No Greater Love (9 page)

Andrea warmed her hands by rotating the coffee mug between them. “I think, maybe, some years ago I might have. But it's too late now.”

“Even if nobody's standing in your way?”

Andrea was sensitive to Patty's tone. Patty seemed to be seeking encouragement to continue her so-far discouraging pursuit of the priesthood. Andrea could understand Pat's need for reassurance. Pat needed Andrea's backing, reinforcement, moral support—something that testified to the worthiness of her goal and the possibility of attaining it, be that possibility ever so remote.

“Yes,” Andrea replied. “If the M.C.P. priest hadn't thrown me out of the altar servers well before I could even get in. And if no one were able to block my equal opportunity … yes, I think I'd be with you.”

Patty looked relieved.

“But, as it is,” Andrea concluded, “I'm going to be in pastoral ministry in a parish where you're the pastor.”

Both laughed equally heartily.

Their gaiety disgruntled Deacon Bill Page. “Damn! Damn! Damn! That Polack broad has spoiled everything. Here we had Donnelly on the verge of tears and now Mary Poppins comes along delivering sweetness and light.”

Deacon Al Cody said nothing. He said nothing because he didn't know what to say. His relationship with Page was as a lackey.

Cody considered Page a man of the world. Page had had a life, a career, out there. Cody admired Page's sacrifice in giving up all that to dedicate himself to God's service.

Cody had no way of knowing that Page was using the priesthood as a flotation device. Page had been slowly sinking, financially, socially, and almost every other way. He had been about to go under before a burst of inspiration suddenly led him to the seminary.

But Cody had no way of knowing that Page was not what he affected to be.

Among other things, Page was capable of sexual, ethnic, and every other sort of slur. Never in the presence of faculty members or seminary authorities, of course, but freely among his fellow students.

So Cody was not unduly surprised when Page referred to Andrea Zawalich as a Polack. Cody wished his idol wouldn't do that. But he was willing to make allowances for one who was sacrificing so much to serve as a priest.

Thus, although Cody was somewhat offended by much of what Page said, as well as by his general attitude, the younger man attributed it to Page's worldly years; he forgave and somehow managed to keep his idol on the pedestal.

“Still and all,” Page said with a lecherous grin, “you've got to admire their bods.”

“What?”

“C'mon, Al baby, you want me to believe you haven't noticed? They may be harpies, but they're
built.
They're stacked. Just look at those”—his elbow delivered a jab to Cody's ribs—“tits and asses.”

Cody was embarrassed and he showed it. He simply did not know how to deal with such remarks, so he chuckled.

Page saw through it. “C'mon, Al, let yourself go, won't you? Those”—he made a gesture toward the women—“are two very sexy fillies. Not gorgeous, mind you; not to die for … but sexy. And I'll bet they don't even know it.”

“They don't?” Cody, of course, was well aware that the two young women were good-looking. It would never occur to him that they might be unaware of their attractiveness. Among the talks seminarians were obliged to listen to were periodic lectures on women. As a matter of course, the bottom line was: Look, but don't touch.

“You don't think they'd be holed up in here if they knew what they could get if they just put out a little,” Page harped. “But they'd have a hard time making it in here … shacked up with a bunch of celibates.

“This place protects itself pretty well. We get lectures on leaving everybody the hell alone. And on top of that, there's ‘fraternal correction'”—he grimaced—“a greased-up way of urging us to rat on each other. Out in the world, squealing is cowardly. In here, it's”—the words were articulated mincingly—”‘fraternal correction.' But those gals don't know they've got something to put on the plate. And, oh, baby, I'd love to be the one who presides at their awakening! How 'bout you, buddy?” Page smirked.

“Yeah,” Cody halfheartedly agreed.

Page winked. “Don't worry, old buddy; Bill Page is going to take care of it. I guarantee you will not go into the celibate life wanting for experience. You've got to know what you're giving up—because you're the kind of guy who actually will be giving it up.”

What could he have meant by that? Cody wondered.

Did Page really plan on introducing him to the sexually active life? Cody couldn't speak for Page's past. But Cody was a virgin, and had every intention of remaining such for life.

He knew—or thought he knew—what that entailed. Not only would he remain unmarried, he would also be, for all practical purposes, asexual. He knew the rules. They had been explained clearly, decisively, and unmistakably—and more than once. Sexual activity was reserved exclusively for marriage, where no artificial means could be used to avoid pregnancy. Where every sexual action had to be open to possible conception.

Since sexual activity was reserved to the marriage state, all other sexual expression, with oneself or another, was a mortal sin. Cody knew this morality and he intended to live by it.

What, then, to do about Page?

Page dominated Cody, Cody knew that. What Page had just said—vowing to compromise Cody's virginity—was no idle promise. In all probability, Page was going to try. Would Cody have sufficient moral strength to fend off not only Page's attempt but Cody's natural attraction to the power of sex?

And what did Page mean when he said that Cody was “the type of guy who actually will be giving it up”? What was Page saying about himself? Was he referring to his past? Before the seminary? Before receiving the diaconate? He couldn't be referring to his future life as a priest … could he? Did he have no intention of leading—or at least trying to lead—a chaste life?

What would any or all of this have to do with fraternal correction? And who should correct whom?

