The Good Shepherd (31 page)

He had paid even closer attention to notes Pope John had made at the Villa Carpegna, March 13-17, 1925, when he was preparing for his consecration as a bishop. The first words of John’s meditation troubled Matthew Mahan when he read them. “I have not sought or desired this new ministry.” He had desired his elevation, desired it intensely because he saw the appalling things that Archbishop Hogan was doing to the Church in the diocese, the almost desperate need for a new approach. But he had given up all hope of achieving it by the time it came to him in such extraordinary fashion. So he could join heartily in the next words:
“The Lord has chosen me, making it so clear that it is His will ... so it will be for Him to cover up my failings and supply my insufficiencies. This comforts me and gives me tranquility and confidence.”

From the window of his hotel, Matthew Mahan could see the illuminated dome of St. Peter’s. Suddenly, with the words of the book on his lap before him, he remembered sitting in the papal library, the day before his consecration, and listening as the bulky old man recited with amazing power of memory his favorite passage from the
Pontificale Romanum,
the ritual for the consecration of bishops.
“Let him be tireless in well doing, fervent in spirit; let him hate pride; let him love humility and truth and never forsake them under the influence of flattery or fear. Let him not consider light to be darkness or darkness light: Let him not call evil good or good evil. Let him learn from wise men and from fools, so that he may profit from all.”
With a flash of humor in his brown eyes, John had added, “That last sentence is perhaps the most important, when it comes to running a diocese.”

Now, Matthew Mahan’s eyes moved down the passages from the
Pontificale
that John had noted in his retreat at the Villa Carpegna in 1925. Two immediately caused him pain.

How often he had failed to live up to the highest levels of these ideals. Where, how, had he lost touch with them? Perhaps the truth was in another sentence he had underlined, from Pope John’s meditations during his first retreat as Patriarch of Venice.
“I could never have imagined or desired such greatness. I am happy also because this meekness and humility do not go against the grain with me but come easily to my nature.”
Yes, Matthew Mahan thought moodily, there was a fundamental point: Meekness and humility did not come easily to his nature. Not by accident was his nickname in high school “the Mouth.” On the playing field, in debates, in classroom discussions, he was always yakking away, monopolizing the limelight, and loving it. Was it a reaction against his father’s unnatural silence? Or an imitation of his mother’s constant loquacity?

The rapidity and intensity with which his mother could talk was a standing joke among her family and friends. Nobody could get the floor from Teresa Scaparelli Mahan once she started talking. Again he felt the curious experience of separation from his mother here in the city of her birth. The movement toward a new self. The progress had been slow and painful over the past ten years, but it was time, and past time, to complete the passage.

It was also time to let go once and for all those dreams of glory that had raced so tumultuously through his brain for the first year or two after his consecration as bishop. He had seen himself succeeding Cardinal Spellman as the kingmaker of the American Catholic Church. But reality had soon shriveled this wild expectation. John was too absorbed in his council to give much thought to episcopal appointments, so he let the Curia make the suggestions, and in America the Spellmanites, Romans all, continued to run the show. At the council, mingling with his fellow American bishops, listening to their North American College reminiscences, he had realized how isolated he was and had gravitated into the company of Europeans, particularly the Germans and Dutch with their call for an international Church less controlled by the Curia, reaching out to men of all faiths.

John’s death a year later had turned his pipe dreams into the petty ashes that they had always been destined - and deserved - to become. Reality had been the order of the day for the past six years. Not so much as a deliberately conceived policy but as a way of life with no visible alternative. Five months after cancer killed John XXIII, John Kennedy had died, and America had reeled off course like a rudderless ship in a midnight storm. Looking back, it was hard to say whether the Church had merely succumbed to the madness or had contributed to it. Perhaps that unanswered question was another reason why he had lost touch with the memory of John XXIII. Had he, like many other bishops he met at the national conferences, begun to make a deprecation out of the phrase “Good Pope John”? In his case, he did not say it aloud, but perhaps he had been saying it in his inner mind, which could be more destructive spiritually.

Yes, Matthew Mahan thought with a sigh, it would do him a great deal of good if he spent most of the following day reading
The Journal of a Soul
and meditating on those maxims.

