The Good Shepherd (43 page)

“Terrible.”

“I mean physically. Why don’t we do a little work before we go to bed? At least organize this mess. We’ll use the triage system. Disasters we can’t do anything about go at that end.” He pointed at the right. “The trivia at this end.” He pointed to the left. “And the crises in the middle.”

For a moment, Dennis thought he was going to weep. He was being forgiven - without even the humiliation of hearing the words spoken.

“I’m ready whenever you are,” he said.

Although Matthew Mahan found himself able to control his rage over Leo McLaughlin’s vicious
a
ttack on him, he soon found it was far more difficult to deal with its impact. Everywhere he looked throughout the archdiocese the exposé seemed to leer at him. On the previous Sunday, at Holy Angels parish, Father Novak had announced from the pulpit that he was leaving the priesthood. He had denounced reactionary pastors and stand-pat Archbishops who, he said, played the Vatican game and were rewarded with red hats. If they thought he was making up this accusation, Father Novak urged his listeners to read a series of articles in the underground newspaper, the Hard Times
Herald.

Father Vincent Disalvo had replied to Matthew Mahan’s repudiation of black reparations by calling him a hypocrite and a reactionary. He now demanded $100,000 from the archdiocese in the name of the black community for his Council for Peace and Freedom. “Black people,” he said, “are at least as important as Cardinal Mahan’s relatives, clerical favorites, and great and good friends, who are reportedly devouring twice this figure each year from the chancery trough.”

Even Monsignor O’Reilly managed to make an oblique reference to Leo the Great’s articles when he told his parishioners that they were lucky to be rid of Father Novak. He was a fraud masquerading as a priest, trying to tell people it was easy to get to heaven when it was very, very difficult. Every age had its special challenge. For the early Christians, it was the threat of martyrdom. For the Christians of the Middle Ages, it was the Crusades, the fight against the infidel. For our time, it was the liars inside and outside the Church who twisted the word of God into meanings that were the opposite of what God had taught in the Bible. Fortunately, they had a great pope who was fearlessly preaching the truth about birth control even when many of his bishops, Archbishops, and Cardinals had lapsed into heresy on the subject.

Three days later, Matthew Mahan still writhed as he read the story in vivid detail in the diocesan paper. It filled the lower third of the first page, beneath the headlines reporting his elevation in Rome. On the inside page, it ran for another two columns, facing the page on which he knelt before Pope Paul to accept his red biretta. The care with which Joe Cohane quoted Monsignor O’Reilly left no doubt that his once liberal editor had become a crypto-conservative. But that worry was minor compared to the pain Novak caused. Several priests - and even an auxiliary bishop - had departed this way in other dioceses. But this was his first public defection.

He was slightly consoled to find that his primary reaction was not anger but sadness. It was not simply Emil Novak’s failure - it was his failure, too. He telephoned Vicar-General George Petrie and told him to find Novak and ask him to come in for a personal talk. “Tell him I only want to do what I can to help,” he said.

“Matt,” Petrie said dubiously. “Do you think that’s wise? After the way he attacked you. On top of Disalvo?”

Matthew Mahan tried to explain to his vicar-general that he was more concerned about Emil Novak’s soul than he was about any damage Father Novak might have done to his already battered reputation. George Petrie found nothing humorous whatsoever in his halfhearted self-deprecation. The vicar-general hung up promising to contact Novak but expressing grave doubts.

Matthew Mahan soon discovered that the gravity of his vicar-general’s doubts about the state of his reputation extended far beyond his policy toward Father Novak. Even in the chancery office, Leo the Great’s obnoxious slander was doing its deadly work, like insidious, inescapable poison gas. On Thursday morning, Chancellor Terry Malone called and asked for “an hour alone” as soon as possible. “You make it sound like we usually meet in the lobby of the Garden Square Hotel,” Matthew Mahan replied. “Of course, we’ll be alone.”

“I mean without Father McLaughlin around,” the chancellor said. He sounded so absurdly conspiratorial, Matthew Mahan almost laughed. “The vicar-general will be with me,” Malone added.

