The Heretics of St. Possenti

by Rolf Nelson

  “A proper book to be using. It is good that you remember enough to be able to inquire, Brother Ken, but it is not proper to interrupt the reading or to be studying a Protestant Bible. You will say the rosary tonight for those. Please, carry on, Brother Clint.”

  Clint continued, doing his best to bring the archaic forms of language to life and meaning. He really got into the spirit of it near the end.

  Who shall rise up for me against the evildoers? or who shall stand with me against the workers of iniquity?

  Unless the Lord had been my helper, my soul had almost dwelt in hell.

  If I said: My foot is moved: thy mercy, O Lord, assisted me.

  According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, thy comforts have given joy to my soul.

  Doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, who framest labour in commandment?

  They will hunt after the soul of the just, and will condemn innocent blood.

  But the Lord is my refuge: and my God the help of my hope.

  And he will render them their iniquity: and in their malice he will destroy them: the Lord our God will destroy them.

  When he finished, Clint being who he was and where he was, he couldn’t help himself. He paused in his solemn intonation before continuing, doing his best to retain his demeanor and not crack a smile. It took a moment for the brothers listening to realize that he’d gone more than just a little bit off-script and listened even more intently.

  “It is said that ‘violence begets violence.’ It is our earnest endeavor to see that it does. We would like very much to ensure that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy. Paraphrase of the all-but-sainted Colonel Jeff Cooper.

  “Amen.”

  The silence was one of amazement. They looked at each other, not sure if they should laugh, chastise him, be embarrassed, remain silent and pretend it didn’t happen, or give him a standing ovation.

  Abbot Cranberry, who had never heard of Jeff Cooper, looked up in the sudden silence, surprised and somewhat chagrined. “Ahem.”

  “Amen,” echoed a handful of the brothers, misunderstanding Thomas but agreeing with Clint.

  “That is not a precisely verbatim reading of scripture, Brother,” said Thomas. “Or of any other book I’ve handed out.”

  “No, but it is certainly in theme with it.”

  Across from Thomas, Mickey Finnegan spoke up. His face was buried in his hands, and his voice carried overacted weariness. “Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, Padre…. You can take the man out of the corps… but you can’t take the corps out of the man. Or the joker.” He looked up, tears of mirth in his eyes. “Some things I think you are just going to have to roll with, given the mission of this mission.”

  Abbot Cranberry sat motionless. The monastic life was supposed to be a very serious calling. But these were not normal monks, nor was this a normal abbey. Nor was anything else very normal about any of them. He was afraid he might regret anything he did or didn’t do at this moment, but… more information was better than less.

  “I hate to ask, but who is Jeff Cooper?”

  “Was. He died some years back. One of the earliest of the modern school of handgun shooting. A retired colonel in the U.S. Marines. He promoted active shooting skills and a combat mindset rather than standing upright and shooting bullseyes. Basically, the more scientific and highly trained approach to doing what Gabriel Possenti did to get himself sainted. A very practical and widely read guy and had a way with words. We could do much worse than to study him, too.”

  “We may, as we study many things. I will consider it. But for now, please do not leaven scripture with the words of any who are not actually sainted, without my approving it beforehand, at least during the required reading time. Thank you for your reading. Now please take your seat.” He returned to his own meal with yet another thing on his plate… or rather, another thing to think about. As if he didn’t have enough already.

  The Fifth Bus

  Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

  —C.S. Lewis

  The first vets with serious substance abuse problems arrived at St. Possenti’s in the fifth load of novices brought to the abbey. They came with a shrink/substance-abuse counselor/pharmacist they’d recruited for the job, Dr. Jacob Hines, a specialist on loan from the VA. He wasn’t planning on being one of the brothers but would just be a live-in specialist for a while. If asked privately, he would have admitted he also planned on being an amateur cultural anthropologist. He thought it sounded like a fascinating place from what he’d heard from Chaplain Frank Bunt. He thought he might be able to turn it into a PhD.

  Hines had reviewed the case files of most of the men already at the facility. It sounded like the place should have been a train wreck, but to hear Bunt talk, it sounded like someplace very far removed from Hell on Earth, with the shooting range time acting like exposure therapy and stress inoculation training rather than a stress factor.

  Riding with Bunt was a man whom Thomas wasn’t expecting. Charles Whidmer had recently been a U.S. Army chaplain and was a Catholic priest like Frank, but rather than being a retired man, he’d been court-martialed and discharged for having the audacity to say that the Bible condemned homosexuality as a sin. Chaplain Bunt thought that based on his last conversation with Thomas, an extra set of ordained hands might be a great help.

  The bus ride to the abbey was tense at times, though ultimately uneventful. Hines had brought significant quantities of prescription drugs but clearly implied to the vets that he only had enough to barely get them there and that he’d have to restock on arrival. He’d had to jump through a lot of hoops to swing getting the quantities he’d requested because of the problems in getting them out in the hinterlands where the abbey was. He wasn’t sure what to expect when a busload of messed-up addicts, some of whom were recently on the streets sleeping in cardboard boxes, got dropped into a monastery; he was eager to find out. Frank told him the welcome was different every time, so he was just as curious as Dr. Hines to see what happened this time.

