No Greater Love (7 page)

That's when appetite had deserted her.

Page and Cody hadn't yet left, even though they had finished eating and were draining the coffeepot to the dregs. She could hear Page's distinctive tone. He was doing most of the talking in his sotto voce delivery, which was just loud enough to be heard but not loud enough for the words to be made out.

Patty was startled when, seemingly out of nowhere, another young woman sat down opposite her. “Andrea! Where did you come from?”

“Just doing a few chores.” Andrea Zawalich set a cup of steaming coffee on the table. She took a cautious sip, then shuddered. “Ugh! Strong and hot and right out of the bottom of the pot.”

“I think the mad deacons drained it. It's good you're holding the cup. If I had it, I'd probably pour it over their heads.”

“Something particular tonight?”

Patty studied the tabletop. “Oh, I did something stupid. Those jerks got wind of it and found it infectiously funny. Then they put on a public show of not letting me sit at their table.”

“How'd they do that?”

“They pretended they were saving two unoccupied places.”

“The old tip-up-the-chair routine?”

“Yup. What with one thing and another, I could kill them.”

“I can think of one redeeming value in this incident.”

“What's that?”

“I heard them talking about the bishop's door and what had happened to it—”

“What
I
did to it.”

“Okay, what you did to it. The thing is, I just got done cleaning it up.”

Patty reached across and affectionately touched Andrea's arm. “You're an angel.”

“Oh, it wasn't so bad. At least the slop was fresh. A while longer and it would've congealed. And then you know what would've happened?”

Patty shook her head. Already she was emerging from her blue mood under the guidance of the almost always ebullient Andrea.

“Somebody would've looked at that mess that had become part of the door and seen the image of Jesus or His mother, or a favorite saint. Then they would've sealed Bishop McNiff in his room and declared the place a shrine.

“Then the next time you wanted to help the bishop, you'd have to climb outside on a ladder and spill the soup and spaghetti all over his window.”

They both dissolved in laughter.

That irritated the Reverend Mr. Bill Page. If Donnelly could laugh after what she had done and the embarrassment he'd inflicted upon her, his lead was definitely narrowing.

“Why'd you do it?” Patty asked.

“Do what?”

“Clean up for me. I would've taken care of it. I just didn't feel like it at that moment.”

“Listen, it's easier to clean up someone else's mess than your own.”

“I'll have to think about that.”

“While you're thinking about it …” Andrea tried the coffee again. It was cooler, but perhaps more bitter. “I've been thinking about a priest I almost literally bumped into on my way to cleaning up the bishop's door.”

“A priest? What's so odd about that? This is a seminary.”

“This was a strange priest—”

“He was wearing a false nose and a bushy mustache?”

“You didn't let me finish. I said strange because I'm pretty sure I never met him before. And yet I almost recognized him. Like I'd seen his picture in the paper, or maybe on TV …”

“Old? Young?”

“Old.”

“That figures!” Patty sighed. “Probably a new faculty member. Probably the same age as the Pope. Probably agrees with everything the Pope says. Just like everybody else here.”

“He had a kind face … and he smiled at me.”

“Be careful then. Maybe he takes after Pope John Paul the First. He smiled a lot. But he didn't last very long.”

“You know what?” Andrea pushed away from the table.” I'm going to make some fresh coffee.”

“And let those two freeloaders have some?!” Patty was indignant.

“Maybe we'll win them over to decency.” Andrea smiled as she went off to make the coffee.

When it was done, she poured some for both deacons. Al Cody seemed genuinely grateful and thanked her. Page groused.

Next she poured a cup for Patty and one for herself.

Patty sipped. It
was
good. “How can you be what you are? You're always cheerful and low-key. I wish I could be more like you.”

Andrea caught the cheerless tone. “If you don't mind my saying it, you
could
lighten up a little. For one thing, I think you've wanted to be a priest for too long.”

Andrea was correct, Patty mused. She had wanted to be a priest as far back as she could remember.

Her parents took her with them to Sunday Mass. Not all churches had “cry rooms”; the ones that didn't expected parents to keep their children at home until the young ones could behave.

But not Patty. As soon as she was free from the pacifier, she spent, her time in church looking and listening.

Taking Patty to church was like putting a fish in water. If at that early age, she could've phrased anything, she would have paraphrased Paul's description of heaven. Except that for her, heaven was a church. So Patty's version would have read: “Eye has not seen, nor has the ear heard, nor has it entered the mind of anyone the joy that God delivers to people in church.”

She was fortunate in being taken to a church where the priests were dedicated—serious about presenting a participation liturgy and providing a choir that sounded angelic.

Because Patty became so absorbed in the Church, as the years went by, she read extensively about that subject.

In one of her research projects, she came across a woman who would become her patron saint—even though nobody ever canonized her.

Her name was Jeannette Piccard. She was married to Dr. Jean Piccard, a famous scientist and, in his hot air balloon, a space traveler.

Sharing her husband's life as totally as possible, Jeannette Piccard learned how to pilot the balloon, and accompanied her husband on his voyages. She felt it wasn't right for him to be “up there alone.”

