Ginny Morgan was in a state of shock. She sat in her apartment in the heart of Chicago’s North Side singles district at five in the morning, shaking. Were she a drinking woman, she would long since have drowned her tensions. This was ridiculous, she felt. A lifetime of getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, and she had gotten all of two hours restless sleep that night, the night before she was to appear at a mass said by her friend Patrick Devlin.

She was ready to bet that she was the only woman about to marry a priest who was putting herself through this ordeal. Goofy as it was to be so upset about other people’s business – and she was convinced that saying mass and hearing it was someone else’s business not hers – she couldn’t walk away from it, because she had made it her own agenda.

She and the one-time nun Margo had discussed it in a way that made it sound perfectly normal, in fact necessary, if she was to throw her lot in with Patrick. Her life, with all its going to bed and getting up on time, had not been a paragon of organization. She’d gone in spurts from cause to cause, motivation to motivation, generally pursuing the writing trade and being pursued by it.

But it had generally been preparation, she finally decided under Margo’s questioning, for the something more substantial that involved connecting permanently with someone else. It had always been vaguely part of her personal baggage, that a Mister O.K., if not Right, was out there somewhere. (No Mister Goodbar, thank you.)

As for the writing part, she’d gotten to the point where she took it for granted. It was part of her life, after fifteen years or so of pecking at typewriter keys from scribbled notes and newspaper clippings. There were no decisions to be made about that. She was committed, one way or another, to observing and relating what she observed. In the manner of dichotomizing life that she’d heard expressed many times, professionally she was doing fine, personally only so-so.

She was on the brink of doing fine personally as well and didn’t want to screw it up. So she sat in her apartment at five a.m. and thought about the future. There were she and Patrick, with no plans to speak of. (They still hadn’t settled on anything, but were in effect drifting together.) She had her parents back in Ohio, still wondering now and then when Ginny-baby would get married and settled down. (Ginny-baby had wondered it herself.) How would they like it when she brought home a priest to dinner? And Patrick had his people.

There seemed to be a lot of them. Not family. He was vague about his brothers and sisters. She wasn’t even sure if there were any. His parents were dead. But his other family, which was the church — that was another story. She got the feeling sometimes that he was in a state of perpetual distraction, like a fireman or doctor waiting for the alarm to go or phone to ring. He seemed worlds away from belonging to anyone in particular (like her). He seemed to belong to some amorphous mass which held him in thrall with a harsh love and call to duty.

She was going to this mass because she felt she had to face up to this, attack it at its base, lest she be overwhelmed by it in her naivete and Protestant ignorance.

Margo the former nun had explained it to her. What was twenty years before a highly concentrated communal act full of long silences and sitting, standing and kneeling, had become since the Second Vatican Council (Ginny had heard about that) in many places a sort of free-wheeling vehicle of people’s own fears and hopes. Once there was the phenomenon of all eyes being focused on the robed back of the priest, who stood with arms outstretched, reading in Latin from the Missal, a red-covered all-purpose mass book, altar boys (never girls — there would be girls at the eleven, Patrick had told her — also faced the priest’s back, dressed in long black cassocks and white, blousy surplices which extended to below feet waist and elbows.

Mass was bell, book and candle time, with incense thrown in for good measure on more solemn occasions. Altar boys handled wine in small pitchers called cruets. They carried the big book around, often on its gold-embossed metal stand. They poured wine over priests’ hands into the chalice, lit and extinguished candles, carried the small “boat” filled with incense and swung the “thurible” on its long chain. Within the thurible burned the incense. If the altar boy did it right, the small piece of charcoal inside was hot and glowing when incense was spooned in by the priest from the boat, and then from the thurible came plumed clouds of sweet smoke which stood, Margo had once been told, for prayers of the faithful rising to heaven.

Rising to heaven. God was up there, the people were down here. The concentration on him above was complete. Everything that happened down here was to aid that concentration. Catholics went to church to pray to God, there was no doubt about that.

They used to. In many places that was no longer the case, Margo explained. In parishes like St. Denis (she knew of the place), God was a presence frequently alluded to. He (She?) was a dominant motif, a background to a self-centered discussion — not necessarily in any selfish sense, because neighborly concerns generally were the focus, but centered on the people involved, not on their God. God was in his heaven, but that had less to do with what happened at mass than his being in the midst of the worshipers. It was almost, Margo had explained to Ginny, as if God was legitimated by his being among the people, rather than the other way around.

No wonder I’m scared, Ginny thought, shivering briefly in her apartment. I’m going up against a tight-knit mass of people who lay claim to this man as their spokesman. A shaman he may or may not be: the important thing was that he represented them in their fear and bewilderment and their confidence and energy.

None of this she knew clearly and concisely. Thus the more frightening it was. She had this feeling, based on what she knew of Patrick and what she’d heard from Margo and picked up from being a Chicago resident for a half dozen years: you did not mess lightly with Mother Church. It was more than autocratic bishops and monsignors. It was a mass of fused concern. Life and death infused the mass: elemental forces gathered on a Sunday morning at eleven, her Patrick at the center of them. She shivered again, screwing her courage another turn.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Devlin lifted the chasuble over his head and let it down over him, for the briefest moment his vision obscured as the pullover vestment descended past his eyes. No matter. There was nothing to see or read at this least solemn moment of the proceedings, though once there were prayers posted as the vesting descended past his eyes. No matter. There was nothing to see or read at this least solemn moment of the proceedings, though once there prayers posted at vesting table, eyes-high, in latin, which the priest could read while vesting.

He recalled briefly the priests of his youth, approaching this very table — actually a deep shelf, a built-in table — after rising from kneeler next to it (the pre-dieu so called), as if already in the sacred mode, if not mood. There was silence in the sacristy, or at most some whispered conversation, and the altar boys stood at attention, having already filled the cruets and lit the candles. There were two for low mass, four for solemn-high — acolytes, thurifer (thurible-bearer) and master of ceremonies, the latter an eighth-grade boy (from the parish school, never a public school student) who had learned the many stops and turns and bows and scrapes that marked solemn high mass, one of which was held every Sunday at noon, come hell or high water.

But the solemn high at noon was poorly attended by the standards of those high-attendance years, because it was longer than the others and made greater demands on on its late-risen adherents. The two popular masses, the eleven in the church, the eleven-ten in the school hall down the block, were jammed, however. Ushers shoehorned people in between others who were sitting comfortably apart. This was togetherness in the pre-Vatican church of the ‘40s and ‘50s, to be shoehorned into the pews on Sunday, not to shake hands with your neighbor (or with your sister Kate, for that matter) just before communion, in the post-Vatican II American version of the kiss of peace.

You could hear mass in the school hall even as part of the rear-of-hall crowd that spilled out on to the school’s broad front walk. If you came late enough, you could listen to the bells announcing the consecration from outside the place of worship. There were those who considered this a good deal and would consider it likewise today, Devlin thought as he vested.

But there were others, a considerable minority, who flocked to the eleven of the 1980s as to their favorite club meeting. It was for them a combination of solemn moments interspersed with relaxation and even laughter and applause. No one shoehorned them into the pews; at St. Denis there weren’t enough to be shoehorned.

“Everything all right, Father?” Tim Flaherty, the red-faced usher, was asking him. He stood near the sacristy door, long-handled collection basket in hand, solicitous. Catholic collection baskets were long-handled. The usher held on to it all the way. Some Protestant baskets had no handles at all, but were passed around by the people in the pews. Flaherty was a conscientious basket-passer who never let go of the handle. Even now he clung to it as a badge of his authority.

“Just fine, Tim,” said Devlin. “Good to be back.”

“Do you like it at Saint Emma’s?” Flaherty asked.

“Very much, Tim. But it’s between jobs, you know. I’m there waiting an assignment.”

“I know you are, Father, and it will be a good one too, I’m sure. You’re too good a man to be let long on the shelf.” He smiled, nodded and left the sacristy for the church itself, apparently unaware that his outpouring of flattery had led to something of a gaffe.