  The fifth busload brought the Abbey of St. Possenti to almost one hundred fifty brothers. When the bus pulled in, nearly all the residents were in the parking area between the ranch house and arena. They stood in teams of five to seven brothers waiting to greet the newcomers, each group wearing a different color sash and belt over the short version of their robes—or tunic for unbaptized postulants or those who were not yet novices—and holding a sign with the name and former rank of the veterans they were meeting. The rest were in getting lunch ready. More than a few of the robed monks were actually old friends meeting acquaintances on the bus. Abbot Thomas Cranberry was in front to offer the formal welcome to the men as they filed off the bus, uncertain in the crisp fall air. Before they could even so much as line up, they were directed to scatter in a very coordinated way.

  “Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome! You see your names. Go to your teams. We start in five minutes!” The men dispersed, one to each of the twenty teams. Every man was greeted enthusiastically and energetically, introduced, and then all heads were bowed in a heartfelt prayer of welcome, forgiveness, hope, and strength. The newcomers were given a matching sash and belt from their teammates, and the rules of the game outlined. Teams of equal numbers were paired up (even Chaplain Whidmer was put on a team), and a coin toss decided who got the foxtail ball. The rules were sort of like Ultimate Frisbee, but there were ten pairs of “goal posts” across the field that had been largely cleared of rocks and plowed smooth. The fields of play overlapped, and players had to keep their teammates and opponents straight as they all played through and around other teams that were on the same field but not playing with or against them. No tackling or hard contact was allowed, and players couldn’t touch or interfere with the foxtail from any other game. The first team from each pair to score five points won and could go to lunch while the other team took
the winner’s gear, as well as their own, to their new quarters.

  Very short prayers were said after each point, and the overall tone was one of very friendly and cooperative competition. The fit brothers who had been there a while covered the other fit long-timers, and the newer and less well-conditioned monks were matched to make it fair.

  It was a boisterous, lively set of games, with much good-natured confusion and quickly recovered and forgotten gaffes. Nobody took it too seriously, but all played as hard as they reasonably could, and great effort was made to include the newbies in every way possible, offering guidance, encouragement, name reminders, rule reminders, and chances to handle the ball.

  Bunt started laughing and cheerleading the action almost from the first moment a ball got tossed, while Dr. Hines gaped in open amazement as he watched the medication-dulled and somewhat sullen men come alive. Abbot Cranberry noted his obvious disbelief and explained:

  “We’re still trying to find the right balance of confusion, competition, stakes, complication, and team size. These are your men, men who wanted nothing more than a chance to fight a fair fight, but kept having the rug pulled out from under them. So we give them something from the start—a team, a goal, some simple rules—where winning means something but losing can be chalked up to confusion and newness, and the stakes are relatively low. Games like this do great work toward building morale and a sense of belonging. We mix teamwork and competition, change and routine, learning and physical activity, spirituality and physical world in roughly equal parts. It welcomes and challenges them. They know they are not in Kansas anymore. Or New York, or Philly, or even Springfield.”

  “How on Earth… why… These men need to be treated very gently. They are fragile, with many issues.”

  “Ah, the soft bigotry of low expectations, my bio-mechanistic friend. Yes, they need to be treated respectfully, but that’s very different than saying they are fragile. They’re tough enough to survive on the streets. They need a place where they fit. Here, we give them a position to play and just enough support that they may rise to the occasion. They play hard now, but the games last no more than fifteen minutes or so. Then they eat a hearty lunch, are shown rooms they can call their own for a while, and are given space and some time for meditation Nearly all of them already know at least one person here who is on their team.

  “Play hard. Pray hard. Work hard. Men of action thrive on it. And nearly all who join the military see themselves as men of action, whether they are or not.

  “But most importantly, it’s a jolt that tells them, very forcefully, that they are in a different place, where different rules apply. They need that shock—that jump start. We keep them busy for a good while, and they will sleep well and rise early. Each will have a different, but overlapping, schedule. They’ll be watched and tended very closely, even if not obviously.”

  “But with so many changing variables, how will we know if the newer experimental drugs are the cause of improvements, or, or… all this?” Dr. Hines waved at the wild action and laughter on the field. Most of the men had been his patients for a while, and for a few of them it was the first time he’d seen them laugh out loud or even smile.

  “They arrive with heavy hearts, and they need to see joy and experience the thrill of honest play. You know what recovery looks like in the normal settings, of course. Frank told me about your experience before you were invited. You know how traditional methods work as well as the effectiveness of the newer medications in a normal clinical trial setting. So we’ll do your double-blind study here. New med versus old med versus placebo, all here, and compare to expected outcomes.” Dr. Hines looked at Thomas in surprise.

  “Don’t be so shocked, Doctor. Just because I’m a man of God doesn’t mean I know nothing of science. I can give a basic description of the neurological pathways used in an endorphin rush from competing successfully, how the depression of inaction and a feeling of making no progress can affect serotonin reuptake, and how adrenaline can change that.” He pointed to the field after a wild leap and grab by a nearby postulant. “EXCELLENT, RIGBY! Great catch!” He clapped excitedly when the man shot a quick look back at him, surprised to be known by one of the handful standing on the sideline. “Part of my job is to know all the new men, contubernium, semi, and centuria of the Legion.”

