The Gathering (14 page)

Having found no solution in the domain of reality, he was now in the realm of fiction.

He couldn’t send a signed form to the Tribunal. He didn’t have a case.

Some would have found such a situation discouraging. Not Father Ed Simpson. No, Father Simpson knew enough about Catholic dogma and law to open his own emporium of dispensations and decrees of nullity.

Once the Church had insisted that baptism was needed for salvation. All well and good, but what about babies who died without being baptized? Were we going to send these otherwise innocent souls to eternal hell just because the parents were negligent and postponed the ceremony until it was too late? Or because it was a stillbirth?

Even the most adamant Canon lawyer could not look at that package of innocence and envision its soul burning forever in hell. Well, some few could, but they would be the exception.

In any event, clearly, something had to be done.
Voilà
!—the invention of Limbo.

Limbo came to be described as a place of natural happiness. A place containing all one needed to be perfectly happy, lacking only the vision and presence of God. Sort of a Garden of Eden without apples.

Limbo would be the eternal destiny of all who were unbaptized through no fault of their own, and were guilty of no actual voluntary serious sin.

In more recent times, the concept of Limbo was becoming less logical. And when a dogma such as this lost its logic, it began to fade like the Wicked Witch of the West. Most now would concede such innocents as welcomed into heaven.

Father Simpson needed an explanation for the dispensation he was about to grant. But he wasn’t going to find it in Canon Law.

It just needed a good excuse, a good reason for solving a problem that had not been foreseen. Like Limbo. Or like purgatory.

There is no mention of purgatory in the Bible. But purgatory answers the question: What happens to someone who is not bad enough for hell, nor good enough—yet—for heaven? Everyone seems to know such people.

On its face, that arrangement seems fair enough. Merciful, even. But dogma was loath to be
too
merciful. So the punishments of purgatory and hell were described as similar, if not exactly alike. The unending, nonconsuming fire awaited all who were either condemned to hell or sentenced to purgatory. Except that hell was eternal and purgatory was circumscribed. Purgatory continued until … until purgation took place.

That span could be as brief as the twinkling of an eye or could last hundreds of thousands of years; no one knew. Indulgences helped. But the duration of purgatory and what suffering it comprised were no more than opinions.

Recently, Father Simpson had heard a fellow priest deliver his concept of purgatory. He compared it to a ticket for an extremely attractive amusement park. You couldn’t get in until your ticket number was called. It was very frustrating to be on the outside looking in. It was, indeed, a mild form of torture not to be able to get in and enjoy the park.

The crux was that you were
going
to get in. Meanwhile, you learned lessons of patience and other virtues you had not attained on earth.

Frankly, as far as Father Simpson was concerned, that was way too merciful. People need a dose of hellfire and brimstone—for hell as well as purgatory.

Yes, thought Simpson, I need a tag, a name for my new law. Something descriptive—like Limbo or purgatory.

He rose from the table with its books invitingly open but leading nowhere. He headed for the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and found a stalk of celery. He was embarked on a quasi-diet.

Somebody sometime in antiquity must have come up with the concept of Limbo to explain how the nonbaptized avoid hell.

Somebody sometime in antiquity must have come up with the concept of purgatory to provide a place in the next life for people who were neither good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell.

Father Simpson had not met anyone in his volumes of law, dogma, or morals who had invented a means of making it possible for George Benson to marry Lily when he had already been canonically married.

Things looked dark. The thought of working Guadaloop until he dropped made things look even bleaker.

As he walked back to the dining room, he passed a statue of the patroness of his parish: Our Lady of Guadalupe. Composed of plaster of paris and painted garishly, the statue depicted a young Latino woman framed by a robe brimming with roses. A rosary—not part of the original sculpture—was draped over the fingers of her right hand. The rosary undoubtedly had been placed there by one of the previous pastors of this parish.

Father Simpson had never paid much attention to either the statue or the addended rosary.

Now something made him stop and think.

The rosary.

Something about the rosary. Any rosary.

But what?

Way back when he had been ordained …

As a brand-new priest, still wet behind the ears with the oil of ordination, what was it that had bugged him most?

Blessing rosaries!

It seemed that each and every Catholic owned at least one rosary, which, in time, was lost or broken, though probably not stolen. And all those rosaries—each and every one—had to be blessed by a priest.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but the young, newly minted Father Simpson felt that he was spending an ungodly amount of time on such an enterprise. The blessing, in Latin, took a solid five pages of the Ritual. Multiply those pages by the hundreds of rosaries awaiting his ministration and one had a blueprint for madness.

Then what should he find in his mail one day but a gimmee letter from a missionary organization. He had come close to throwing the packet in the circular file, when something—he no longer could remember what—caught his eye. Possibly it was an attractive layout. Whatever the reason, and whatever the missionary order—its name had long since escaped his memory—he had read the letter.

One could join their missionary efforts in some distant, exotic land by sending a fixed stipend—he no longer recalled the amount. His face contorted in an effort to remember these long forgotten minutiae. No matter; the point was that this missionary organization had received from Rome a fringe blessing: permission for contributing priests—those who donated to this worthy cause—to bless rosaries with merely a simple sign of the cross.

And it was a one-time-only donation. Send them one hundred bucks (or whatever amount was required) and in perpetuity the donor could simply trace a sign of the cross over the beads and they would be blessed. As blessed as anything requiring five Latin pages.

There were additional benefits to the rosary owners—like a reduction in one’s time in purgatory—just for using these specially blessed beads. One could enter the amusement park sooner than one might have otherwise expected.

Father Simpson couldn’t have cared less about the other fringes. He had sent his financial gift, received the authorization, and never again flinched at the outstretched hand bearing an unblessed rosary.

