The Heretics of St. Possenti

by Rolf Nelson

  “It’s a long story, and I’m not at liberty to discuss all the details at this time with anyone except key people in the strictest of confidence.”

  “Very mysterious. You can be assured of my silence, of course.”

  “I would never question a fellow priest’s word. But it is a somewhat unusual situation that may be uncomfortable for some people. You see, we are starting a new kind of monastery. One that will specialize in a particular type of man with a certain type of background. It needs to be secluded and rural, and there isn’t anywhere available in our region to build it. There is in your region, and…”

  “They are not criminals, are they?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that. Not at all. Primarily military veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, actually. Men who have been through great spiritual and physical trauma and have very troubled spirits. There are some with prosthetics. But they have no serious criminal history. A couple were arrested for theft when homeless and starving, but nothing serious. We have plans that will require a lot of room for the activities involved. We desire to build a large abbey—compared to most—and we’ll take them in for a while, get them straightened out over the course of a few years, and then return them to their home city. Or someplace else if there is a better fit and they want a totally new start. We will be doing some very traditional monastic things, but also some more modern counseling—we have a Catholic chaplain on loan from the VA to help out, and also a board certified psychiatrist, and a substance-abuse treatment specialist.”

  “It sounds like a very challenging undertaking, Bishop Cranberry.”

  “You have no idea. I’ve been working out details for months, and I think we are nearly ready to start for real, if we can get just a few more things lined up, this young priest being one. I’m not foolish enough to think that I can do everything when dealing with this many men.”

  “How many are you planning for?”

  “We’ll be starting with nearly fifty.”

  “Fifty! That’s a huge monastery! Most have only a dozen or two.”

  “Starting. Once we have the program worked out, we’ll ramp up to over a hundred.”

  “That is a lot of monks. Very ambitious.”

  “There are a lot of men in need. His Holiness has given it his blessing in part because of the numbers. He has also given a strict admonishment to keep it out of the news. You understand that when dealing with psychiatric cases, the potential for things not working well is, well, problematic, so to speak. To succeed we need a certain kind of man to work with this population. Military experience would be ideal, but other than that, it’s mostly attitude, energy, and excellent knowledge and teaching skills.”

  “No, Father McKale was never in the military. But energy and attitude he has in abundance. Too much for some around here, in fact. Tell me more about the program. It may prove a marvelous opportunity for both of us.”

  * * *

  An hour later, Father Compton called in the cause of his most recent problem and sat him down to explain the situation and likely transfer. Father Mathews sat motionless, certain he knew what he’d been called in for. He was fully prepared to defend his actions with chapter and verse. He didn’t expect Compton’s expression to be so serene, almost blissful. He tended more toward old-school dourness. The broad smile that flashed across the older man’s face was nearly without precedent when they were alone together in this office.

  “After your most recent escapade, I have been wondering what I can possibly do with you. Or to you. As it turns out, God has his own plans, of which I have just been informed.”

  “I’m sure he does, but I’m afraid I don’t follow,” Mathews replied uncertainly.

  “You are getting transferred.”

  “Transferred? Where? I like it here! And the congregation likes me… except for Mrs. Alvarez, I suppose, but other than that–”

  “It is all but done, McKale. We have only to fill out the paperwork and sign it.”

  “I, but, you can’t….” Father Mathews gulped, turned slightly pale, and then straightened his posture and calmed himself. “Where?”

  Compton paused dramatically. “A monastery.”

  Mathews blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard correctly.”

  “A… May I ask why?”

  “You may.”

  “…Why?”

  “They need a priest, and you will be an excellent fit by the sound of it.”

  “A monastery? But don’t they already have enough priests? It’s full of monks! Why on earth would they need another?”

  “As you should well know, not all monks are priests, any more than all priests are monks. In this case, it is a new monastery, just being founded. An unusual monastery—one that doesn’t have the normal sort of residents. Many men will need to learn a great deal in a short time, and with the abbot being the only priest, a man with your knowledge and energy will be a great benefit.”

  “But I don’t want to spend my life in a monastery! I became a priest so I could help ordinary people, not so I would be cloistered away singing hymns that only a handful of staid old men hear. Begging your pardon.”

  “You might be surprised in this case. And this need not be a lifetime assignment. Perhaps just a few years. Although the details are still in flux, I think you’ll find that working with Bishop Cranberry will be most interesting.”

  “But I’ve only been here for a year.”

  “And a most exciting year it has been.”

  McKale stood and started pacing. Finally, he stopped and faced his superior with resignation on his face. “Where is it, Father, and when do I leave?” he said quietly.

  “Where: I don’t know exactly. The location is very rural, and I’m not familiar with that county. When: about two months, so you will spend Christmas here. However, I’d like you to leave quietly. It’s a long story, but I can tell you this in confidence: this is not merely a new monastery. It is the founding of an entirely new order of monks, and you are under strict orders not to say anything about it to anyone. You are to slip out as silent as the ghost of a church mouse.”

  “A new order? But why?”