  “The what? Not familiar with those terms.”

  “There has never been a proper name for a group of monks. They are former soldiers, and the founders thought that Latin sounded beautiful, so they decided to adopt something similar to Roman army terms. A squad is a contubernium, which will range in size from eight to a dozen, depending on need and personality. We’re flexible, not fighting in formation. A modern platoon is about thirty or forty men, and there isn’t a proper Roman term for a group that size, so we adopted ‘semi-century’ for five contus, about sixty men, because quinquaginta in Latin for fifty just didn’t flow right. Of course, centuria is a classical Roman term for about 120 men.”

  “But isn’t… isn’t Legion something bad in the Bible? I forget what exactly.”

  “Yes. Mark 5:9. A possessed man spoke in reply to Jesus asking his name, My name is Legion, meaning many demons were inside him. But Roman legions fought for civilization as we will fight the hordes of endarkenment. I can see, and Brother Finnegan can, too, that we will found many more abbeys in the coming years. Those who graduate from here will be part of the First Legion. Those from the next will be the Second Legion. Each graduate or long-term monk will be counted as a part of their centuria even if they were the only ones leaving on a particular day. We are soldiers for God, and we will be many to fight the forces of evil. Dark humor for dark times.”

  “Sounds like a lot of… I’m not sure what.”

  “We are building an entirely new way of dealing with troubled men here, Doctor. We meet their needs by adapting to them. We don’t offer a set of fixed services. Our postulants have all said that one of the biggest things the military does is to shock the system to unsettle old ways of thinking. They usually bring in the recruits at night after a long flight or bus ride. They yell and make them run around, do lots of exercises, and cut their hair. They shake them up and make them feel afraid, vulnerable, and alone.

  “That kind of shock has already happened to these men. They need a shock to make them feel welcome. A slightly odd team sport that resembles a bastard cross of Calvinball and Hot Potato with a hundred people playing on twenty teams on ten overlapping courts at the same time seemed like just the thing. Now look at them.” They did. The purple team’s new man scored their fifth point, sending up a cheer from his teammates. The opposing red and white team took it in good stride and went off with the purple team men to gather their minimal gear.

  Dr. Hines saw Jonathan Hicks, the new man on the losing red and white team smiling widely in spite of the loss. “How did it go, Jon?” he called out, pleased to see the smile worn so rarely on the man’s countenance.

  “It’s a blast!” came Jon’s reply between deep gulps of air.

  “We lost, but Jon scored two of our four points!” added another red and white team member. “Some great plays all around!”

  The old hands grabbed the two novices’ duffel bags, so it wasn’t much of a loss for Jon. And with much joking and a brief prayer, the two teams went off together to show the novices around a bit and to take them to hit the shower and to get some lunch.

  The next team to leave the field brought Charles Whidmer with them. He was laughing and clearly having a good time. His team—tan—had won, five to three, and the reception which his short victory prayer received made the grin on his face grow impossibly wide. “That was the most rejuvenating thing I’ve done in years! Outstanding play and sportsmanship! And they know how to pray.”

  Whidmer gave Bunt a bear hug. “Thank you for asking me here! I don’t know what the rest of the abbey holds, but if these men are any indication of what is in store, God’s doing great things here. Great things, Father.”

>   As he and the rest of his team left, Frank wiped a tear from his eye. “He’s been pretty depressed since the court-martial. You have no idea how rarely I’ve even seen a fleeting smile cross his face. I’m sure he’ll be a great help to you, and you have already helped him out, too.”

  The rest of the teams followed not long after. Some went to lunch first while others were shown their rooms. One was happily given a chance to pray for his deliverance to such a place, breaking down and weeping uncontrollably. After being on and off the street for a year, going cold turkey on drugs and being welcomed to a place where a hot shower, a secure private bedroom, honest friendship, and decent food was the expected order of the day was such a radical change he could not hold it together any longer. After a good, long prayer and brief but intense “been there, I understand” session, they helped him to his feet and into the lunch line to collect his meal. The much-needed shower waited until shortly before he collapsed into his narrow bed in his own room just after three, asking to be sure to be woken up before dawn so he could be sure to greet the new day of a new life.

  When Dr. Hines heard that from one of his toughest patients, he decided he needed to have a moment or three of silence by himself, too.

  Failed Vocation

  Above all things, we should ensure that no brother, powerful or not powerful, strong or weak, who wishes to promote himself gradually and become proud and defend his crime, remain unpunished. But if he does not wish to atone for it let him be given a harsher punishment. And if by pious counsel prayers are said to God for him, and he does not wish to make amends, but wishes to boast more and more of it, let him be uprooted from the pious flock; according to the apostle who says: Auferte malum ex vobis. That is to say: ‘Remove the wicked from among you.’ It is necessary for you to remove the wicked sheep from the company of faithful brothers.