Bill Page had many more years than Al Cody, and those years had been vastly different from Cody's.

Cody did not know all the particulars of his mentor's life. But what he did know would have constituted a fairly successful made-for-TV movie—to say the least.

He, on the other hand, had grown up in a family frozen in time. They seemed to mirror the old Robert Young TV series,
Father Knows Best.
The principal differences were that Al Cody was an only child and Mrs. Cody was not nearly as submissive as Jane Wyatt, who portrayed the TV mother. Otherwise, in the Cody household, Father did know best. Or so he thought.

William F. Cody was more or less named after William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. However, they were not related. And their middle names were different.

William Francis, Al's father, was born in 1952. William Frederick, the scout and abominable showman, was born in 1846.

Both of them were known as Buffalo Bill—William Frederick because he killed buffalo, William Francis because he was named partially after William Frederick.

William Francis Cody attended St. Ambrose school in the Chicago parish that would later be a workplace of noted sociologist and author Father Andrew M. Greeley.

Cody tried the Quigley Preparatory Seminary-South. Reluctantly, he came to realize that he was not cut out for the priestly life.

As good luck would have it, he finished college without being drafted. With the Vietnam War escalating at an alarming pace, he decided to enlist. But he would make no long-term deal with the army; he chose to do his two-year hitch and get on with his life.

Again as good luck would have it, he got through his stint without serious injury. And he was actually in Saigon on April 29, 1975, the day that war ended. He was among the last to be evacuated, carrying with him a trunkful of memories. He had seen death in all its forms, from those who died of old age to those torn from their mothers' bodies. Friends and enemies alike had been killed with age-old as well as modern weapons.

His parents had moved to a suburb of Detroit. Bill Cody enrolled in the University of Detroit Law School. Three years later he graduated from that Jesuit institution.

Shortly before graduation, at a campus Christmas party, Bill met Eileen Regan, who was studying dental hygiene at U-D. They courted and were married before either of them started a career.

Two months later, Eileen was pregnant. It was a difficult pregnancy leading to a cesarean section. Then her doctor discovered a cancer affecting her uterus. Consultation with an oncologist was followed by a hysterectomy.

Bill and Eileen had a healthy boy they named Albert, thus precluding any more Buffalo Bill jokes. They would have no other children. The couple grieved; they had planned for at least three, if not more, children.

The good news was that Eileen's cancer had been discovered in time; she could look forward to a normal life span.

Had it not been for the hysterectomy, future circumstances might well have called for a sexual hiatus. “Female trouble” perhaps, possible financial problems—anything, in effect, that would make having another child inadvisable. Bill was far too faithful a Catholic to resort to any form of outlawed contraception. Now he had no worry along those lines. Eileen's condition was a green light for all future sexual activity without fear of unwanted consequences.

Eileen's outlook was less rosy. She worried: Had the surgeons gotten it all? Or would it be the once and future cancer?

The other silver lining for Bill was that his one and only child was a boy. Bill had plans for this lad.

Albert would develop as a macho man. They would hunt and fish together. Togetherness would be the primary goal. Although fishing and hunting had their place: Bill would teach his son how to bait and cast and, mostly, how to kill and prepare his food.

It was, however, the hunt that offered the greatest opportunity for manhood.

It began with knowing your weapon. Being able to field strip and reassemble it. How to make it an extension of yourself. How to bait and stalk your prey. How to bring down the victim. How, in instances when the prey is merely wounded, to track it and deliver the coup de grâce.

In the face of growing controversy, Bill would indoctrinate Albert in the precept that said animals have no rights. Bill remembered his training in Catholicism; man's role in the earliest moments of creation was spelled out in Genesis:

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.'

“God created man in his image;

“In the divine image he created him;

“Male and female he created them.

“God blessed them, saying: ‘Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the moving things that move on the earth.' And God also said: ‘See, I give you every seed-bearing plant all over the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food, and to all the animals of the land, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the ground, I give all the green plants for food.' And so it happened.”

At first blush it would seem that God was giving mankind carte blanche over the rest of creation. Words such as “dominion” and “subdue” are powerful incentives to be lord and master of all creation and to treat animal life in cavalier fashion.

Those prone to take the first couple of chapters of Genesis literally also should conclude that God intended all animal life—including mankind, fish, birds, cattle and creepy crawlies—to be vegetarian.

Mankind's food is “every seed-bearing plant all over the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it.” And God gives all green plants as food for all the animals of the earth, and the birds, as well as the creatures that crawl on the ground.

So much for Wendy's, Big Boy, Arby's, Burger King, etc.

Latter-day Scripture scholars have placed more emphasis on mankind's obligation to conserve rather than dominate or subdue creation.

But a macho mankind with the mandate to treat earth and its inhabitants as it wished was the image inculcated in young Al Cody's psyche as he passed from one parochial grade to another.

And things once planted in the senior Cody's mind, particularly religious concepts that were drummed in, were there for life. “As the Church has always taught …” was a phrase often used in the Church in which he grew up.

Thus it was no surprise that Bill Cody never bought in on Church changes effected by the Second Vatican Council. Postconciliar teaching hardly ever used the cautionary, “As the Church has always taught …” Because, over the centuries, there was very little the Church had “always” taught.