  “The abbot, Bishop Cranberry, will fill you in. I’d heard rumor that something controversial was brewing, and now it appears a small part of it has landed on our doorstep. This diocese will not be held responsible for causing any problems with it. Do I make myself absolutely clear?”

  “Yes. Abundantly,” Mathews said firmly. He turned and left silently, mind churning. On the one hand, a monastery?! And silence wasn’t his strong suit. What could Compton be thinking? On the other hand, an entirely new order, the first in… what, several centuries at least. That was exciting. Cranberry, Cranberry…. The name didn’t ring any bells. He wasn’t from around here, Compton implied. Time to do some quiet research.

  * * *

  Hours of his best efforts with Internet searches didn’t add much. Bishop Cranberry appeared to be an entirely ordinary, conventional, middle-aged, mid-level Church man. Nothing in anything McKale could find stood out. Normal archdiocese, normal church, normal congregation, normal homily videos, normal education and promotions, normal if irregular church blog posts. Why would someone as utterly ordinary as Cranberry appeared to be found a new monastic order? And on that topic there was absolutely nothing on any source, regular media or Church. No announcements of what he’d expect to be huge news in certain circles. But all he saw was the daily, unchanging drone of an ancient institution. There had to be more than was apparent, he thought. He must be careful. But he was under orders to be silent, and for once he thought it might be a good idea to play dumb and to follow orders to the letter.

  Travel

  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

  —Psalm 23:3-4

  Other than be
ing slower than expected, the bus trip was uneventful and according to plan… until they wrecked on an icy back road that other accidents ahead on the interstate had detoured them onto. As wrecks go, it wasn’t bad; they plowed slightly askew at a relatively low speed into a snow-berm after a fool in a hurry tried to pass them and lost control. The bus driver, making every effort to avoid having the smaller car go under the bus, left the road. The Mini Cooper, after careening off snow banks on both sides of the road and spinning too many times to count, gunned the engine, straightened out, and fled into the evening, leaving three other cars in the ditch or fouled up.

  The driver dug out a tow-strap, and it didn’t take long to get the other somewhat bemused drivers pulled out and back on the road with four-score hands pulling vigorously on the strap. Extracting the bus was rather more difficult, but with a constant rotation on the one available shovel to keep it moving at high speed it wasn’t quite full dark before they were back on the road. The worsening conditions made it advisable to pull over for the night; they could see through the blowing snow and falling dark they were not far from a small town, so they pulled in at a diner with a cheery OPEN flashing next to a motel VACANCY sign.

  Bill volunteered to secure what rooms they could, and Bishop Cranberry, now wearing his new monastic robe (with a sweater and pants underneath) led the rest into the diner to arrange for an unexpectedly large (for the folks behind the counter) dinner. When they saw the brown robe, the owner’s eyebrows went up slightly in surprise, and the hostess greeted Thomas as cheerily as she would anyone else.

  “And how many are you today?”

  “Forty-five.”

  “…”

  “Field trip got detoured,” extemporized Mickey.

  “Whatever you have for dinner would be fine,” said Thomas with a grin.

  “We just dug out a bus and a few other cars, so anything hot is fine!” chimed in one of the recently homeless men crowding in behind the older two.

  “You don’t have to serve us all at once. No allergies. Tea, cocoa, or water as they desire. No alcohol or soft drinks. All on one bill, of course.”

  The hostess waved around. “I’m not sure we have room. Let me check. It’ll be just a moment.” She pulled out a phone and made a quick call as she began walking around the diner. Shortly she was back. “We can just barely do it if you don’t mind squeezing in a few places. I’ve got some off-shift kids coming back in to help out. Should make it go a bit faster.”

  A few minutes later the very brown-looking crowd filled the place with hushed conversation. Only about half of them had habits; some of the new monks had not been off the street long and were not particularly well cleaned up yet, but were presentable enough. The owner, seeing a much larger crowd than any of his workers had ever dealt with at one time, decided to go wholesale on the orders. He rapped a glass for attention.

  “We were not really ready for you to arrive, what with the snow and all, and I apologize for that. But some meals we can do really well and fast. If you can keep it to six or seven things, we can really jam on getting orders up. Two breakfasts, two lunches, two dinners.” He ticked them rapidly off. “So: how many want breakfast combo one, with biscuits and gravy, a side of eggs, and fruit?” He counted the hands that went up. “Seven breakfast combo one!” he shouted to the cook in back while pointing to the hostess, indicating she should write it down. On down the list he went. The chicken-fried steak dinner was popular.

  Just when he was done, two employees came in the front door and were promptly shooed into the back to help in the kitchen, where the sounds of people moving fast could be heard.

  The hostess came over to Thomas with a concerned look on her face. “There are fifty-one meals here. Is that a problem?”

  “Some of them are quite hungry, I’m sure, but I’ll check. It’s not a problem.” He and Mickey rose to see who had signaled for more than one meal. As expected, a couple had ordered twice for themselves, but the others had intended to share among the four or five at their tables, particularly the very underweight brothers.