On the shelf, eh? Devlin thought. But he didn’t mind it. How Tim Flaherty saw his position was the least of his worries. He had a mass to say, a swan song to sing at St. Denis, where if nothing else, he had come to terms with his ailment, the ennui that had gripped him for years.

He looked forward to the mass. Others now scurried around the sacristy, including two altar girls, both Skeltons. That was nice, he thought. He’ been through a few episodes with them and sat and chewed the rag and even been there when young Tom had run away (for a half hour) after he came on his mother, full of innocent zest having just gotten encouragement about her proposed column, hugging him, Devlin.

He laughed at the absurdity of that comedy of errors. Wonderful woman, Mimi Skelton, he thought. I hope she’s here today.

The reader, a young woman with a high-pitched voice, and the leader of song, a deep-voiced man about Devlin’s age, were lining up at the sacristy door. One of the Skelton girls took the crucifix and led the way into the church proper. The rest followed, with Devlin the mass’s celebrant, brining up the rear. Tim Flaherty smiled at him as he passed the ushers’ room, turned and headed down the long side aisle. The congregation was singing “Praise to the Lord,” and Ginny Morgan was standing next to a pillar on the side aisle, not daring to turn and look at the priest as he strode by in his regalia.

The procession reached the rear of the church and turned up the main aisle, heading toward the altar. Half way up, glancing to one side, he spotted the rest of the Skeltons, including their kindergartener and their first- and second-graders. The same glance showed him the Williamses a few pews ahead — Arthur, Melissa and their three kids. Good, thought Devlin. This is working out fine. Good turnout for my last shot. All that’s needed is for the Goodmans to show up, which is not likely but would be nice. No Dolan either. He’s occupied. So everybody’s here, he thought. Oh yes, he thought again. No Trib reporter. Thank God for small favors.

He strode up into the sanctuary where the marble altar rail had been torn out and sold for scrap. Devlin didn’t know if it had been sold. He had no idea. It happened before he came to the place as a priest. But he did figure the gold-plated gates into the sanctuary must have been worth a few bucks. Small price to pay for liturgical renewal, he thought, circling the table that stood in front of the high marble altar whose backdrop ascended dozens of feet into the air against the sanctuary wall.

He circled the presently used “free-standing” altar — so called by liturgists to distinguish it from the built-in affair where the priest stood with back to people — and approached it facing the congregation.

“The Lord be with you,” he said, eschewing the less formal and not uncommon “Good morning,” and the last mass was off and running.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Ginny was stunned. She never pictured it like this. The stateliness of it all, the attention of the people, the gestures of Patrick as he said his opening phrase. She’d never seen anything like it. Her Protestant experience, now several decades removed, was a static thing, stately too in its way, but not so grand. Some Episcopal friends had talked about their “mass,” but she’d never joined them for it. And her plain old Methodist church had done for singing what this place St. Denis was doing for a sort of liturgical choreography.

Patrick called for a moment of repentance, and people around her bowed their heads. Then he sat down on the big chair — she was ready to call it a throne — behind him, up a few steps. And a tall black woman strode from her position to Patrick’s right to the reading stand and in a high-pitched voice began to read from a big book.

It was the mass’s “first reading.” Something from St. Paul. Ginny sat with the rest and listened as the young woman announced:

“Now here, brother, is the news of the grace of God which was given in the churches of Macedonia.”

Ginny stole a look around her. Eyes were turned to the young woman. Macedonia?

“And of how, throughout great trials, by suffering, their constant cheerfulness and their intense poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity.”

The reader continued in a measured pace, her voice singing out over and past the church’s p.a. system. Ginny looked around her some more, now more boldly. Nobody was paying any attention to her.

The racial variety struck her — Filipino, black, people of apparent Mexican ancestry, judging from the Indian-like features, East Indian people, including a woman in a sari, the usual blend of white American faces.

A fat man with his stomach hanging over his belt caught her eye. She noted his heaviness, looked away, then looked again, amazed. She had to turn slightly to do so, but neither he nor anyone else paid attention to her. The man’s skin was showing where his shirt didn’t button all the way down, at belt level. Just about at the navel —from the angle she couldn’t see if the navel showed — his stomach had proven too much for the shirt button, and his white flesh showed.

Ginny’s eyes widened as she noticed it. She caught herself staring, then turned back, flustered, to the reader.

“I can swear that they gave not only as much as they could afford, but far more, and quite spontaneously, begging and begging us for the favor of us sharing in this service to the saints and, what was quite unexpected, they offered their own selves first to God and, under god, to us.’

She got about half of what the reader was saying. Back in the Methodist days of her youth, she hadn’t got much of Scripture readings either. She had had Bible drummed into her. This St. Paul talk about “service to the saints” and so forth, she found familiar enough. The longer the black woman spoke, the more familiar she found the situation. She began to sit back and relax.

The tall woman finished and sat down. The man on the other side, at another lectern, led them all in some prayers, and then Patrick went to the pulpit. Was he going to preach? Ginny sat up in her pew. He looked handsome up there. Would he talk about atheism? She found herself praying he wouldn’t.

Everyone stood. He read from the book, from St. Mark’s gospel, or as he said introducing the reading, “the gospel of Jesus Christ according to Mark.” It was about divorce.

“Leaving others, Jesus came to the district of Judea and the far side of the Jordan . . .” The east bank, thought Ginny, looking for points of reference.

“And again crowds gathered round him, and again he taught them, as his custom was. Some Pharisees approached him and asked, ‘Is it against the law for a man to divorce his wife?’ They were testing him. . . .”

Those Pharisees, testing him again. No worse group in the whole New Testament, as Ginny recalled from her Sunday school days. What the Pharaoh was to Moses, the damn Pharisees were to Jesus, bugging him at every turn.

“He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’” He let them do it, they answered. “’It was because you were so unteachable . . . ‘” Jesus told them. “’But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two must become one body. So then, there are no longer two, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide.’”

And on Jesus went, Patrick reading it, to tell his disciples afterwards that divorce and remarriage were the same as adultery, for man as well as woman.

Why was Patrick reading this? Ginny noticed people checking little leaflets, booklets really, they had pulled out of the pew rack, flipping through pages, looking at the index and so on, one or two lifting eyebrows.

She took up the booklet, which as well as she could figure carried the prescribed readings for a few-month period. She looked up the June Sunday that was the day at hand and saw a passage from St. John’s gospel, not the anti-divorce passage from St. Luke. What was going here, another Patrick Devlin surprise?

He finished his reading of the gospel passage. “The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her,” he read, quoting Jesus. “And if a woman divorces her husband and marriages another, she is guilty of adultery too.” Bang. He closed the book, straightened a bit and smiled.

“Good morning,” he said, oozing charm. “Thanks for having me back.”

Ginny saw people smile, returning Patrick’s greeting.

“I’m here because your parish priests are busy with more important things this morning.” He paused. “Just kidding,” he added. “One had a long-standing previous engagement, the other has a sick father. The gospel says you leave father and mother behind you when you follow Jesus, but the sick father won out this time. As it would for ninety-nine priests out of a hundred, if not a hundred out of a hundred.”

“That’s because we’re weak,” he said. “We’re all weak, including me.” He paused. “Weakness is our middle name. We barely know right from wrong, because of our.

“That’s because we’re weak,” he said. “We’re all weak, including me. Weakness is our middle name. We barely know right from wrong, because of our clouded consciences. And then when we do know, when we make a wild, accurate guess, we can barely summon up energy to move on the insight — or to reject it, for that matter. Call us weak-knees. That’s us.”

Ginny sat stunned. This was like nothing she ever heard from any pulpit as kid or grownup. Patrick talked with barely any inflection. He was relaxed, and a little smile played around his mouth. He spoke with no dramatic rise and fall in pitch, almost off-handedly. He didn’t hesitate, never inserted an “ah” or “uh” or (dreadful to hear) a “you know” or “sort of.” The church was very quiet.

“This is my sermon on my last day in your pulpit,” he said. “About weak-need people with special attention to divorce. I’m specially interested in divorce because I’m getting one. From you.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Arthur Williams nudged Melissa. She didn’t turn towards him but kept looking straight ahead at the man in the pulpit.