The telephone rang. “Your Eminence, a cablegram. . . .” said the desk clerk. Five minutes later, it was handed to him by a bellboy. He opened it and read the brief message, then slowly folded it again and slipped it into his wallet. He sat down at the desk and wistfully fingered the pages of
The Journal of a Soul
. He would not be reading it tomorrow after all. The cable gave him one of those rare opportunities to reach out as a priest to a fellow priest. He could not pass it up for his own spiritual gratification. John would understand.
Santo Padre,
he prayed,
forgive me for my neglect. Stand beside me now and in the years to come.

At ten-fifteen, the following morning, Dennis McLaughlin and Matthew Mahan rolled out of Rome in a rented Mercedes with a handsome talkative young Italian named Tullio as their chauffeur. Dennis looked puzzled but vaguely pleased. He seemed to think Matthew Mahan was still worried about his health and was taking him for a little trip into the country for a quick rest cure. They headed south along the Via Appia Nuova, past numerous ancient ruins, and glimpses of new white high-rise apartments, and in their shadows tin shacks built by the poor from discarded construction materials. Tullio assured them that he would have no difficulty finding the town of Nettuno. He often drove down there during the summer. It was one of his (and Rome’s) favorite bathing beaches. But too crowded in recent years. He preferred the sand at Anzio, softer, no rocks. But that, too, was crowded. The smart swimmers were now going to Sperlonga or San Felice Circeo. While Tullio talked, he drove at a pace that (Dennis remarked) made Eddie Johnson look like a National Safety Award winner.

In a half hour, the white buildings of the town of Nettuno were visible ahead of them on the lush flat coastal plain. Matthew Mahan peered out the window until he spotted a sign that read:
Sicily Rome American Cemetery.
“That’s what we want,” he told Tullio. In another five minutes, they were there.

The cemetery rose in a gentle slope from a broad pool. In the center of the pool was an island with a somber cenotaph on it, flanked by rows of Italian cypress trees. From the parking lot, they walked down a wide grassy mall toward a white-pillared memorial at the end. The thousands of white crosses were in precise rows on each side of the mall beneath rows of Roman pines. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and the whiteness of the crosses was redoubled beneath the dark, brooding trees. On one side of the memorial was a chapel. On its walls were the names of 3,094 missing in action whose bodies were never found. On the other side was a museum room with wall maps describing the operations of the American forces in Italy.

A pudgy gray-haired man smoking a cigarette emerged from an office off the museum and introduced himself as George Carmody, the superintendent of the cemetery. He wore the doleful expression of an undertaker. “Would you like to look at the grave now, Your Eminence? I’ll be glad to lead the way.”

“No,” Matthew Mahan said, “we’ll find our way by ourselves, if you don’t mind. Just give us the directions.”

Carmody gave them a map on which he had drawn an arrowed path in red. Halfway down the mall, they turned right and strolled down a shadowed lane between two rows of Roman pines. Dennis McLaughlin looked bored. He now obviously thought that this was just another episcopal aberration born of World War II combat neurosis. They stopped, and Matthew Mahan counted the rows of crosses they had passed thus far: ten. eleven, twelve, thirteen. At the head of the thirteenth row stood a cross with the name carefully lettered on the horizontal arm: Richard McLaughlin Lieutenant, USAAF.

Dennis McLaughlin stared at the knee-high marble cross, his face frozen in astonishment. “He’s here,” he whispered. “Here?” He turned to look at Matthew Mahan as he said the last word.

Matthew Mahan nodded. “I wrote to the American Battle Monuments Commission in Washington, D.C. I still hadn’t heard from them when we left home, and I sent them a very stiff telegram. Their cable arrived last night.”

Dennis returned his eyes to the marble cross, his head nodding automatically. He heard what Matthew Mahan was saying, but the words meant nothing. He was in the void now, falling like that figure on the Manzu doors of St. Peter’s, dying in space. “I never knew him,” he heard himself saying. “I never knew him. I was three years old when he - went into the Army.”

