apostles from Christ Himself.
"Any questions?" The professor bli
nked above his notes. He was an old man named Father James Ford, but because he'd always abbreviated his first name, "Jas.," and also, of course, because there was nothing modern about him, he'd been discreetly dubbed "Jazz" by seminarians years before.
Michael raised his hand and Father Ford nodded. "While there is no pope, Father, who can be said to hold the power of the Keys?"
"Why, the power rests with the whole Church."
"But then it reverts to the pope once he's elected?"
"Precisely."
"Thank you, Father."
Jazz blinked out at him.
Michael had hoped to get something going, but even he knew what a dustball his question had been.
"Anything else?" Jazz recognized another seminarian.
"In order to be in contact with the Apostles somebody has to be a member of the Church?"
"That's correct, although, as you know, the Holy Office distinguishes between in re membership and in voto. Who can tell me what this distinction means?"
No one moved.
Father Ford grimaced, as if their ignorance was a physical pain of his.
Michael raised his hand. "In re means 'in fact' and in voto means 'in desire.'"
Jazz nodded. "One can be incorporated as a member of the Church in fact, as we are, or one can belong to it in desire, as in the case of a man who wishes to act in accord with the will of God. Why is this distinction important, Mister Maguire?"
"Because it's how we get around the doctrine that there's no salvation outside the Church."
The class gasped at Michael's phrase "get around," and braced itself. Michael realized it was a slip. He'd answered, stupidly, with what he really thought. He tried to bury it by going on. "Father Feeney was condemned for concluding that those outside the Church are ipso facto damned. That has never been the Catholic position. The Catholic position is only that there is no salvation outside the Church. And we can affirm that because in voto everyone is, in potency at least, even atheists whose 'desire' may be implicit, a member of the Church."
"Even Luther?"
"Yes, I would say so."
"Well, you're wrong. Membership in voto is available only to those who have had no opportunity to know the truth. Luther was a heretic and apostate." Father Ford was angry. To him Luther wasn't an obscure figure from centuries before but an enemy who still threatened, the embodiment of rebellion. If he had been squashed the first time he'd used a cocky tone with his professor the Reformation would never have happened.
Michael said nothing.
"Do you understand now?"
"Yes, Father," Michael answered.
"And is understanding Church doctrine our purpose, Mister Maguire, or is our purpose 'getting around it'?"
"Understanding, Father."
"I expect you to remember that, young man."
"I will, Father." Michael felt sick. He continued to stare back at the professor, but not defiantly. He was afraid to lower his eyes for fear it would seem coy.
Father Ford snapped his notebook shut and stood. The class stood. They recited the Latin prayer and, then, once the priest left, burst into muted conversation, a release of tension.
Michael walked from the room without talking to anyone, but when he saw O'Mally ahead of him in the corridor he grabbed his arm. "Hey, Gene-o!"
O'Mally faced Michael. "Boy, Maguire, you got the hot-foot that time, didn't you?"
Michael made a face, a quick intake of breath through gritted teeth. "And I was just trying to play the damn game. Speaking of games...''He paused. He knew what he was doing. One way out from under the awful feeling of having been slapped down would be to do what this kid had asked. Michael wanted to belong. He had felt a new blast of the old voto —the desire to appease. Finally it came to that, and the walls around the last small part of himself that he had not surrendered just collapsed. He felt like a child asking a harsh playmate, "...Do you still want me for this afternoon?"
"Pick!" the Paulist guard cried and moved toward the top of the key, driving O'Mally into the other Paulist who'd set himself.
"Switch!" Michael called, sliding away from his own man, the pick, to cover the guard. The guard went up for a jump-shot and Michael went with him. When the guard released the ball, it was still arching slowly upward when Michael slapped it away.
"Shit!" the Paulist said, but the play moved quickly away from him as O'Mally led yet another TC fast break. Approaching the key he drew one of the two defenders and dropped a short pass to Maguire who was coming in right behind him. Maguire drove into the left slot, drawing the other defender, then fired a pass across to Tommy Coogan, the second TC guard, who was open for an easy lay-up.
"Beautiful! Way to go, Coogs!"
Coogan crossed to Maguire on their way upcourt. "Mister Wonderful," he sang, "that's you."