And now, once again a missionary organization would come to his aid. But this time the missionaries would be of his own invention.

The plan was so simple it required no time to put it in operation. But for the sake of credibility, he waited a week before calling George, Lily, and Stanley Benson in for the good news.

Meanwhile, Father did not let slip any hint that he had or had not been successful in his quest for the Bensons’ salvation.

When he finally opened the door to the family, the look of struggling hope on their faces was all too evident.

He ushered them into the living room. No one cared for coffee or any other beverage. They sat on the edge of their chairs, waiting … waiting for their destiny to be revealed.

He told them bluntly that relief for them was nowhere in Canon Law—Church law. Their case, as his predecessor had found, was canonically hopeless.

Their attitude bottomed out.

However, he went on—after a pro forma pause—he had recalled, in a providential moment, a missionary society that had contacted him years before. Said society had offered a special privilege to priests who would, for a small stipend, spiritually participate in their missionary effort at catechizing the natives of a country in Africa.

As a reward for contributing to their effort, the order was empowered to grant a share in a dispensation they had gained from the Vatican.

Father Simpson had the Bensons’ rapt attention.

One of the biggest problems facing missionaries, Simpson explained, was the status of marriage among the natives. It was extremely common for men, especially tribal chieftains, to have many wives—many, many wives.

The missionaries could catechize to their hearts’ content, but, in the end, as much as they had convinced their catechumens of the necessity of becoming Catholics, still and always there were those impossible marital situations.

The missionaries could bring these people to the very threshold of Christianity, where, in the vast majority of cases, they would slam into the unrelenting door of multiple marriages.

Did the Bensons follow so far?

Yes, they nodded. The condition made sense, though the Bensons had never really reflected on it.

“Well,” Father Simpson continued, “it was a stalemate, a Mexican standoff, as it were.”

What these missionaries did, Father Simpson explained, was to take the problem to the Vatican authorities. The missionaries convinced Rome that there was no way in hell—Father Simpson asked pardon for his French—that they could ever walk these well-meaning people through the intricacies of canonical procedures.

So, in a one-time-only exception to Canon Law, a compromise was reached. The Vatican Congregation would allow each man of these tribes to pick one of his wives to be his one and only wife. In other words, once each man had made his choice, that was it! No more multiple marriages. One choice, one time.

Even with such a generous offer, the dispensation didn’t solve all the problems, but it helped.

“Now,” Father Simpson semiconcluded, “you may wonder what all this has to do with you.”

Yes, they nodded, they did wonder.

The missionaries, Father Simpson explained, couldn’t accomplish all that might be accomplishable without help—both spiritual and material.

Which is why the Vatican granted the Order permission to solicit priests around the world to contribute both money and prayers for the work of these African missionaries. And, in keeping with the one-time-only rule, this would be a one-time-only solicitation.

Father Simpson paused. He was approaching the nub of his fabricated story. It was crucial that the Bensons believe what would follow, else the priest would be up a creek, paddleless.

George and Lily looked as if they were ready to believe anything. Besides, Simpson’s story was not that incredible—especially if one had only a superficial grasp of Church machinations. Simpson picked up his narrative.

In return for their generosity, the contributing priests were allowed to share in the boon bestowed on the missionaries. Each native man would be permitted to select a member of his harem to be his one and only wife. Therefore, the power to grant a declaration of nullity without consulting any Tribunal or submitting any documentation would apply not only to the members of the missionary Order but also to those priests, worldwide, who contributed to this missionary program. They would each be empowered to grant one similar dispensation to a couple whose canonically impossible union could not otherwise be dissolved by law.

Everything about this unique relaxation of law, known as the Missionaries’ Privilege, was on a one-time-only basis. (There it was: that one-time-only rule. Obviously, the powers that be were concerned about not setting precedents.)

Each male tribal member who had God-knows-how-many concubines would, upon this application, have just one wife. Aside from the death of that spouse, he could henceforth have no other wife. It was a one-time decision, which did not completely solve the problem—some refused the choice—but it did help in many cases.

What was relevant to tonight’s gathering was that Father Simpson had contributed to the missionaries’ fund. He, therefore, had received permission to utilize this power once and only once in his lifetime.

He had never used it, he told them. But now he had decided that the Bensons deserved the benefits of this remarkable privilege. Lily Benson had been more than faithful to her Church lo these many years. Not to mention that this dispensation and convalidation would clear the path for Stanley to enter the seminary.

George had a reservation. “Do I have to join the Catholic Church? I mean, I got no objection. It’s great for Lily, so I’m all for it. And I don’t really know why Stan wants to go to the seminary. Hell, that’s up to him.

“But not if I have to join the Church!”

What George Benson did with his immortal soul was beyond Simpson’s immediate interest. “No, George, you don’t have to become Catholic. Actually, you don’t have to do much of anything. We just make a date to meet in the church. Both you and Lily can look on this as a renewal of your vows. Stan can be the witness.

“Well,” he summed up, “what do you think?”

George shrugged. “It’s okay by me … as long as I don’t gotta join.”

“I can’t believe it.” Tears streamed from Lily’s eyes. “How good of you, Father … to let us benefit from your Missionaries’ Privilege.” She shook her head in wonderment. “It’s as if God was saving this wonderful gift in your care. I can hardly believe it. But”—she smiled through her tears—“I do. I’m just so grateful.”

She turned to gaze adoringly at her son. “And you, Stanley: You may one day be my very own priest!”

Stanley could scarcely breathe. He had let others, primarily his father, think he wanted to go to the seminary because he had been so certain all along that Church law would block him.

Now, as far as he could know, Father Simpson really had this Missionaries’ Privilege, which could be used only once. And that once was now!

This was one of the worst days of his young life.