“All we have to do is close the door to Dennis’s office, Terry. We’ll be alone.”

The burly chancellor and the suave vicar-general arrived at 4:00 p.m. on Friday. They looked pointedly toward Dennis McLaughlin’s office to make sure the door was closed. Both were solemn as men on the way to a grave. It soon became clear that they hoped they were digging one. Vicar-General Petrie let Chancellor Malone do the talking. “Your Eminence - at the risk of upsetting you - it is our considered advice that you should discharge Father McLaughlin as your secretary immediately.”

“Why?”

“I’m sure you’ve read those articles his brother wrote. Frankly, Your Eminence, so has every priest in the archdiocese. Are you going to issue a denial?”

“I think silence is the best answer.”

“Joe Cohane says you could sue for libel and run Leo the Great and that hippie rag out of the state.”

“I know. I still prefer silence, Terry.”

“Then you have no alternative, but to get rid of Father McLaughlin.”

“
Why?”

The chancellor glanced over his shoulder at Dennis’s closed door. “For one thing, we strongly suspect he leaked a lot of that information to his brother. A thorough investigation - by me personally - exonerates the chancery office. Who else could have done it?”

Matthew Mahan told himself to be calm. At the same time came a warning:
You are not dealing with stupid men.
“Now Terry,” he said, “those articles were such a mess of wild exaggerations, scandalous rumors, absurd charges. The fellow worked for the paper. He could easily have picked up most of his ideas just talking to priests who have no great love for me.”

“There were facts in those articles that could only have come from our files. Financial facts that will upset a lot of younger priests.”

“I have absolute confidence in Father McLaughlin’s integrity - and loyalty to me,” Matthew Mahan said.

“All right,” said the chancellor, yielding so readily that it was clear he never expected to win this part of the argument. “But we still think you should discharge him - for your own good and the good of the archdiocese.”

That was almost diabolical, Matthew Mahan thought mordantly. Using his own best argument against him. “Why?” he asked, sparring for time.

“He has a bad reputation. I’ve been checking up on him. When he was at Yale, he was a supporter of every radical cause you could find. That novel he wrote - it makes fun of everything - radicals and conservatives - the Church itself. If anything he’s a nihilist.”

“Do you think he’s a nihilist, George?” Matthew Mahan asked his vicar-general. He knew George Petrie was too intelligent to wrap his case around the outmoded philosophic terms so dear to Terry Malone. For a moment, the Cardinal felt almost light-hearted. Once he got his two chief lieutenants to disagree, it would be easy to dismiss the idea.

“Let me put it this way, Matt,” Petrie said smoothly. “Even if he’s innocent - and I am inclined to share Terry’s doubts on that score - I think, at this point, you have to make a show of cleaning house. Even a gesture of authority is important at this point. Those articles were terribly clever. They were aimed at making you look not only corrupt, but ridiculous. To keep the brother of the man who wrote them on your staff - in the most intimate of all jobs - he goes everywhere with you - not only reminds everyone who sees him of the wretched things, but suggests you may really be as foolish as they make you sound. I can’t think of a better way to demolish your authority.”

That will teach you to ask smart questions, Cardinal Mahan, whispered a mocking voice as the vicar-general finished. He was right, crushingly right, and the voice in which he spoke - whose voice was it but Old Smoothie Mahan? - the very advice he would have given to himself if he had never gone to the Church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome, never visited a cemetery in Nettuno, never walked a Mediterranean beach discoursing on moon shells and dynamic spirals and Pope John XXIII with a young priest who suddenly seemed to share his feelings about these things.

Terry Malone cleared his throat. Outside the world of business, he was not terribly bright. But he was a veteran of a thousand encounters with Archbishops and knew when to press an advantage. “George is speaking mainly of the impact on your priests. I can assure you that keeping him around will have the same effect - maybe even a worse one - on the laity. The big givers. You know how conservative they are.”

Yes, I know. Haven’t I sold them carefully calibrated sections of my soul for the past twenty years?
That was what Matthew Mahan wanted to say. But it was better to be silent, even at the risk of sounding like a fool.