Arthur nudged her again, and she was filled with immense irritation at the man with whom she had cast her life, who sat in the pew next to her. “What do you want?” she whispered, barely moving her head toward him.

“Did you hear that?” he whispered back.

“Yes I heard it. Be quiet,” she said.

Arthur wiped his upper lip with his finger and looked back at the pulpit to hear the rest of Father Devlin’s swan song.

“Jesus socked it to the Pharisees in this passage,” said Devlin. “He explained away an early permissiveness — by Moses, no less, hardly your classic example of permissiveness — by dumping on the Jews. Or so the gospel writer tells us, whoever he was, or whatever committee.

“‘You people,’ Jesus said, or something close to it. The phrase that in the 1960s more than any other betrayed the white speaker to a black audience as one who pictured himself apart from ‘those people.’ Or so I was told by friends who worked in black neighborhoods in those days.

“You people, Jesus said, were so unteachable, your own leader Moses, who led you from nowhere to or near the promised land, had to let you off the hook. ‘You were so unteachable,’ he told the Pharisees, a fairly conscientious group who did get carried away sometimes, to be sure. Can you imagine someone coming into this community and telling us we’re unteachable? We’d crucify him.”

He paused. Mimi Skelton sat riveted, plunged into gloom. The better the sermon got — and she thought it was getting very good — the deeper the gloom. The priest she had come to know and love was calling it quits before her eyes. And doing it with style, in church. It was dreadful.

Her husband Ted, sitting two children removed from her, gave a look that said, “It’s a tough one, dear, isn’t it?” She acknowledged it with a nod, then turned to listen some more.

“Divorce is the question of the moment,” said Devlin, standing straight up, not leaning forward in the old style but making his own up for the occasion, staying with the near-monotone recitative. He was later to concede to Ginny that this was one of his best sermons, if not his best. She said she was in no position to argue the point.

“Should two people tear asunder what God has put together? The position of Jesus is clear, but let us examine the matter.”

Examine the matter? wondered Ginny. Since when do Christian preachers examine the matter when Jesus’ position is clear? This Patrick had better get out of his present position, while the getting was good, she thought.

“God works, after all, in strange ways,” said Devlin. “‘What he puts together, maybe sometimes he himself tears asunder. He lets people die, for one thing, to cite the most obvious case. ‘When a husband dies, the widow may marry, because God obviously tore asunder what he once put together.

“God lets people die. Does he let relationships die, so that marriages are dead while their two partners still live? Very tricky business here to most of us. Once you talk about relationships dying while the relators still are alive, you have opened up a Pandora’s box. You can weasel out of anything that way. Declare moral bankruptcy, file under theological Chapter Thirteen or Eleven, and you’re home free. All debts cancelled or at least shelved for a while, and it’s away we go!”

What’s he up to? wondered Ginny.

What’s all this about? thought Melissa Williams.

Oh Lord, let it end, thought Mimi Skelton.

“Do you get my drift?” asked Devlin, now leaning forward for the first time, as if awaiting an answer. He did pause for a few seconds — an eternity for the beginning speaker, but nothing for Devlin, who knew what he was doing in the pulpit if nowhere else. The pause captured the few who were daydreaming. Nobody answered Devlin’s question.

“I’m saying we all have our contracts, our debts, whatever. We all owe something, and we can’t just break things off. Jesus didn’t think so, anyhow, and I agree with him.”

Jesus must be glad to hear it, thought Ginny.

I’m glad to hear it, thought Melissa.

You better, thought Mimi.

“Marriage is the most obvious case,” Devlin said. “You can’t just break up a marriage, which is very serious business, often involving kids, but even when it doesn’t, involving two bruisable people who once trusted each other. Jesus hits the God part. God joined the two together, and so forth. But even without that, or beyond it, there are the two people who trusted each other. You can’t just walk away from that sort of thing,”

Two bruisable people, reflected Ginny.

He doesn’t deny the God part, he just ignores it, thought Melissa.

And you, Father, speaking of walking away? wondered Mimi.

“I say you can’t do that. When Catholic priests preach about marriage, they have to say you not we, for obvious reasons. Anything else priests can preach about, they can join in the universal recommending, commanding, condemning, whatever. Lying, cheating, stealing, backbiting, murder, treason, genocide, fornication, adultery, incest, envy, lust, jealousy, hatred, sodomy, greed, gluttony — you name it. Priests can do it, priests have done it, priests will do it again. At a lesser rate than the general population, we believe, we hope. But still they can do all these things — and more — and can, nay must, be included in any praise for avoiding or condemnation for indulging in these all too human behaviors.”

Ginny thought she would suffocate as the list of horrors went on, Patrick dragging this whole churchful of people through his gallery of abominations. Melissa was stunned at his dragging priests into all that. Mimi found herself, against her will, fascinated.

“The one thing priests can’t do is get a divorce, because they don’t marry. A simple, inner-city woman, being informed for the first time that priests didn’t marry, and assuming they enjoyed sex outside of marriage, castigated the priest who informed her, accusing him of all manner of illicit activity. Informed further that he neither married nor engaged in such activity, she announced her opinion, calling it impossible.” Told by the flustered priest that she would have to take his word for it, she said she did but still considered it impossible.

I sincerely hope he’s not going to talk about us, thought Ginny.

He means a black woman, thought Melissa, picturing several from her girlhood who might have reacted that way.

That story again, thought Mimi, who had heard it from her inner-city priest brother-in-law.

“The woman gave priests more credit than many of you. A theologian would say she gave more credit to the grace of God.”

Wouldn’t you? thought Mimi.

“As a matter of fact, the woman was right. The priestly life is impossible, or virtually so. As a priest for 25 years, I ought to know. I have watched, or at least heard in confession about people who have fallen and skinned their sexual knees enough times to use up a factory of band-aids. I’d be very surprised if this church didn’t have a good number of such people. I hope it does, in fact. Churches need people with first-hand knowledge of human weakness. We’re not so cocky that way. We are less likely to be vain about our wonderful track records,”

He’s wandering, thought Ginny, but he’s getting too close to me for comfort.

“I’m getting too close to some people for comfort,” Devlin said. “I’m getting close to myself, for that matter. I’m getting a divorce from you, as I said earlier. Not from St. Denis, by moving to another parish either. But from the whole darn people of God, all of whom everywhere must today say goodbye to Father Devlin, because he’s going. Leaving. Checking out. Anyone behind me, don’t forget to turn off the lights. Father Devlin is dead, long live Patrick Devlin the simple layman and ordinary citizen. Goodbye.”

(end of chapter 23)

In days gone by the mass of old:

Rising to heaven. God was up there, the people were down here. The concentration on Him above was complete. Everything that happened down here was to aid that concentration. Catholics went to church to pray to God, there was no doubt about that.

They used to.

In many places that was no longer the case, Margo explained. In parishes like St. Denis (she knew of the place), God was a presence frequently alluded to. He (She?) was a dominant motif, a background to a self-centered discussion – not necessarily in any selfish sense, because neighborly concerns generally were the focus, but centered on the people involved, not on their God.

God was in his heaven, but that had less to do with what happened at mass than his being in the midst of the worshipers. It was almost, Margo had explained to Ginny, as if God was legitimated by his being among the people, rather than the other way around.

The Skeltons usually went to 9:30 mass. Ted and Mimi, their kids in public schools, were trying to supply for them what the nuns did years ago for their parents: get them to the church on time and get them to sit still when they got there. The 9:30 was less a production than the 11:00. It was easier to move their troops in and out of it and avoid riots in the process.

But now and then they decided to risk all in an early-arrival, front-pew, all-troops-present viewing of the biggie. They planned ahead for it, beginning with a quiet, early-bath and early-to-bed Saturday night at home, complete with reading to the little ones, preferably after a hard day’s running and screaming that left them limp and only moderately cranky.

Such a Saturday was the one preceding the day Devlin was to fill in at the 11:00 for the associate pastor visiting his sick father. The Skeltons had planned to attend that mass before they heard Devlin was to be its celebrant. Mimi, unsettled by her discovery that Devlin was leaving the priesthood (bad enough) and by her intuition that Ginny Morgan was awaiting his departure, had accepted the news with resignation. Painful it might be to watch the passing of a good priest. But she couldn’t walk away from the man. He was making, in her view, a terrible mistake, with implications, she was certain, for the whole world she lived in. But humanity being what it was as she viewed it, she was committed to the guy and couldn’t write him off.