“Yes, you told me,” Matthew Mahan said. “But I thought - you should know this much about him. At least know where he died. He was copilot on a B-26. The plane was hit by German antiaircraft fire only a couple of miles from here. He was badly wounded, and the pilot was killed. He held the plane on course long enough for the rest of the crew to get out. He got the Distinguished Flying Cross for it.”

“I never knew anything - about him. My mother hated him for dying.”

Tears were strangling his throat. The airlessness of St. Peter’s was nothing compared to this agony. Suddenly, there was a big hand on his arm wrenching him up like a drowning victim toward sunlight, air. “It’s all right, it’s all right, Dennis,” said Cardinal Mahan in a voice he had never heard before. “Don’t be afraid to cry. Everyone should cry for their dead. I cried almost every day during the war. So did a lot of other men, even tough mugs like Mike Furia.”

He opened his arms, yes, Dennis McLaughlin, the sardonic smiler, who perpetually confronted the world with arms crossed on his chest like a shield, opened them and flung them around the solid bulky blackness that confronted him. He was weeping, yet he was breathing, miraculously breathing. “I never knew him,” he said for the fifth or sixth time. “I never knew him. She didn’t want me to know him.”

“She couldn’t help herself, Dennis. Some people can only give their love once, and when it’s refused or lost by the person they give it to, they can’t forgive them.”

“Sometimes - I try to be him. But you can’t be - something you don’t know. Every time you reach out, all you get is emptiness.”

“Now you know where he is, Dennis. Here with his friends.” Softly, gently, the big hand patted him on the back. He was being held, yes, caressed, like a child, yet miraculously he felt no resentment. “The older I get, the less I grieve for those who died in battle. I think there’s a poet who said they remain forever young. It’s true, especially if you’ve known them, loved them before they died. You loved him, Dennis, even if you didn’t know him. Someday in Heaven you’ll know him - and love him even more.”

But how do we know he’s in Heaven? How do we know he didn’t die in mortal sin? What if you go to Heaven and find out he’s in Hell, what would you say to God? Out of my way
,
I’m going to Hell with my father.
The favorite fantasy of fifteen-year-old Dennis McLaughlin, president of the Sodality, winner of general excellence medals galore. Through his tears, he tried to tell something of this to Matthew Mahan, interlacing it with sardonic laughter. Was he collapsing into hysteria?

“I’m sure he’s in Heaven, Dennis. This is a dangerous thing for a bishop to say, but I believe that every man who dies in battle fighting for a good cause goes there, just like the Mohammedans say he does. Courage is a better absolution than any priest can give.”

Ten minutes ago, Dennis McLaughlin would have laughed this idea into oblivion. Now he accepted it in silence broken only by his sobs.

“I’d like to say a prayer for him, Dennis.”

The Cardinal knelt before the cross. Dennis knelt beside him. He could find no words in his numbed brain. He stared down the long rows of crosses, trying to comprehend the immensity of death’s grasp.
I had not thought death had undone so many.
“I can’t pray, I can’t pray at all,” Dennis whispered.

“Would you let me pray for both of us, Dennis?”

He nodded.

Matthew Mahan was swept back to a dozen, no, 100 days in France and Germany when he knelt before the bodies of men he had joked with or blessed only hours before. Here the sunlight, the soft green grass, and the white crosses were different, creating a serenity that was never there in the blasted landscape of war. He was grateful for it, because it helped him to struggle against the memory of the anguish, the helplessness that he had felt in those days, yes, even the terrible doubts about the worth of his priesthood, of all priesthoods. Slowly, he let his mind empty, as he had done in those awful days. Anguish made all formal prayers - except the prayers of mass - meaningless. The words would come as they had always come, even on the worst days.

“O God,” he said, after almost a full minute of silent waiting, “we kneel here in search of comradeship. Two lonely men, dedicated to your service, in search of comradeship with this brave man, Richard McLaughlin, and his friends. Help us to see them as they were before they died, Lord, young and full of laughter. Help us to remember their courage. We know it wasn’t a constant thing, Lord. They weren’t heroes twenty-four hours a day. Sometimes they were afraid and cried out to you. You came to them, especially to those who died trying to help their friends. Greater love than this, no man has, Lord. No one knows this better than you.”