“This is good advice - sound advice,” he murmured. “I’ll certainly give it careful thought. But there are - other considerations. I mean - spiritual ones.”

The look of incomprehension on George Petrie’s suave face and the frown of disapproval on Chancellor Malone’s crusty forehead brought him to a dead stop. How could he explain to these men? How could he take them into his personal life? For ten years, they had lived and worked together - but he had never had a personal conversation with them. Occasionally, he would reminisce with Petrie or exchange gossip about the class of 39. But most of the time, it had been strictly business - doing the job. Worrying about Father So-and-So who ran wild with his Diner’s Club card. Monsignor What’s His Name who boiled curates for breakfast.

“He’s - he’s fighting for his vocation, you see. I think I can - help.”

It was hopeless. He was contradicting the arguments he had used for the last year to hold the diocese together. The good of the majority was more important than the troubled minority, the individual.
The peace of the diocese, that was the paramount thing.
He could suddenly see Emil Novak’s skeptical face on the third floor of Holy Angels’ rectory. Now it was replaced by more obvious skepticism on George Petrie’s face.

Somehow, Matthew Mahan got them out of the office with more promises to think the matter over very carefully. On Monday morning, Terry Malone was back with a face like a gargoyle to hear the Cardinal tell him he wanted to find $1 million to keep St. Clare’s Hospital open and also give $25,000 to fund pilot projects for inner-city nuns. The Cardinal had to listen to forty-five minutes of objections and protests. The chancellor left assuring him that Monsignor Jeremiah O’Callahan, head of Catholic Charities, would be even more upset by these decisions. He was right, of course. With a master’s degree in social work to bolster him, Jerry O’Callahan did not like amateurs like the Cardinal - or the nuns - invading his bailiwick.

The Cardinal decided to wrestle with O’Callahan some other day and spent the rest of the morning in conference with lean intense Monsignor Tom Barker, head of his diocesan Rota. Monsignor Barker, who had a doctorate in canon law from Rome, was aghast at the Cardinal’s idea to receive good-conscience divorced Catholics back into the Church. Matthew Mahan nodded solemnly into the teeth of his warning that the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Sacred Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Sacred Roman Rota, and a half-dozen other Vatican departments were sure to disapprove it. He told Barker that he would take complete responsibility. Only then did the anxious canonist agree to write to the diocesan Rotas of Portland, Oregon, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where similar programs were already operating.

After a long-faced Barker departed, Matthew Mahan dictated a circular letter to all his pastors, urging them to seek out divorced Catholics in their parishes and advise them to petition the marriage tribunal for permission to receive the sacraments once more. Next he dictated personal letters to the bishops of Portland and Baton Rouge, asking their confidential opinion of how well their programs were working - and whether they had aroused any controversy in their dioceses or criticism from Rome.

At three-thirty the next day, ex-Father Emil Novak appeared without warning in response to the message Matthew Mahan had sent to him earlier in the week. A very tired Cardinal, who had resisted Dennis McLaughlin’s urging to take a nap after lunch and now regretted it, lit his sixth cigarette of the day and offered the last one in the pack to Father Novak, who primly shook his head.

It was an omen. There was nothing to discuss. Father Novak said that he was here only because he respected Matthew Mahan as a person. He no longer had any respect for his office nor, for that matter, any other office in the so-called teaching church. Leo the Great’s articles had confirmed all his suspicions and liberated him from his lingering illusions. He had meant every word of the sermon he had preached last Sunday morning. The teaching church was a monster, offering men scorpions instead of eggs, stones instead of bread. With Leo McLaughlin’s help, he was writing a book that would make all this very clear. He was also getting married next week - to an ex-nun who had taught the first grade at Holy Angels until she left the convent earlier this year. He said this with a note of triumph in his voice that made Matthew Mahan wince inwardly. He was a little boy finally doing the forbidden thing. He was not here out of any personal respect for him. He was here to tell off Big Daddy, the boss, face to face.