Ted Skelton had been catching wind of l’affaire Devlin for several days now. Nate Goodman had made a remark just Friday about “getting Pat settled” at breakfast that day. It came in the midst of some moderate beer-drinking the two couples had engaged in at Doc Sweeney’s in Forest Park on Friday night, just before Earl Dooley and his wife had stopped by their table to chat. Dooley was the lawyer and member of St. George’s who had helped Father Jerry Skelton get his new boiler. He’d been part of the parish council group to which Jerry, accompanied by his brother Ted, had made his pitch for money. Dooley asked how Father Skelton was doing. Mimi told about visiting him a few weeks earlier. He was doing fine, she said, better than some she knew.

Ted caught that too, coming as it did moments after Nate’s talk about getting Devlin “settled,” and it raised a flag for him. Mimi said it with a quiet, stubborn look on her face that he knew enough by now to respect. He loved her for it. It was a part of her that fascinated him. But he didn’t plunge ahead with questions. That would be dumb. He hadn’t stayed married and relatively happy by doing things like that.

Later that night the talk came around to Devlin again.

“Had breakfast with Pat Devlin yesterday,” said Nate.

“Oh yeah,” said Ted. “You mentioned that earlier. How’s he doing?”

“Not bad, not good,” said Nate.

“Has he got his new assignment yet? It was a shame to lose him at St. Denis,” said Ted.

Nobody said anything.

“Wasn’t it?” said Ted.

“Ted,” said Mimi.

“Yes, Meem?”

“The church is losing him.”

“The church?”

Nate watched the exchange.

“He’s leaving the priesthood,” said Mimi. “In a little while, nobody’s going to have him. No parish. No Catholics.”

“Oh?” said Ted. “No more Father Devlin? Father Devlin is dead, long live Pat Devlin?”

“Something like that,” said Mimi. “If you feel like being cute about it.”

“Meem.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly.

“She feels betrayed,” said Carol. “She’s in the dumps about it.”

Ted reached out for Mimi’s hand and held it. She gave him a dark look full of hurt and anger but not at him. It was Mimi to a T, not hiding it, confident in her strong feeling.

“It’s all right,” Ted said softly. “It’s all right.” He let her hand go.

The Goodmans watched.

Ted drained his beer, smiled at them both, sat back and gave a sigh. “Oh boy,” he said with a grin, “When you’re out of Miller’s, you’re out of beer,” and they all laughed, including Mimi, who daubed at an eye with a handkerchief, looking first at Ted and then at their two friends.

“Well,” she said, “I guess the world will go on, won’t it?”

“Another day or so anyway,” said Nate, signalling the waitress for a second pitcher.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

On the night the Goodmans and Skeltons were at Doc Sweeney’s, Arthur and Melissa Williams had the quiet dinner out that they had planned on some weeks back when instead they went out with Devlin and Ginny.

They had dinner at Johannsens’, a Scandinavian place on North Avenue. At first they reserved for its bar and grill, just off the front entrance. But when they arrived, it was too noisy, crowded and music-filled.

Arthur checked on a table at the main restaurant, which much better reflected their sedate mood, found one would be available in five minutes, and cancelled at the first place, which seemed to get louder by the minute.

In twenty minutes, not five, they were seated in the soft-lit maroon-dominated friendly confines of the main dining room, where an incredibly fresh-scrubbed young woman, maybe a student working there for the summer, asked them what they would like to drink, Each went for Jack Daniels on the rocks. Rolls and crackers were put on the table. They settled in for relaxation, sipping the bourbon and looking now at each other, now at the other diners, a random assortment of west suburban couples and family groups, predominantly white but including a few other blacks besides the Williamses.

“There was a time I wouldn’t have relaxed in a situation like this,” said Arthur.

“I know what you mean,” Melissa said. “We would have made such a splash just showing up at the door.”

“Still would, given the right circumstances.”

“If the natives were restless, you mean,” she said, and they both laughed.

The room was blessedly lacking in music, canned or otherwise. There were no strolling performers, as they had endured at other places, nothing hoked up about the place. Just the freshly scrubbed waitresses and couples and families like themselves.

“I like this place,” said Melissa. There was noise but it came from table conversations. A woman knew the people at a table near theirs. She stopped by to talk, with a slight accent that might have been Swedish. Neither of them knew.

Arthur was reminded of the teeny-boppers he had seen in a New York hotel lobby, guests at the place in midtown Manhattan, lolling about in the evening, full of the impulsive comings and goings of adolescents and talking a language, very rapidly, that he couldn’t place. Finally, one of them, speaking to Arthur as he sat in the lobby with a drink, alone, listening to a combo at its far end, asked if he knew Portuguese. He said no, asked and was assured they were from Brazil, and was told they knew no English when he began to ask what brought them there.

The woman with the accent he and Melissa couldn’t place finished gabbing with her friends, who like four or five other groups were celebrating a birthday that night at Johannsens’, and went her way.

“I like it too,” said Arthur.

“Being here reminds me of my friend who said she was tired of hearing about black people. Years ago, during the revolution,” she said.

“White person, tired of us black folks?”

“No, black, tired of talking about the problem. It was tiring. You remember that, don’t you, Arthur? Isn’t it nice to have breathing time, like these days?”

She looked at him plaintively, a glimmer of tension around her eyes. Watching her brown, longish face, he remembered her terror when police had moved on their picket line once, only to be ordered back by a red-faced captain who had appeared almost out of nowhere. The terror had receded then, and he had held her as the situation cooled. Now, sitting in Johannsens’ years later, he watched the glimmer of tension fade away.

“I talked about those times the other day to Father Devlin,” he said. “Got a little hot about it, in fact. While jogging, no less, What’s the latest with him, I wonder.”

“Artie saw him the other day at McDonald’s.”

“With Ginny Morgan, I suppose. They meet there regularly. At least, I’ve seen them there,” Arthur said. “Our Father Devlin is in for a change of life, I would say.”

“It won’t be easy,” said Melissa.

“Now when is marriage easy? Marriage isn’t easy. It’s shocking. He ought to know that by now; so he’s a step ahead of the game.”

“Arthur, he’s almost fifty.”

“So what? For every drawback to being fifty, there’s an advantage. Or so my old Daddy used to tell me.”

“He’s walking out on a whole life. He isn’t just getting married. He’s changing everything,” said Melissa.

“So, he’ll need the support we can give him, people like us. He’s done things for us, we ought to do things for him. It’s that simple. Unless you’re stuck on authority and all that. Are you stuck on that sort of thing?”

“Itm not an anarchist, Arthur. But no, it isn’t authority as such. It’s commitment. He made a big commitment with his eyes open, and now apparently he wants to walk away from it.”

“Do you boycott your divorced and remarried friends? Because they walked out on a commitment? No. You don’t. So why pull that on Devlin?”

“I’m not boycotting him. He’s not a department store. I only boycott them when they get uppity.”

“No, but you’re giving it some thought. If you ask me. “Anyhow,” she said, “divorce is different. When you divorce someone, it’s only one you divorce. For him it’s a whole community that’s getting put aside. He has a commitment to a whole community he’s walking away from, not just to one other person.”

“Wait a minute,” said Arthur. “That whole community doesn’t depend on him as much as one marriage partner depends on the other. You walk away from marriage, you pull the props out from one or more very dependent people. No community depends that much on its priest, or on any one of its priests anyhow.”

Melissa knitted her brow and thought about that one. “He divorces a community,” she said. “But the community marches on.”

“Exactly,” said Arthur. “The community can use Devlin, but it doesn’t depend on him. With fewer priests around, are there fewer Catholics?”

