The Heretics of St. Possenti

by Rolf Nelson

  “But we will be silent about it to the world. I will pray the outside world, beyond your own good monks’ word of mouth, will be silent back and take no notice beyond seeing more young men survive and thrive.

  “Continuing as before, effectively not doing anything even as the number of these young men swell, is unconscionable. A large majority of the cardinals are against it, but enough are willing to be flexible and test the waters and see what might work in a form that is more palatable to them, that going forward in a small way is… less problematic. I believe you are on the right path, or at least a righteous path, and have a pure heart. So… you will be given a free hand and distance for a period to see if divine will smiles upon your vision. With little fanfare or paperwork, and—God willing, no headlines—you will have your chance at this.

  “We must respect and understand the old ways. But we must also remember that sometimes the seed cannot grow without splitting the pavement. I trust you to do everything in your power, Abbot Thomas Cranberry, to save these men and do the Church no harm in the process. Let us pray for success on both accounts.”

  “Abbot?” replied Thomas, startled.

  “Of course. You are founding a new abbey with people far less learned than yourself. You must lead them until such time as one of them attains stature, knowledge, age, and wisdom enough to replace you at some future date. So you are no longer a mere bishop with a hundred peers. You are a founding Father Abbot. May God’s light shine upon this venture and keep your path true.”

  Bulletproof Monk

  Blessed be the LORD my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight

  —Psalm 144:1

  Thomas looked at the list of names. One hundred names in ten categories. He hoped to get four in each, so he had first choices and backups. Different problems, backgrounds, skills, ages, needs, and connections.

  The facility that was to become a monastery had been chosen and dealt with quietly. Arrangements had been made with local food providers and various professionals. Now they just needed volunteers.

  A handful he knew had already come aboard. Bill and his wife had a major falling out. Mickey had been thinking about moving west one day anyway and was coming as a weapons trainer, martial arts tutor, and maybe brother; Thomas was also trying to talk him into being novice-master. One of John’s instructors was coming along—a great fighter but a bit manic-depressive and caught in a tight divorce vice. Timothy, the homeless man, was in. They’d borrowed Frank Bunt, the retired chaplain from the VA, to come along as counselor and temporary prior of the monastery for a period before he was to return to collect the next batch of recruits. Frank was by far the oldest one on the list, but he was enthusiastic, friendly, and solid and knew far more about uniformed life than Thomas did. He also knew a lot of people in need and had helped winnow and shape the list over the last month by looking at files, making calls, and assisting with research.

  It was time to make the first “house call.”

  * * *

  The first candidate lived in a run-down apartment in a low-rent area of town in a building where most of the apartments had been subdivided at least once. The junkies and toughs on the street eyed them cautiously when Thomas, Frank, and Mickey neared the entrance, but they didn’t approach or call out even though the two older men wore their special new habits. When they walked down the fourth-floor hallway the thin walls let them hear all too easily the music, voices, and anything else that was going on in each room.

  “413, right here,” said Frank, wearing a black suit, narrow tie, sunglasses, and fedora. He gave the door a polite rap, rap-rap. From inside came an unintelligible yell, followed shortly by a shuffle. From down the hall came the sound of running feet and shouting that echoed from the stairwell. In front of them came the sounds of chains being pulled and dead-bolts sliding. The running and swearing from the end of the hall got louder. The door opened.

  There stood the man they had come to see, Hugh Antczak. Thomas instantly recognized him as the short-haired man who had dressed him down so pointedly an age ago in the holding cell.

  Hugh’s eyes opened in surprise and recognition, seeing Thomas in the monk’s habit. But before they could say anything, a young man carrying a spiked club charged out of the stairwell and down the hall, and right behind him was another. While the first kept sprinting, angling to run past them, the other stopped and raised a pistol, unleashing a pair of shots at his quarry. Hugh slammed the door. Mickey, wearing his normal street attire and hardware, suspected something bad heading their way. He clotheslined the one running past them with his elbow. That sent him spinning and down as the club went flying, while Finnegan raised his own pistol and aimed it at the second man, belting out in a booming command voice, “DROP IT, ASSHOLE!”

  The assailant dropped his heater, reversed course with commendable speed, and disappeared back the way he came.

  Thomas Cranberry looked down in surprise at the hole in the chest of his habit. “Well. Will you look at that.” The door opened back up a crack, and Hugh peered out cautiously.

  There was a moment of silence with all of them looking at the 9mm hole almost dead center in his chest before Mickey said to the chaplain, almost casually, “I’ll get the gat, Rev. You check the running back here while Brother Tom introduces us.”

  Thomas held out his hand, which he was surprised to note wasn’t shaking. Hugh looked up and down the hall, and then back at them before opening the door and reaching out to take his hand. “My name is Thomas Cranberry, Hugh, and I’m not quite the squish you met a few months ago. We have a simple proposition to offer you. May we come in?”

  “We’re on a mission from God,” Frank added, looking up from where he knelt beside the prostrate runner in the hall.

  Without a word, Hugh Antczak stood back and opened the door for them.

