Chameleon (18 page)

“Anyway, Larry Hoffer had a brilliant career in the comptroller’s department at Ford Motor Company. When he was nearing retirement, he decided he wanted to do something for the Church before finally retiring.

“Needless to say, he was a great catch for the Detroit archdiocese. Cardinal Boyle hired him immediately. Of course we couldn’t match what he earned at Ford. But he wasn’t so much interested in the final buck as he was in contributing his talents to the Church.

“Fortunately, the position of head of finance and administration was open when Larry offered his services, and he moved right in. He’s done a magnificent job, as everyone knew he would. Until … until …”

“Was he married?”

“Yes. Poor woman. I didn’t know her but I will certainly pray for her. Come to think of it, Larry’s situation is very much like Quent Jeffrey’s,”

“Humm?”

“Quentin Jeffrey. A deacon—head of the deacon program.”

“A deacon? The Baptists got deacons, as I recall.” Tully’s comprehension was threatening to disintegrate, “This may be more than my mind can handle.”

Koesler could sympathize. “Lieutenant, it seems confusing because we’re dealing with the bureaucratic Church. It gets simpler as it gets down to just people.”

“We are, unfortunately, where we’ve got to be,” Tully said, “Whoever killed the Donovan woman and Hoffer, if he’s messing with department heads, may know as much as you do about the top echelon. He sure as hell knows more than I do. Continue, please. What about deacons? What about Jeffrey?”

“Deacons go back a long way. All the way back to the Bible. When the infant Christian Church began to grow, the apostles found they couldn’t do it all. So they appointed ‘seven holy deacons.’ The rank goes back that far! For centuries, men—and men only—in their progress toward priesthood were ordained to the functions that, in earlier times, had been fulltime jobs in the Church. In the ceremony called tonsure—a cutting of hair—” Koesler explained, “the man became a cleric.

“Then,” Koesler continued, his explanation interspersed with subexplanations, “followed four ‘minor’ orders: porter (janitor), lector (reader), exorcist (caster-out of demons), and acolyte (a server at the altar). The ‘major’ orders were subdiaconate—which included the obligations of celibacy and daily recitation of the monastic hours of prayer, or the breviary; diaconate—the first step into the sacrament of Holy Orders; and finally, the priesthood.

“The order fell out of practical use some centuries ago. Until very recently, nobody remained a deacon. It became merely a step you took on your way to becoming a priest. Then we started running out of priests, and what was called the ‘permanent diaconate’ was reestablished. Now, in the post-conciliar Church, the diaconate has also been made available to men who choose to remain in that office, without intention of progressing to priesthood.”

“Why would the Church do that?”

“Because a deacon can do almost everything a priest does—baptize, preach, witness marriages—everything except saying Mass and absolving from sin.”

“But what’s the advantage? For the deacons, I mean: If they can do
almost
everything, why not just become priests?”

“Deacons can be married.”

“Oh.” Tully almost asked a follow-up question but thought better of it.

“Now,” Koesler continued, “what got me started on Quent was the similarity between his background and Larry Hoffer’s, Both men were significantly successful in their lay careers, Larry a financial wizard prized by Ford, and Quent with his public relations firm, Jeffrey, Smith and Allan … maybe you remember them?”

Tully thought briefly. “Yeah … didn’t they do a lot in politics?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I remember: Jeffrey used to sit in on WJR on election nights predicting the results. He was pretty accurate. Good-looking dude.”

“Still is. But the election business was only part of what he did. Then, like Larry, he decided to leave the public arena and devote his talents to the Church. So he became a deacon. And because he was so talented, the Cardinal asked him to guide the program. Even though it goes all the way back to the Bible, for us, now, it’s a relatively new game.”

“And,” Tully tested his understanding of the matter, “Jeffrey became a deacon and not a priest because he was married.”

“That’s about the size of it. But now, unfortunately, he’s a widower.”

Tully raised an eyebrow.

“His wife died of cancer a while back. It was tragic.”