For another minute, there were no words. But Matthew Mahan knew the prayer was not over. So, apparently, did Dennis McLaughlin. He did not raise his head. “O Lord, we believe that no sacrifice is in vain, that its graces are stored in Heaven to be used for the works of love. Pour into our hearts, O Lord, especially into the heart of Richard’s son, Dennis, the grace he needs, as we all need it, to love himself, his fellowmen, his priesthood. Thank you, O Lord, for giving us this day. Your ways are a mystery to us, but we shall always believe in your justice and your love.”

Silence again for another full minute. The prayer was over. Dennis raised his head and smiled wanly. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

Together they walked back to the memorial building where Superintendent George Carmody was waiting for them. He gave them a package containing a colored aerial photograph of the cemetery and a black and white photograph of the cross with Richard McLaughlin’s name on it. “We don’t get many of these kinds of requests anymore,” he said. “Most of the people who wanted them wrote to the commission and got them a long time ago.”

“I’m sure Father McLaughlin’s mother has one,” Matthew Mahan said, “but I thought it would be nice if he had a set, too.”

Mr. Carmody nodded, and they chatted for a few moments. He told them there were very few air force men buried here. “Most of those poor fellows got it down at Anzio, the beachhead. What a foul-up that operation was. The generals who thought that one up should have been shot.”

Mr. Carmody got quite emotional. He pointed to a map on the wall and described how the Germans ringed the Anzio beachhead with artillery and pulverized everything that came ashore. “Eighty-eights they had, the best gun of them all,” he said. “We never had anything to match it. They could double as antiaircraft.” He lectured them for five minutes on the virtues of the 88-millimeter gun. Dennis McLaughlin listened, slowly letting this clumpy, earnest man return him to the real world with its stupidity, its idiotic fascination with violence.

Still, something had happened to him out there kneeling before that cross. He did not understand it. He did not understand why that intense emotion did not crush his chest and send his breath whistling up his throat. What a strange paradox, emotions of equal intensity seemed either to kill him or - what? What do you feel, Dennis? He tried to let the words come into his mind, unhindered by preconceived ideas . . . more free, more real.

Back in the car, Matthew Mahan told Tullio to drive them to a good beach. “We’ll eat our lunch down there and take a walk.”

Dennis nodded agreeably. As they rolled toward the shore, he looked out at typical resort scenery. Villas and hotels and restaurants (most of them closed until late May, Tullio told them) filled the landscape. It was hard to believe that thousands of men had died along these roads and in the miles of farmland through which they had just traveled. Dennis began asking Matthew Mahan about his experience as a chaplain. “I never realized you were such a hero,” he said half joking.

“Don’t listen to those stories. They get better every time someone tells them. The fact is, Dennis, if you really don’t care about dying, almost anybody can be a hero.”

For the first time, Matthew Mahan talked frankly about his chaplain’s experiences, especially what they meant to him as a priest. For over twenty-five years, he had never talked about them to anyone. He did not think it was edifying for a layman to know that a priest could have strong doubts about his faith. He never shared them with a fellow priest because he did not trust anyone in the diocese to hold his tongue about them. How childish these fears seemed now. Childish, even humiliating. As he talked about them, Dennis McLaughlin’s face in the shadowy back of the car seemed to brood over them, like the fixed expression of a statue.

“The terrible part of it was the way it kept happening, day after day. The dailiness of it. Again and again you’d think: This time God will listen to me, this time my prayers will do something. But at the end of every day, there was a new batch of bodies to be blessed by me and tagged by the grave detail. After a while, I went a little crazy. It wasn’t enough, not to care about whether you lived or died. I started trying to get myself killed. I was saying to God, take me, take my sacrifice, and let the others go. I’m absolutely positive I’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for Steve Murchison.”

“The Methodist bishop?”

“That’s right. He was the Protestant chaplain of our regiment. He’s ten years older than me. One day, just before we crossed the Rhine, he took me aside. We’d been under heavy artillery fire all day and taken terrible casualties. For a couple of hours, I’d walked around in it and never got a scratch. ‘Matt,’ he said, ‘you’re not Jesus.’”