  Frank stood up, reporting, “Pulse is strong; just knocked out,” before he followed Thomas inside, as if checking on unconscious bodies was an every-day occurrence.

  Mickey trotted in with the dropped gun in his hand, which in moments he had unloaded and field-stripped on the counter. “It’s good to be bulletproof, isn’t it? That was my idea. Figured if I was going to be a man of the cloth, I’d prefer it to be ballistic cloth. Likely be pretty sore later though, Tom.”

  Finally, Hugh spoke. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Oh, yes, fine, thanks. Miracles are nice to work from time to time.”

  “Can you believe it?” Said Mickey. “First day in uniform, and he goes and get all hole-y-er-than-thou but leaves us with cleanup duty. Sheesh….” The other two rolled their eyes at the pun. “Be interesting to see how Spiderlon repairs. You want this?” He asked Hugh, indicating the disassembled gun. “Cheap little .380, but better than nothing, and free’s a good price for an untraceable bean-shooter.”

  “Not now, please, Mickey,” said Thomas. “Let’s stick to the question at hand. Oh, and you need to work on your epithets.” Mickey gave him a blank look. “It’s not proper for a man with monks in habit to refer to another of God’s creations as asshole, even if he’s acting like one, and even if you are not a full monk yet. It’s unbecoming.”

  “You’re bulletproof?” said Hugh, disbelievingly. “You look like the priest I met in the cell, but you sure don’t sound or act like him.”

  Thomas rapped his chest with a thumb, which gave a muffled thock from the light ballistic plate in its sternum pocket underneath. “I’ve had a… a come-to-Jesus moment if you will. Well, another one. We are here to offer you a deal.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Hugh leaned back in his uncomfortable rented chair to consider his options. Before these three walked in, he had a half-dozen very bad choices. Now he had those same terrible choices, and one… strange… choice. Rent was due in a week anyway, and he didn’t have the money for it no matter what he did, and he had no good backup plans. Or even bad ones. Not even a car to live out of. But he had to admit, for once someone was
actually offering him something that had some real-world value right now. Yes, there were strings attached, but… but the payoff was now, the rewards were real, and the potential cost was nothing but time, which right now he had plenty of, unless his totally dead-end security job that didn’t pay enough and had ever-reducing hours with no benefits took an all-but-impossible turn for the better.

  The offer these three men spelled out for him had a lot going for it—food, housing, medical, training, and refuge from the debt collectors for a while… years, really… while he got his shit together with some men it sounded like he could relate to. All in exchange for… what? It almost seemed like a deal that was too good to be true.

  “So what do you get out of it? Where is it that I sell my soul or something or sign over ten percent of my wages for life?”

  “Quite the opposite, actually. We are saving your soul and our nation at the same time. We help you get your life together by giving you training and support. We help you understand the message of Christ. This—” he held up the symbol of Catholicism “—is called a cruci-fix, not a cruci-broken, after all. While you are with us, you do what we ask you to do. You can tap out and walk away at any time, pay off the loan the way you normally would, and take it up with God when you die.

  “But for us, when your time is up and for the rest of your life, your legal obligation is done other than the debt consolidation loan; pay that off, and we mark the file as such, so you can get a decent credit history going. Other than that, we ask only that you pay us what you think your time with us was worth and that you spread the Word. If you think it’s worth ten percent, give that. If you think we saved your life, give what you can. We are not demanding that you spend your whole life impoverished,” explained Thomas.

  “Actually,” Mickey said, “what we really hope is that you learn enough that you can get rich enough to attract a hot wife, support a big family, and throw a few bucks our way every now and again, and your family will be more than happy to let you because you are such an awesome husband and dad.”

  “No contracts?”

  “Nope. No paperwork. Well, almost none, anyway. A vow and doing most of it… on faith, if you can believe that,” Mickey answered.

  “Still sounds too good to be true.”

  Thomas looked at him hard. “You gave me an earful in that jail cell, Hugh. And you were right in a way. We were asking for people to give on faith when they had neither faith nor money. So I started learning and listening. Listening hard. Then I asked the higher ups to take this gamble, also on faith, so that we could convince people like you that we were worth it. That we would offer you what you need, here and now, on faith that you will give back later when your life is back in balance.”

  “And you have your shit together a bit more than you have right now,” added Finnegan, holding up the threadbare and poorly patched pillow that had been on the threadbare and falling-apart chair he was sitting on. “You can do better than this, dude.”

  “What sort of monk swears like you do?”

  “A new one,” said the chaplain with a grin. “We’re working on that. But it’s the thought that counts. And I think you can do better than this.”

  “I don’t know, man. I mean… never thought I’d ever consider being a monk.”

  “Think of it as a more full-service service. Kick ass, take names, save souls, learn a trade, get some breathing space. It’ll be an adventure to tell your grandkids about.”

  “Tell my grandkids? Hell. My kids aren’t out of grade school yet.”

  “And you think the way things are going, that’s ever going to happen with a woman you think is worthy of raising your kids?”

  “I… well… Ah, shit. Got nothing to lose but time and got nothin’ but that right now. I’m in.”

  “May God have mercy on us all,” said Mickey. “Welcome to the fold, Brother Hugh.”