“Sometimes I think being Catholic depends very little on priests. But we can all look back and —”

“Remember what a priest once did for us,” interrupted Arthur. “Sure. We can all use a good priest. We can all use a good wife or husband too, or a good friend. But someone like Devlin can’t wait around to be of use to a certain number of people, which if it grows big enough, makes his life cost effective. Be glad he’s done what he’s done, and welcome him into the ranks of the dumb lay people. Better yet, welcome him into the pews. See how he likes that. He won’t, I don’t think. But then he can write a book about it. From Pulpit to Pew: I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sunday Sermon.”

“You’re so smart,” said Melissa, as the freshly scrubbed waitress returned (from a scrubbing?) to take their food order.

“I know,” said Arthur, taking menu in hand and focusing on London broil, which he ordered medium. Melissa, taking the cue from the smart man she was married to, did the same.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Dolan was convinced it was time for Devlin to fish or cut bait. He had not been happy to hear Devlin was still on the fence. He was convinced you could get splinters that way. It was an uncomfortable position and bad for your health.

The problem wasn’t what to do. Dolan was convinced it was pretty sure only one route was open to his friend, and that was defection. So do it, was Dolan’s position. Take the leap of unfaith and get it over with. Then salvage what was left of your life. Pick up the pieces and start over. That was Dolan’s advice, but Devlin wasn’t asking it.

Devlin, in fact, appeared to be in something of a fog. He was returning to St. Denis to say eleven o’clock mass the next day, Sunday, and that, in Dolan’s opinion, was a bad idea. You don’t return to the scene of one’s peccadillos. Returning was a sign of Devlin’s indecision.

“Can you spare me Sunday?” Devlin had asked, and Dolan, thinking his friend had at least a hot date or at most was taking off for good, had nodded yes. He might be dumb, but he wasn’t stupid, and he hadn’t put his manpower eggs all into a Devlin basket.

“I’ll be over at Denis,” Devlin added, and Dolan turned from his desk to look at Devlin, standing at the door of his room.

“Over where?” he blurted.

Devlin just looked at him. He knew an honest didn’t-hear-would-you-repeat question when he heard one. This wasn’t one of those.

“What are doing over there?” asked Dolan.

“Saying the eleven. McCarthy has to go see his father. He’s very sick, you know.”

“And you’re saying the eleven?”

“O’Malley’s tied up with some sort of study group. It was me or a Dominican. And I know the ropes and told him I’d do it for nothing.”

“That’s mighty white of you,” said Dolan. “But do you think it’s a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

Dolan by now had turned entirely toward Devlin, who continued to stand in the doorway. “Well for one thing, you got removed from that spot by the archbishop, who had serious objections to your performance there. And for another, it’s not fair to the new pastor to show up this way.”

“He’s the one who’s asking me.”

“He doesn’t know the story.”

“Well who does? What story?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean. My impending retirement from the service. You want me out right now? You want me gone and forgotten, the sooner the better? What’s the matter with me returning to Denis for one eleven o’clock mass? The way it used to be, with everybody’s favorite pastor — everybody’s but one or two —holding forth like the good old days? Besides, Ginny’s gonna be there.”

Before that moment, Dolan had thought he’d heard everything. He took in a quick breath, got red in the face and stood up.

“Pat,” he said. “Why? What is she doing at mass? Or at one you’re saying? How does she fit in? Pat, I don’t get it.”

“Terry, take it easy. This is getting out of hand. Sit down.”

Dolan sat down.

“Terry, I want you to calm down on this thing, Let me tell you something. There are very few people whose opinion I care about. You know me. You know that’s true. I’ve never been one to give two shits about it. Right?”

Terry nodded.

“There are very few I care about, but you’re one of them. I have absolutely no doubt that when this passage of mine is completed, I will still have you for my friend. O.K.?I’m not pushing any panic buttons on this thing. But I think you are.”

Dolan breathed heavily a few times but otherwise just sat there with his arms folded, looking at Devlin.

“The irony of this exchange does not escape me. I find it very odd to be giving advice to anyone at this point. But frankly, you’re not doing this right.”

“Well I have a problem, Dev,” Dolan said quietly. “I’m having trouble thinking up a good way to do it.”

“I know you are, and I understand that. I’m not talking about approving or disapproving. I’m talking about how you personally handle it.”

“The two are connected,” said Dolan.

“Right, but not so they can so they can’t be separated. You can’t be so committed to your ideals that you can’t function in pursuit of them.”

“What the hell does that mean that mean?”

“It means you ought to re-emphasize the sardonic side of your nature, the part that has served you so well in helping you to cope with the presently reigning archbishop, the one whose decision to expel me from my parish you were just now defending.”

“God, you’re full of speeches this morning.”

“Not full of something else? A distinct improvement, wouldn’t you say?”

Dolan chuckled. “It’s distinct, all right.” He sighed. “Dev, go ahead to St. Denis Sunday. Lead the circus, I mean liturgy. Preach up a storm if you want. Call for the archbishop’s resignation, condemn the church’s traditional lack of hospitality towards atheists, announce your retirement, as you call it, from the priesthood. Say you’re taking it early. Tell them not to worry, because your pension is vested, or tell them to expect you on their doorstep because it isn’t. It isn’t, is it?”

“No,” said Devlin.

“But one thing above all not to do.”

“Geez, what’s left not to do?”

“You can’t guess?”

“No,” said Devlin. What are you talking about?”

“Don’t introduce your girl friend, have her stand up and take a bow, anything like that.”

Devlin grinned. “It’s a deal,” he said. “I won’t do that. If I don’t do that and maybe don’t even do some of the others you said, do I proceed with your blessing, Father?”

“For what it’s worth, you proceed with my blessing.”

(end of chapter 22)

. . . Not reading them, of course, but if I had “the book,” not “the bells,” sure enough enabled the priest to read (a) the epistle in its side and then (b) the gospel on the other side . . .

Back in the city room, Ginny took a call from Fred the banker. “How you doin’?” he asked.

“Not bad, Fred. Busy, that’s all.”

“Thought you might like to have lunch.”

“No.”

“Everybody eats lunch. You have to eat lunch. Thought you might like.

to join me.”

“Nope. Busy.”

“O.K. I can try some other time.”

“O.K.” They hung up. Ginny had no time for Fred. Not a second. She was totally absorbed in her Devlin project. It was part of her work at hand.

She called Devlin.

“How about I come to see you?” she asked.

“You’re always welcome, lady. What are you sellin’?”

“I mean on Sunday.”

“Never on Sunday. You know me, lady.”

“When you say mass.”

“You comin’ to mass?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Sunday. O.K.?”

“Well, sure it’s O.K. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know. Which mass are you saying?”

“Which one am I saying?”

“You’re cute when you repeat my questions that way,” she said.

“Watch it, lady. I’ll tell the vicar general about you. Then where would you be?”

“Where would you be is the question, Patrick.”

“On the street. Or in New Mexico.”

“New Mexico?”

“Where fallen priests go. To commune with their God, spit out their demons, get straightened out,” he said.

“By the way, what was that straightening out business a while back?”

“Never mind for now.”

“Fine, but tell me what mass. I’m coming.”

He said he tell her when he knew for sure. They hung up.

“Ginny.” It was Eddie on the desk. Not the city editor but his assistant. The city editor was studying pieces of paper, his head bent down. The two womens’ column, “SHRINK,” he called it, was running Monday.

“Thanks, Eddie,” Ginny said.

“It’s nothing,” said Eddie. “Thought it would be some news you could use.”

“You’re too kind,” she said, dialing.

It was her hairdresser. She made an appointment. Little trim, little frizz, little spiffing up. Going to church on Sunday, she had to look her best.

At noon she flew out of the place and headed for Field’s, shopped for an hour and returned to her desk with a small mac, which she ate while reading notes for a story.

Meanwhile, the two women, Mimi Skelton and Carol Goodman were in and out of the building. They sat with editors, who apologized for the delay in getting back to them about their columns. One, a large-headed man with owlish eyes and a wide mouth, suggested they might have been more persistent in seeking an answer.

When the conversation was done, the two women had their assignment: they were to write five more columns in the next two weeks. Mimi blinked when she heard this but kept a straight face. Carol raised her eyebrows. The large-headed man spotted this and assured them the deadline wasn’t set in concrete, but added that if they were smart, they would move before the editors lost everything again.