Michael grinned. With less than ten minutes to go they were leading 74—70. TC hadn't beaten the Paulists in four years. Michael had already scored twenty-four points, but his real value to the team seemed to be the way in which his concentration and his hustle—his discipline—communicated to his teammates. He had a rare esprit and they caught it. On the basketball court his natural grace, his instinctive willingness to take risks, asserted themselves. It was the opposite of the inhibitions he felt throughout the rest of his life. He was a man of action again. Why had he denied himself this pleasure? So as not to show the others up? To protect a little autonomy for himself? Or had he refused to play because he was a loner? No, not that. Suddenly he knew. He had denied himself this pleasure—driving, shooting, passing, scoring—because it was pleasure.
O'Mally had scored nineteen points, a personal high. Even if they couldn't quite hang on to win, although at last he believed they were going to, this was already the happiest day of his life. During his two years at Notre Dame, the truth was he'd been a substitute and he'd never really experienced until now the true ecstasy of the game. All he'd wanted was a ringer to keep the score respectable. It never occurred to him that what he'd get was everybody at his best together.
The Paulist forward took a bad shot. None of his teammates was in position for the rebound and Michael snagged it easily. He passed off to O'Mally for the run upcourt.
O'Mally's heart was in his throat. This would make it six, a lead of six!
But something happened.
The carillon in the Knights of Columbus bell tower at the shrine exploded with a loud peal of bells, and in quick succession bells began to ring loudly from the crenellated tower of the adjacent Paulist house and then from the Redemptorists' beyond the playing field and from TC across the wooded ravine behind the basketball court. The bells in the tower at the CU faculty residence began ringing too.
The players drifted. O'Mally started to throw a pass at Coogan, but Coogan wasn't paying attention. He was looking goofily up at the sky as if for a show of angels. Bells were coming from Trinity College across Fourth Street.
The referee blew his whistle; time out.
They all stood there listening as the bells from religious houses all over Brookland began to sound. It was the most extraordinary thing.
"Habemus Papam!" one of the Paulists cried. "We have a pope!"
And with that, the Paulists and the TC guys filed off the basketball court, some without picking up their sweatshirts. They were all dressed alike in tan workpants or old black cotton trousers and T-shirts. They didn't wear shorts. They crossed the driveway en masse and funneled quickly into the common room of the Paulist House. As a religious order, the Paulists took the vow of poverty, which meant that they had a new, expensive, large-screen television mounted nicely where everyone could see it. On the screen was a photograph of Saint Peter's Basilica and a correspondent on radio hookup was describing through static the white smoke that even then was pouring from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel. He said the cardinals burned their ballots without wet straw and that's why the smoke was white.
A few moments later the correspondent said that the first unco
nfirmed report was that the new pope was named Roncalli. Walter Cronkite came on then and awkwardly explained that Roncalli had not been mentioned as a possible pope. For the moment they knew nothing about him, not his first name, the see of which he was Ordinary, his age or the stripe of his politics. Nor did they have a photograph. The newsman flashed that twinkle of his, though, and said it was safe to assume that Roncalli was Italian.
The seminarians didn't laugh. A somber crowd, they pressed forward, listening, waiting to glimpse their future.
Michael looked out the window. O'Mally was still standing on the basketball court with the ball between his forearm and his hip, as if he expected the game to resume. "That guy," he thought, "doesn't have his priorities straight."
Later, by the time he told me this story, by the time he'd finally thrown off the pall of priestly subservience, long after the famous fresh air that blew into the Church with the election of John XXIII had grown stale, and after Eisenhower's Lebanon had become Johnson's Vietnam and Civil Rights had become Benign Neglect and birth control had become abortion and Lennon had become Lenin and the world had learned that at Auschwitz the smoke from the ovens was white because the victims' bones lacked fat enough to blacken it, Maguire had decided that O'Mally was the only guy of all who got it right that day.
TEN
THE breakfast dishes hopped when the monsignor slammed his hand down on the table. "The son of a bitch!" he said.
"Who?" Father Rice asked mildly without looking up from the Times.
"Moses! The son of a bitch!"
Father Rice raised his head and shook it once at Michael. "He doesn't mean the prophet."
Michael checked himself; Moses wasn't a prophet, but it wasn't a deacon's place to correct a priest, not even a vain, pompous one like Henry Rice.
The monsignor muttered under his breath while he read the article to its conclusion. Then he looked up at the table. Father Rice and Michael were the only ones left. Father Keegan was in the church already for the eight o'clock Mass, and Father Mahon was in the common room where he could have his morning drink in peace. Since Father Rice remained buried in his newspaper, Monsignor Ellis addressed himself to the new deacon. "He is one son of a bitch."