  “Brother Hugh. That’s too funny!” The newly minted proto-monk laughed at the absurdity of it all, but with a heartfelt note of relief as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He had a plan. “Hey, how many more are you looking for? There are more screwed-up guys in this building than you’d believe.”

  “We are only planning on forty or so total, and we have a list of a hundred to draw on,” Thomas replied.

  “Oh, man, sorry to hear that. So when do you want me where so we can start this thing? I gotta be out of here by Friday anyway. I got no other plans, and I don’t work until tomorrow evening.”

  “That depends on how fast we can get to the rest of them, I suppose.”

  “Can you at least follow me next door? Maxwell ain’t gonna believe this if he doesn’t see you fellas here as proof. C’mon.” Hugh headed for the door, and the other three followed him out and down the hall (noting that the previous unconscious occupant was now gone). He strode rapidly to the third door down, where he pounded briskly. “Maxi! Hey, Max! Open up! Got someone for you to meet!” He pounded again.

  “Go away!” came a strained voice from the other side of the door.

  “Come on, Maxi, my man! You ain’t gonna believe this. You gotta see it!”

  “Go away!” came the repeated request, in a cracking voice.

  “Life is looking up, buddy! A way out of this hole just landed on my doorstep!” Hugh pounded again.

  “There ain’t no way out but the one I’m taking. See you in Hell!” Max’s voice sounded strange and shrill. A crash sounded from inside the room.

  Without a word, Hugh and Mickey stood back and then gave a simultaneous kick against the closed door. It crashed open, hinges, chains and deadbolts ripped from the flimsy door-jamb easily under the violent onslaught. On the floor in the middle of the room was a man with a lamp-cord noose around his neck with a kicked-over trash bin and a light-fixture ripped from the ceiling next to him, with dust and debris still showering down. He stared up at the ceiling, where the cheap construction had foiled his suicide attempt, and broke down in tears, sobbing wretchedly.

  The next few minutes were chaotic, with much talking and emoting but few distinct or coherent words. Max had been raised Catholic, and when he finally opened his eyes enough to recognize anyone around him, seeing two monks sent him back over the edge in paroxysms of tears and apologies and pleas for forgiveness.

  An hour later they took him to a hospital with a suicide prevention and counseling center attached to it. All four men were somber and quiet. They sat in the cold car after they left the building, silent with their own thoughts. Thomas turned the key.

  “We have to pick up the pace. We were lucky. We need to get to everyone on the list ASAP. Every minute we delay may cost lives. We can do….” He looked at the list they’d prepared. “We should be able to get four more today. Hugh, you can sit in on the first couple. Then we split up into two teams to cover the list faster. I want it done by the end of the week. We will start getting the debts consolidated now, as that may make them a little less desperate. We’ll work on a list of who we can get started in the program before they join us. See if we can get them some help before–”

  “No,” said Frank softly. “The splitting up is good. The plan is good. But if we rush it, we’ll make more mistakes. Yes, there might be a short-term cost. Yes, we were lucky today. But let’s be methodical. Careful. We cannot do everything, but we will do what we can by being methodical, careful, and deliberate.”

  Finnegan, his expression more serious than usual, agreed. “We all feel the same way, Thomas. This was unusual. Slow and steady wins the race.”

  Thomas sighed, took a deep breath, and nodded. “Yes. You are right, of course. Let’s get on with it then.”

  * * *

  A week later Thomas Cranberry and a load of newly signed-up members of a mysterious order were on a jam-packed charter bus, headed west.

  Prior Restraint

  If, however, the place require it, or the brotherhood reasonably and with humility make the request, and the Abbot shall deem it advisable, let the Abbot hims
elf appoint as Prior whomever, with the advice of God-fearing brethren, he shall select.

  The Holy Rule of Saint Benedict, Ch. LXV (Of the Prior of the Monastery)

  Father McKale Mathews was in trouble.

  Again.

  He was sharp and well educated in seminary but an impulsive and restless young man. His devotion to God was great, but his earthy involvements in problem solving tended to be just a little bit too blunt and hands-on for comfort. His relative youth and enthusiasm had attracted more than a small amount of attention from the wrong quarters, and his tendency to do first and ask later made his superiors sigh heavily often. His latest involvement with a cheating wife (visiting the home and reading her the biblical riot act for her infidelity in front of her family, that is) was just the latest. His heart was in the right place, but….

  “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” McKale’s superior said wearily, half joking, as he read the husband’s email.

  His phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number. “Hello, Father Compton speaking.”

  “Good afternoon. I am Bishop Thomas Cranberry. I was given your name and number by Archbishop Gillison. I’m working on a project, and I’ve been informed you may be able to help me.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. I’m looking for a young priest who is physically very active and sharp, likes arguing the scripture vigorously, is having trouble fitting in, and is able to move to a new location.”

  “I might know a man who fits that description. I was just thinking of him, in fact. What do you have in mind?”

  “A monastery.”

  “A monastery?” Compton chuckled. “That would be quite a change of pace. And not at all what I expected to hear. Not the first place that pops into my mind when thinking of him. Intriguing. Please go on.”