Tully mulled that over. “But he’ll probably marry again. He’s still young and he’s still a good catch.”

“No, he won’t marry again.”

“You seem pretty sure of that.”

“He can’t marry again. Church law makes it impossible for men who are deacons or priests to marry. In so many words it just says clerics in major orders cannot contract matrimony.”

“But you just said—”

“There is no second marriage allowed after one becomes a deacon or a priest. There is no marriage allowed for men who are going to become priests.”

“Say again?”

“Young men who go to a seminary to become Catholic priests know that they will never be permitted to marry if they go on to ordination. If a priest marries, he is no longer authorized to function as a priest. If a man is unmarried when he goes into the permanent diaconate, he never will be allowed to marry. Some men who are ordained in Protestant faiths, like Episcopalians and Lutherans, and who are already married, are allowed to become Catholic priests if they convert to Catholicism. They may remain married, but, like the permanent deacons, if they become widowers, they are not allowed to remarry.

“Now there are some extenuating circumstances, for instance if there are small children involved who really need a mother as they mature. But there are none of these extenuating circumstances in Quent Jeffrey’s case. He will never be permitted to marry again. But of course he knew that going in.”

Tully decided to ask the follow-up question he had rejected a moment before. “Just what do you guys have against sex and marriage?”

Koesler’s first impulse was to laugh at the provocative exaggeration implicit in the question. But on quick reflection, he decided to take Tully’s question quite seriously on face value. What was the saying—If only we could see ourselves as others see us?

“One could argue,” Koesler said, “that we haven’t got anything against sex and marriage. People who have gone through our matrimonial court trying to get a judgment that will declare their marriage null and void could assure you that we are extremely serious about marriage. As for sex, the teaching is that it finds its place within marriage.”

The two regarded each other, each knowing Koesler’s argument could be considered extremely shallow.

Nonetheless the priest forged on. “But I suppose you’re referring to the laws regarding marriage for the clergy.”

“That’s what I had in mind.”

“Lieutenant, I can only tell you what my experience has been. I attended the seminary in the forties and fifties. I became a priest in 1954, which was eleven years before that famous Church council was concluded. I spent the maximum number of years—twelve—preparing for the priesthood. All of us in the seminary wanted very, very much to become priests. It was made crystal clear that among the requirements was that if we were ordained we’d never marry. It was something you accepted and stayed in or rejected and left. It was no surprise. Adding credibility to the whole thing was the fact that in those days almost nobody left the priesthood. A priest who left and got married was looked on pretty much as a notorious sinner.”

“But I got the impression lots have left and married.”

“True. Another result of that remarkable council. Lots of the guys became convinced the rules of the game had been changed. There was a new way of looking at the priesthood, the laity, the Church, and marriage. As a result of this new vision they had, they couldn’t see any good reason why they couldn’t be married and still be priests.

“But the Church didn’t see it that way. If they were determined to marry then they couldn’t function as priests. Not that everybody who left did so specifically to get married. But most did.”

Tully thought that over. “But why the rule? Ministers get married. Rabbis get married. Why not priests?”

“That is truly tough. It’s been a long while since I studied the history of celibacy. Jesus, of course was not married. But tradition tells us that all the apostles with the exception of John and Paul were. As I recall, there were a few attempts at getting an unmarried clergy early on, but it never took hold. After a while there was a problem with married priests willing their church properties to their children—thus taking some extremely valuable properties out of the hands of the Church. But it was not till the twelfth century that the Church simply made a law rendering each attempted marriage by a cleric in major orders invalid. And it’s been that way ever since.

“But let me have a question, Lieutenant: Why this interest in married and celibate priests? What’s it got to do with your investigation?”

“Okay. A big part of what I’m lookin’ for is conflict, a grudge, resentment—things, emotions, that could become motives for violence, for murder. I thought I’d find something here, and I think I have. These guys who had to quit the Church …”

“Wait,” Koesler interrupted. “If you’re talking about priests who get married, they don’t leave the Church. They may leave the priesthood, but they are not forced to leave the Church,”

“Corrected.”