  Finnegan and Thomas were just meeting back near the door when a family entered, looking ill-prepared for the snow. The man was arguing with his wife, and the three kids, looking to be between five and ten, looked ragged and tense as they trailed behind.

  “GOD! Of all the stupid things to do, I let you drive in a storm!” the dad said angrily. “You can’t hardly drive in good conditions, stupid… Gah!” He glared at her, oblivious to his surroundings as he pushed past the two men. “Gotta do everything myself! No tow-trucks available until tomorrow, of course! Your family is always trouble! Trouble when they visit, trouble when we go to visit them, every God-damned time, God dammit!”

  “AHEM!” Bishop Cranberry cleared his throat loudly.

  “WHAT?” said the man with a snarl, finally taking notice of them.

  “Please do not take the Lord’s name in vain,” Thomas said, polite but firm, features stern.

  “Or you’ll do what?” The man held up a fist, half-threatening, and his wife pulled at his arm in a desperate attempt to redirect him.

  Finnegan noticed part of a tattoo exposed on the arm. “Well, we can explain it the easy way or the hard way.” His voice carried the calm of a man who is totally confident of his position.

  The man looked at Mickey with a mix of surprise and anger on his features.

  Finnegan started rolling up his own sleeves. “The easy way”—he waved to a roomful of brown robes now starting to stand up—“is we help you pull your car out if it is close by, and then you have a quiet dinner with the family and calmly talk out any real problems…. The hard way”—he flexed his own Semper Fi-tattooed forearm visibly as his voice took on a harder edge—“is best left undiscussed.” The rustling about the room of other monks looking like they were quietly preparing for a brawl wasn’t missed.

  Behind Mickey and Thomas the front door swung open. In the reflection of nearby glass, Finnegan saw the revolver in the hand of the entering stranger as he waved it about before he shouted “Everyone hand over–”

  Mickey spun in a well-practiced disarming move, seizing the revolver with his hand closing over the top of it, jamming his pinky-finger into the gap between hammer and action as he pushed and twisted it out of the man’s grasp. In a flash he’d up-ended the familiar gun now in his own hands, flipped the cylinder out and dumped the loaded cartridges on the floor. With a dramatic flourish of the stainless steel gun (grip notably not in his own hand), he glared at the would-be robber. “Can’t you see we’re having a moment here? Sheesh! Have some respect!”

  Mickey turned back around to face the startled father while the would-be robber beat feet back out the door into the snowy night. Out of reflex Mickey started to holster the now-empty gun in his hand before realizing his own normal sidearm was already there. He changed course and stuffed it into a different pocket on the opposite side. “Where was I? Oh, yes. The hard way…” his voice dropped to barely audible, almost conciliatory. “Let’s not go there in front of your kids; it might leave a bad impression. I think things can be worked out.”

  Thomas looked at the man and his even more surprised wife, the door still closing behind the fleeing robber. “Is your car far?” Bishop Cranberry prompted.

  The wife shook her head.

  The husband looked at the odd pair of monks in front of him, glanced down at the tattoo that looked so much like his own and the now matching pair of bulges underneath the brown cloth, and found his voice. “No, man, uh, no. Just a little way short of the parking lot.”

  “I’ll get the tow-strap out!” the bus driver called out with disarming cheerfulness as he rose from his seat.

  “Brothers! Three men from each table follow them out to rescue a car from the Abominable Snow-Berm!” Thomas called out, causing a sea of brown cloth to rise and flow toward the door. He faced the surprised father. “If you’d be so kind as to lead the way, I’ll see if we can make room for your family inside where it�
��s warm. It shouldn’t take but a minute.”

  It took closer to ten, but the food was just starting to come out when the car-recovery crew came back in, knocking the snow off but looking rosy cheeked and cheerful. They had pulled out another car while they were outside as well, the sedan of a local woman, and had a brief but furious snowball fight.

  The mother and her kids were looking noticeably more relaxed, happy to be given a little breathing space, and knowing that however much she and her husband might argue tonight, it wasn’t going to get out of hand like it sometimes did.

  Though it was a very full house at the diner and motel, it turned into a very pleasant evening. The owner thought a group discount was appropriate, all things considered. Cranberry put on his marital counseling hat and helped the parents smooth out some of their problems somewhat while a couple of the brothers (at Bill’s suggestion) taught each other and the kids how to play checkers at a nearby table. Eventually, everyone had eaten, they’d helped get beds up from storage so that everyone had a place to sleep in the motel, and they’d put in orders for the morning’s breakfast, and then they called it a night.

  Move-in

  In my Father’s house there are many mansions. If not, I would have told you: because I go to prepare a place for you.

  —John 14:2

  The remainder of the trip was relatively uneventful other than that they got very good at pulling cars from the ditch. It made for a great teamwork exercise, taught practical skills (led by a former combat engineer and sergeant, Ken Johnson, who had spent a lot of time doing vehicle recovery), never took very long with the number of men they had, made a great break from sitting on the bus, and made them feel good about themselves; they thought of themselves as men of action, and they were acting. It also gave Ken, recently living in a friend’s RV, a much-needed confidence boost to be leading men doing good works again.