The two tore out of the building, narrowly missing Ginny, who followed them by seconds but headed directly south down Wabash, over the bridge, while they headed west across the street to the IBM Plaza and State Street.

They were headed back to Oak Park, she to the Loop. They had fame and fortune in mind, gotten through honest work. She had religion in mind, gotten with a curious affection for a celibate minister of religion.

“Ginny,” Eddie yelled. “There’s a fire at 29th and Halsted. Warehouse exploded. Go with John Brown.”

“Ready?” John Brown the photographer said as she moved toward the elevator.

“Ready,” she said, smiling. They found John’s car in the basement garage across the bricked street down below, a street with railroad tracks going down its middle for the rare, off-hours delivery of paper, Ginny thought, but had never checked it out and wasn’t sure.

John pulled out and headed them to lower-level Wacker Drive, where they tooled along in the green-lit, eerie riverside haze of a hot June day. It was moments like this, hustling to the scene of a catastrophe, seated next to a photographer, when Ginny got depressed about newspapering.

She didn’t care about fires and doubted whether anybody did. Then the next day, or later the same day, she saw pictures and text of a story that would catch a reader’s eye and remind him or her what could happen. Not the point at all, she realized. The story was its own end. Even selling papers came second. But she was cursed with a second-look mentality that made her examine why she was doing what she did.

The scene at the fire was the usual chaos. Lot of smoke in the sky and hose on the ground. Streams of water poured forth into flames and smokes. Firemen stomped by in boots and raincoats and their curious hats from another era. She would have to write about fireman’s hats some day, she thought, as she tried to get the lieutenant’s attention for just one minute, so she could satisfy people’s curiosity, tell them how this happened, what made this building go from just another drab brick structure to a panoply of blazing light and smoke. Even now, motorists on the Dan Ryan Expressway were spotting the smoke and turning on car radios to hear what radio reporters were telephoning in to their stations.

Ginny stood in the midst of it all, scribbling. John had left her and gone picture-hunting. She leaned to hear what the lieutenant was saying, then overheard a bystander spouting forth her observations. She took the virtue of having seen the explosion and noted its exact time on the watch she had been given the day before, which was her 55th birthday. Her son, a lawyer downtown — did Ginny know him? — had given it to her, and she was checking everything out, noting the times. She had newly discovered, in her 55 years of marking her life as much by factory whistles as by clocks, the joys of watch-watching.

Ginny tore herself away from this fascinating woman with her lined, Slavic face and house dress and new watch and picked her way through the crowd to the nearest phone, at which stood the Tribune reporter, Ken Cooper, who had tipped the columnist on Devlin’s fight with Fred the banker. Ginny had to wait while Cooper finished calling.

He winked at her as he handed the phone over. She didn’t wink back but dialed and got Eddie, who gave her to rewrite. Reading from notes, she spilled it out, keeping an eye on the smoke a block away from the outdoors phone she stood at. She could hear Paul O’Sullivan’s typewriter’s going tap-tap as he took down her information. She was tempted to tell him about the woman with the watch but decided Paul couldn’t use it. This was for edition. And with all the smoke and fire and people milling about and cars slowing on the expressway for a better look, the story might not even make it to next day’s paper, other than the briefest mention. A warehouse exploded, but attention would be easily diverted. The readers in Schaumburg, to name only a few, couldn’t care less.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Devlin was set to say the 9 o’clock on Sunday morning, but got shifted to St. Denis instead. The assistant at St. Denis had to go see his sick father, who hovered near death, and the new pastor, a friend of Devlin’s, was scheduled to give a talk at his old parish on “The Changing Church: What To Do About It.” The parish’s third priest was committed to a senior-class picnic. So the pastor asked Devlin if he’d return just this once to his old stamping grounds. It would make things much easier, the new pastor explained, since nobody would have to show Devlin the ropes. Dolan got a Dominican to fill in at St. Emma’s.

The ropes to be learned by a newcomer at St. Denis were considerable, especially for the eleven o’clock mass, which got elaborate at times. Devlin had mostly watched it all happen under his pastorship at St. Denis. He hadn’t initiated much but rather had watched in bemused astonishment as people of the parish rushed to be not the last by whom the new was tried. He had to admit there had not been excesses, or none to speak of, at least. The emphasis on being nice to each other, as opposed to dealing directly with God, had certainly alienated some older parishioners while leaving others quietly seething, in some cases not quietly at all.

The alienated sought to discuss the matter with Devlin, who gave them his time and attention but not their way. Miffed, they drifted to other parishes. Some found a home in the Dominican Priory, whose Sunday mass accommodated the more tradition-minded. Nobody made much of any of this. There were 19 different kinds of Catholic around town, and a sort of winnowing process allowed each to find a home. Those who found one at St. Denis were generally ready to have a good time at Mass.

This meant sometimes fairly lighthearted affairs, with laughter and clapping, banners and different kinds of choirs, from white-robed and singing in Latin to blouse-and-skirted and playing a guitar. Devlin had to hand it to them for their (his at the time) Holy Week services, which ended with a baptism by immersion (of the head) of a black, hugely dignified, 50-year-old-or-so woman and the reception into the church of seven other adults, white, black, young, old, men, women, at the height of the Easter Vigil service on Holy Saturday. He sometimes wondered if his sermons on atheism hadn’t been aimed a bit over the heads of people too busy having fun at church to pay attention to such dour considerations as whether there might not be a God after all. In the end he decided to give them more credit for their enthusiasm than blame for their shallowness. Or was he the one who was missing something? He didn’t know.

He did know he was on for the eleven at St. Denis on the Sunday his girl friend was coming to see him say mass, and so he dutifully informed her with a quick phone call.

“They are letting you back to your old place?” she asked. “After they kicked you out of there?”

“The archbishop kicked me out, Ginny. St. Denis had nothing to do with it. They are tolerant to a fault; so I never had any trouble with them.”

He gave her instructions on where to find the place. “It’s the steeple you can see from McDonald’s.”

“Good. I feel comfortable about it already,” she said, promising to make it to the church on time and ringing off till Sunday.

For some reason she needed time away from Devlin to get ready for his mass. Margo encouraged her in this.

“This something special,” she told her in her office. “It’s a celebration, after all. The mass, I mean.”

“I’ve heard that word used,” Ginny said. “Things like ‘He celebrated the mass of the dead or a burial mass.’ What’s that all about?”

“Resurrection. Jesus died and rose from the dead, and so will the Christian. The mass celebrates that.”

“Margo, that strikes a lot of people as very strange, you know.”

“Do I know it? I sure do. It got Jesus hung.”

“I thought he was crucified.”

“On a cross, I mean, till he gave up the ghost.”

“Then he rose.”

“Well, his father raised him. We ought to be precise about it, or at least as precise as Scripture,” said Margo.

“Is this a Sunday school class?”

“It’s a propaedeutic towards your first mass as the wife of a priest. A preliminary investigation, as it were.”

“Wife?”

“For all practical purposes. You sleep with him and are committed to him, and he to you. What’s missing?”

“Getting married. That’s what’s missing.”

“Being joined publicly. You’re right. Well, Sunday, you join him publicly. Or semipublicly.”

“I intend to be discreet, of course.”

“Of course. You are neither iconoclast nor revolutionary, though you are subject to being used by both. Hence you are discreet. It’s the only reasonable way.’

“Margo, you’re incredible.”

“The whole business is incredible. The mass and all. Virtually incredible, which means, for all practical purposes it can’t be believed. I believe it for impractical purposes. You will too, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure I will,” said Ginny, and was amazed to hear herself say it.

She was further amazed to find herself later in the day asking a Kroch’s and Brentano’s clerk for a book about the Catholic Church. She walked out of the store on Wabash with a volume of moderate size whose author was billed on the flyleaf as a priest-theologian who had done everything but singlehandedly direct the course of Catholic progress over the previous twenty years. Fom its title, “Vatican Two Revisited,” and its table of contents, “Sex,” “Worship,” “Authority,” “God” and other titles, she got some idea of Catholic preoccupations over the years. “Warfare” was another title, but she paid little attention to it, figuring there were few things even the church could say about the dread subject that hadn’t been said already and/or weren’t taken for granted by dozens of her contemporaries. Anyhow, it was a subject vulnerable to oratond commentary and posing, and she shied away from it.