In addition, Dr. Piccard needed someone he could rely on, someone who would not learn the secrets of space flight and then desert him. Of course, he knew he could rely on his wife.

In a historic 1934 flight over Dearborn, Michigan, Jeannette Piccard set a record when the couple's balloon rose to an altitude of 57,559 feet. But the record was unofficial; in 1934 there was no category for women. And when that category was established, it wasn't made retroactive.

They'd hoped to go to 100,000 feet, but couldn't get any sponsors for the flight. Nobody wanted to be held responsible for the danger or the possible death of a woman and mother.

“Danger?” Mrs. Piccard snorted. “Once I took our son up for a lovely flight in our balloon. Two weeks later I walked through a doorway and broke my hip. And doors are supposed to be safe.”

In 1964 Jeannette Piccard was appointed a consultant to the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. In 1970 she was cut from the program, a victim of the Nixon administration's austerity agenda.

Clearly, this was a woman who was all too familiar with the fabled glass ceiling.

But what most endeared her to Patty Donnelly was Jeannette Piccard's dogged pursuit of the priesthood.

In 1916, as a sophomore at Bryn Mawr, she wrote a paper on the ordination of women. Nearly sixty years later, in 1974, she received a phone call. Four retired Episcopal bishops were going to ordain women to the priesthood: Did she want in? Indeed she did.

When she was ordained, the NASA space staff sent her a congratulatory letter.

And so, after a lifetime of persevering in the face of discrimination, this dedicated woman achieved her “impossible dream.” Asked when Catholic women might expect ordination to the priesthood, she replied, “When they get another Pope like John.”

Patty Donnelly couldn't see another Pope John XXIII anywhere on the horizon.

However, even without a John as Pope, there was another crack in the dike.

It was by no means probable, but faintly possible, that what had served Jeannette could work for Patty.

Somewhere, somehow, there might be a Catholic bishop, perhaps retired—as were the four Episcopal bishops who had ordained the original eleven women priests—who would do the same for Catholic women.

But even should that happen, Patty knew the fight would by no means be over. Even if a validly ordained—not under the pressure of an oppressive Communist regime—Catholic bishop were to ordain women who had no impediment to ordination except their femininity, the Vatican Church would fight it with everything in its power. Of this she was certain.

Patty had entertained these thoughts so often that now they passed through her mind in just a few moments.

Andrea could not have known the stream of consciousness her observation had triggered. To her it seemed Patty responded immediately.

“I've wanted to be a priest too long? Andy, isn't that like telling an astronaut she spends too much time thinking about flying? Or a writer that he's reading too many books? What's wrong with wanting to be a priest?”

“Nothing—on the face of it. But let me offer you a couple of analogies. Your wanting to be a priest is like a kid who wants to be an Olympic runner but she's paraplegic. Or she wants to sing for the Met, but she's tone deaf.

“Bottom line for all of you: It's not going to happen.”

“Maybe it could. Maybe it will. What if we find a bishop who's willing to ordain us? What about Bishop McNiff?”

“Whoever it is, it's got to be someone who's willing to spend his remaining days picking buckshot out of his hide. And even in the unlikely event—as they say on planes—you do find such a dauntless martyr, Rome would not sit still for it. My guess is the Vatican would simply declare the ordination invalid, have some vino, and call it a day.”

“Even then,” Patty pressed on, “we would just carry the battle to a higher level.

“Those of us who were ordained would push on ahead to exercise our priesthood. We'd preside at the eucharistic liturgy. We'd absolve. We'd bless. We'd do everything priests do.

“The struggle would go on, as it does now.”

“Now? Here?”

“Certainly. Here and now we want to be admitted to the M.Div courses.”

“Again, why? Even if you're admitted and you pass them all, where does that get you? You're all dressed up with a degree and you've got no place to go.”

“Not so. When we find our bishop we'll be ready to go. We won't be forced to say, ‘Thanks very much for the call to orders, Bishop, but we'll have to take a few courses'—so a lack of preparation won't be thrown in our faces along with everything else.”

“But, Pat, you can take these courses just a few miles from here at Orchard Lake Seminary. Why bang your head against the wall here?”

Patty nodded. “Cyril and Methodius does offer the M.Div courses to women—as do many other seminaries in this country. But that's like, before the civil rights movement, telling an African-American that there's a water fountain down the street so she doesn't have to try to get a drink at this fountain here that's reserved for whites.

“The point is, Andy: All the water fountains should be available to everyone, no matter what their skin color. And all the seminaries should have to offer M.Div courses to everyone, male and female alike.”

Andrea, lost in thought, did not respond. Patty was content to let her argument sink in.

“I've got to admit you make a convincing case,” Andrea said after a time. “And I can see parallels with the civil rights struggles—at least as far as I've read about them and watched the TV documentaries. But the civil rights struggle has one very important advantage over women's ordination …” She did not pursue the thought.

“So?” Patty said. “And that is?”

“They—the African-Americans—had friends in high places.”