“It’s a common enough mistake.”

“Okay,” Tully said, “but they do have to quit bein’ priests if they get married … right?”

“In effect, yes. They’re not allowed to function as priests—do what they’d done as priests—unless there’s some sort of emergency.”

“The point I’m getting at,” Tully explained, “is that they could be pretty sore about that. You tell me that bein’ priests is just about the only thing they ever wanted to do. Then mis council happened and, if I’ve got you correctly, the rules of the game changed.”

“A lot of people perceived it that way.”

“You?”

Koesler hesitated. “Yes.”

“Now, through no fault of their own—at least they can look at it that way—mey can’t be priests anymore. Just because they want to be married.”

“Some of my former confreres certainly see it that way,”

“Then they could be pretty angry about this. Angry enough, maybe to want some sort of revenge.”

“I find that hard to imagine, Besides, why would anyone who felt that way strike out against two innocent people like Sister Joan and Larry Hoffer? They didn’t have anything to do with the Vatican Council or the laws that create a celibate clergy. Or even the laws that allow some of the clergy—deacons and converted ministers—to marry and still function as clergymen.”

Tully drained his cup. “Who are they going to shoot, me Pope?”

“It’s been done.”

“Let me put it mis way: If they were to shoot the Pope—kill him this time—would it change the rules?”

Koesler did not need to reflect on that question at all. “No, probably not. Another Pope would most likely not change a thing, especially on the question of a celibate clergy.”

Tully shrugged, “Then it might make some sort of sense to get a kind of revenge wherever somebody could. It might make some sort of sense—to a very disturbed mind.”

In the silence that followed Tully’s statement, the ticking of the grandfather clock could be clearly heard. Tully was again reminded how very old this structure was.

At length, Koesler said, “In all fairness, Lieutenant, former priests are not the only Camolics with an ax to grind. Particularly if you’re looking at this from me viewpoint of a disturbed mind.”

“That’s what I want to hear. Go ahead.”

Koesler paused. Then he said, slowly, “There are so many, I’m ashamed to say. And yes, the council brought out most of them.” He sighed. “There are those thousands upon thousands of parents who had a dozen or so children—if you go back far enough, and it’s not that far—because sexual abstinence was the one and only acceptable form of birth control. Then, in the fifties, the Church approved the rhythm method, which didn’t work all that well in many cases. Nowadays, while abstinence and rhythm are still the only officially accepted methods of family planning, only the Pope, the bishops, and very few others believe this.”

“So?”

“So, all those people who had kids every nine or so months or suffered with the guilt of serious sin if they used birth control could be extremely angry. Once again the rules of the game changed, and changed drastically, for their children and grand children.

“Then—holy cow, there are so many! Like all those people who became converts to Catholicism before the council! I gave instructions to a lot of them. They became members of a Church that changed like the ground moving beneath them. They accepted doctrines and moral directives—in some cases with a lot of reluctance—only to see them subsequently questioned, reexamined, and reinterpreted by responsible theologians. They could bevery angry.

“Many Catholics in the archdiocese of Detroit are angry specifically with the archdiocese of Detroit. Our archbishop lives in the eye of a hurricane, and his space is shrinking all the time. Some wish he would cut through all the red tape and allow inactive priests to function again. Or officially expand the permissible means of family planning. Or admit that there may be circumstances—rare but potential—for a licit abortion.

“Or, on the other side, they want the Cardinal to discipline outspoken priests and nuns. They want him to enforce the most restrictive interpretations of Church rules, laws, and dictates. They want everything returned to where everything was before the council and the sixties happened. And, as someone remarked, that’s about as possible as getting toothpaste back in the tube. But they want and demand it anyway. And they can get very angry when it doesn’t happen.”

Koesler paused. Tully could guess that the priest was struggling with some sort of difficult decision. He decided to help resolve the quandary, “Remember, Father, this is a homicide investigation. I need every bit of information I can get. Maybe even to save some lives that might be taken if we don’t get this perpetrator soon.”