She zeroed in on “Ministry,” wondering what a Protestant word was doing in a Catholic book, and found out that Devlin was a minister. That did neither him nor the few other priests she had met justice, she decided. If they were ministers, why were called priests? In her heart she felt there was a big difference. Who ever heard party jokes about ministers, unless it was the kind that compared minister, priest and rabbi in a lost boat or in heaven with Mayor Daley? And then the minister was no more than a foil, representing a reasonable approach to show off priest’s and rabbi’s idiosyncrasies. What got your audience to perk up more readily? “Did you hear the one about the priest?” or “Did you hear the one about the minister?” No mystery in being a minister, thought Ginny. Being a priest was something else, to be sure.

Coming out of Kroch’s, where she had perused and bought the Catholic book, she bumped into Ken Cooper.

“They chewed hell out of my fire story,” he said, picking up with her as they walked toward the river. “Ended up sounding like an autopsy. I swear, they flee drama like the plague sometimes.”

“Editing is too important a thing to be left to editors. You know that by now, Ken. Half of them are misdirected plumbers, I do believe.”

“Most plumbers would treat my drama in a more kindly fashion,” he said. “By the way, speaking of drama, how’s the battling priest?”

“Who?”

“Never mind. If you don’t want to talk about him, that’s O.K., Ginny. I couldn’t walk away from that story, though, could I? It could have been worse, at that. Right?”

“I thought you didn’t mind not talking about it.”

“God, you’re smart. I’ll bet you’re smart enough to work for the Tribune. What a waste, to have you filing gems for the Brand X newspaper in town.”

“Did you see my fire story, Ken? My gems were not wasted. They got into print.”

And indeed they had. Eddie on the desk and O’Sullivan on rewrite had worked together to make a minor naked-city story out of the warehouse explosion. Ginny had sensed something like that in the works. There was something in Eddie’s voice when he said the city council had acted like dead men that day, and she had called back, half apologetically, with the woman whose new watch had replaced the factory whistle for a timepiece. O’Sullivan had suggested she go for some more eyewitnesses, get a brief line on each and make a tableau out of it: explosion on 29th Street or something like it. Ginny managed to nail a half dozen others who had heard and/or seen the explosion, being careful to ignore anything like “It sounded like the explosion of a bomb,” and was back on the phone to O’Sullivan in a half hour. He put them all together, hopping on exact phrases Ginny had given him, and next day’s page one had “Explosion on 29th Street.” For Ginny, preparing for her first mass, it was a good omen.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Nate Goodman knew from a brief reference his wife made that things weren’t going well with Pat Devlin. Something about “trouble in River City, in the St. Denis and Emma branches” as seen through Skelton eyes had set him to wondering about his boyhood buddy, a queer bird who nested in both branches.

“Patrick, what’s up?” Nate said when he called the priest.

“Why Nate, I’m pretty much out of work, that’s what’s up,” said Devlin. “I’ve been thinking of you, in fact.”

“You need a brush up in secular realities, otherwise known as grim?” said Nate.

“The grim realities, yes. I need another short course in what happens if you do this and if you don’t do that, and so forth. My situation is beginning to climax, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

“Coming from you, I’ll pardon. You want me to be Christian about it, that it?”

“You got it, Nate. Be Christian when you deal with me. When I deal with you, maybe another story. We spoiled Christians are the worst kind. You don’t know what we’ll pull.”

They set up another breakfast, again near St. Emma’s. “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Devlin said the next day, taking his first cup of coffee.

“What’d I say?” asked Nate.

“About me and my problems. Getting work.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Devlin lowered his voice and looked around. “Let’s face it. I have some planning to do.”

Nate looked at him.

“It’s time for me to take stock,” said Devlin.

“I agree. You’ll need money.”

“I need more than money,” said Devlin.

“Like what?”

“Like some work I can live with and find satisfying.”

“Pat, you’re not in a good negotiating position. What do you want to do, anyway, now that you bring it up. What’s your preference?”

“Something worthwhile.”

“That’s a very round category,” said Nate. “Could you be more specific?”

“A service role of some sort.”

“Waiter? Have you thought of being a waiter? It’s nothing but service-oriented.”

“What are you doing to me, Nate? I’m serious.”

“So am I. You are fifty years old.”

“Forty-eight.”

“Forty-eight years old and know how to preach and are good company. You have certain other skills — liturgical? — that might be of use on the stage. A certain presence, shall we say? You have a way with people that I find hard to categorize. It’s a combination of being sensitive to them and of requiring” — he paused. “Yes, requiring a certain response in return. Not from me. I’m your friend. But in general.”

“What are you driving at?” Devlin interrupted.

“I’m driving at the importance of a certain realism as you assess your vocational opportunities at this point. You’ve been performing a highly specialist function for a highly segmented market, I might say. You’re like a bank, that’s what you are.”

“How am I like a bank, smart guy?”

“You’ve had a niche for decades, where nobody could touch you. You had a market sewn up and were in turn protected from competition. You were ordained; so were banks. You’ve found out you can, or at least want to, do more; so you’re branching out. But you’re moving out of a protected environment. You’re excited about that, but you’re scared. Right?”

“At this point, since you’re being so smart about it, I am not ready to agree to anything you say, Nate. Keep talking.”

“Don’t mind if I do. I think I’m on to something.”

The waitress filled the coffee cups. Nate continued.

“What you need is a shtick. You are useless in a corporate sense. Most corporations, if you’d been with them twenty-five years, they’d be looking to fire you for old age by now, unless you were the one doing the firing. You need a shtick, something you can do that’s distinctive. Then sell it. That’s a shtick.”

“From your secret language, Yiddish.”

“How’d you know? See? Smart guy like you can make it.”

“What’s my shtick?” Devlin asked.

“We have to see. It’s got to match a market, of course. So we should look at markets where you might fit — where your shtick would fit.”

“Mimi Skelton once tried to do that for me, a few months ago. Wanted me to hang out a shingle, The Belief Doctor, or something like that.”

“Then you preached atheism. Hell of a belief doctor.”

“I didn’t preach atheism. You weren’t even there. I said, let’s take the position seriously. I was aiming at people who already did and could use some straight talk from the pulpit.”

“Jesus. Straight talk. From a pulpit? That’s always been the quickest route from preacher to cabdriver. Who wants to hear straight talk from a pulpit? You think people come on Sunday to hear that? Unless you can intellectualize it. That’s what Jews do. Then we talk it to death.”

“Talk what to death?”

“Whatever the no-bullshit, simple statement might have been before it got put in round-about phraseology.”

Devlin looked away. “I’m not in the mood to hear complaints about preachers.”

“Neither am I. We got off the subject. Mimi Skelton had a shtick for you? You know, I thought you were sweet on her a few months back. And she on you.”

“Mimi? She’s married with seven kids, belongs to the parish. Has live-in husband, feisty, good-looking, smart.”

He stopped.

“Right. You just hit it off together,” said Nate.

Devlin threw up his hands and looked away.

“Anyhow, now it’s you and Ginny, right? And you on your way to a new and wonderful life.”

“Like a bank.”

“Yeah. That’s it.” Nate laughed. “Like a bank. You and banks. New life, new challenges, new opportunities. The world is your oyster.”

“If I come up with a shtick.”

“What can it be?” said Nate, getting serious again.

“I don’t know. I’m not full of ideas today.”

“Let’s blue-sky,” said Nate.

“What do you mean, blue-sky? What kind of funny language are you talking?”

“Brainstorm. Try ideas on each other. Throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks,”

“O.K. Brainstorm in a blue sky. Stormy weather it.”

“Stormy weather?”

“Forget it. Private joke.”

“Between you and some meteorologist. No. You and some reporter.”

“Me and some reporter. Right.” Devlin looked out the window of the little restaurant. It was going to be hot today, he thought. Might rain. “Nate,” he said. “I don’t feel like blue-skying right now.”

“Don’t have to right now. Let’s think about this. Think what you can do to keep the wolf away.”

“That’s a depressing way to look at it,” said Devlin.

“Christ, don’t get depressed,” said Nate. “Do banks get depressed?”

“Banks aren’t starting something entirely new.”

“Why should you, therefore? Don’t start all over. Look at what you’re doin’ and start there.”

“What am I doing?”

“What are you doing?” Nate repeated. “Do you need me to tell you that?”

“No, but I need you to ask me. I need someone to ask me.”

“Exactly. You need someone to blue-sky with so you don’t get lost in stormy weather.” He stopped. “That’s it,” he almost shouted, slapping the table.

“Waitress,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Another round of coffee. It’s time to brave the elements.”

(End of Chapter 21)

“Are we drifting apart?” asked Devlin. He and Ginny sat in McDonald’s again. She had come out after a bad day at Hard Rock, as her friend Betty referred to the city room, eager to drink in a different environment. |

“I never thought I’d hear a phrase like that from you,” she said.

“I never thought I’d say it. Are we?”

“Yes. We are a classic case of drifting apart. Someone should put us ‘in a textbook.”

“Why are we?”

“I am not the expert on human nature. You are,” she said.

“Yes and no. I’ve been a careful observer, not a participant.”

“That’s all right. In fact, it’s better. Being a participant makes you no judge.”

“In this case I’m a participant, which is why I’m asking why we are drifting apart.” He said it with an elaborate smugness, sitting back with a satisfied smile.

“Aren’t you clever,” she said, turning away to look out onto Madison Street, where some children were crossing from the laundromat on the other side. “I wish I knew,” she said.

“All the years I have on you, and I don’t know either. These aren’t the kinds of problems people brought to me. I’ve been a belief-merchant. Then I ran out of belief to sell. Or give away, for that matter. There are places you can’t give it away, you know.”

“I’m sure there are,” she said.

“You know how I feel now?”

“How?”

“Like the spiritual writers say, arid.”

“You feel arid.”

“Yes. Great word for it, huh?”

“Great word for what, Patrick?” Her eyes widened in exasperation.

“For not feeling anything. No motion, nothing. Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. Know what I mean?”

“Shitty.”

“No, no. Not it. Shitty gives you something to fight against. Same with the blues.” He waved a hand for emphasis. The kids from the laundromat moved to a table near them, pushing each other. “When you’re arid, you feel nothing. You’re in a dark night.”

“Better than a stormy day.”

“Not a whit. Storms bring out the man in you.”

“In me?” she said.

“In me. When I say you, I mean me.”

“Yes.”

“Stormy weather. That’s worth writing a song about.”

“And Lena Horne singing it.” she said.

“Right.”

“We’re not in stormy weather?” she asked.

He smiled. “Ginny, sitting in McDonald’s discussing our faltering love affair in a disgustingly reasonable manner. You call this stormy weather?”

“You have a point.”

“Are you Irish?” he asked.

“Tl suppose so. Way back. Some Scotch, some English, a little Welsh. Mostly Scotch and Irish.”

“A regular potpourri of the British Isles, right?”

She shrugged. “Where I came from, it was not an issue.”

“It is here,” he said. “Here in Ethnic City.”

“You have to declare yourself?”

“Just about. Not like it used to be.”

“But you still want to know.” Her red hair touched her shoulders. He remembered for a flash the warmth of her face and lips. He smiled.

“Helps you forget how arid you are.”

“As a matter of fact, it does.” He eyed her hair and lips and the near-redness of her skin. “Ruddy Celt,” he said.

“I think I’m being seduced,” she said.

“On the contrary, it is I who am being seduced,” he said, a little louder than he intended. One of the laundromat kids, a girl about fourteen, glanced briefly at him, her eyes white against chocolate skin.

“I don’t think you are feeling as arid as you were a few minutes ago.”

“No, I’m not. The mood has passed.”

“What do the spiritual writers recommend at such a point?” she asked. “To plunge in and forget the consequences, as it were?”

“How’d you know? Abandonment, that’s it. To God.”

“And when there is no God, as you apparently believe?”

“Then to the reality that is its substitute.”

“Which I trust is not your friendly newspaper reporter,” she said.

“No.”

“What is it then? Come on. You got yourself into this. Get yourself

out.”

“It’s . . . “ He hesitated.

“Yes?”

“It’s . . . hard to say what it is. It’s whatever strikes your fancy at a given moment.”

She flinched. “My, you’re honest if nothing else. What a thing to say.”

“The devil made me do it.”

“Patrick, don’t talk that way,” she said. The chocolate-colored girl’s eyes flicked their way again.

“O.K. I’ll stop. No more talk like that. Let’s take a walk.”

Out on the sidewalk, they faced the spanking new village hall complex. “Let’s get married,” he said, pointing across the street. “I’ll bet there’s a J.P. there.”

“There isn’t. You don’t have J.P.’s around here. You have judges in the county building. Besides, I’m not in the mood to get married. It’s not the fancy that has my attention at the moment,” she said.

He threw up his hands in a shrug. “So? What is it you would like? Frozen custard? McDonald’s shake? Burger King delight?”

“I want to go home,” she said, heading for her car.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

“Mama, guess who I saw. At McDonald’s.”

“Who, Honey?” Melissa William said.

“Father Devlin, with a lady,” said Artie, who forgot he wasn’t supposed to ride that far on his bike.

“Oh?” said Melissa, distracted by the news from the fact that

Artie had wandered so far from the block. “Was it an old lady, Artie?”

“No, Mama, she was young, like you.” Artie had moved from his earlier assessments of age that put anyone over eighteen in the senior citizen category to something more realistic. A year or so before, Ginny Morgan would have been considered old. Now she was young like Mama.

“Red hair?”

“Red hair, Mama. Pretty too.” And for insurance as he began to remember he wasn’t supposed to ride that far, “Like you.” With a sweet smile.

To no avail. “You weren’t supposed to go that far, Artie.”

Artie hung his head, hoping repentance, or its appearance, would help. His mother being distracted, it did.

Melissa Williams was not happy to hear Father Devlin had been at McDonald’s with Ginny. She had hoped that business was ending, though she had no reason to hope it.

“Maybe he dropped her,” she had suggested to Arthur.

“I doubt that,” Arthur said.

“You think they were made for each other, or something?”

“I just don’t think he dropped her. Why should he drop her?”

“Arthur, he’s in a tricky position. He has a lot of reasons to drop her.”

“So he can go crawling to the archbishop, get a parish and pulpit again and return to the old grind? Melissa, he’s been burning bridges for months, if not longer. A priest doesn’t talk in the newspaper the way he did without knowing what he’s doing.”

“Maybe he was misquoted,” she said.

“By Ginny Morgan? He has a funny way of showing his displeasure.”

That was a few days before Artie had made his Devlin sighting in the midst of a long expedition to forbidden territory. Melissa duly reported the same to Arthur that night.

“In McDonald’s? Sure Artie didn’t see them in church? Maybe Artie’s been hanging around church these days and doesn’t want us to know.”

“McDonald’s.”

“More power to them,” said Arthur. “Not prudent, but who cares? Maybe he was counseling her. I don’t think he’s dropped her, at any rate, as you suggested the other day.”

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

“What do I think?” repeated Arthur. “I think Father Devlin is in the middle of a long, painful process of withdrawing his troops from the field.”

“He’s hardly been in a war.”

“Are you kidding, Melissa? He’s been in a war.”

“Fighting whom?”

“Himself and the powers of darkness.”

“Really, Arthur.” |

“Sure. You don’t think he’s been under warlike strain all these years? Since the bloom went off the rose?”

“Since he was first ordained, you mean?”

“Or some unspecified time thereafter,” Arthur said.

“Arthur, the same goes for any commitment, job, whatever.”

“Right, and he’s leaving a commitment. He’s changing his mind.”

“What if I changed my mind about our marriage?”

“I was waiting for you to say that. Marriage is different. But to answer the question, knowing you, I’d say you’d pull your troops. I picture Father Devlin pulling his with all the neatness of helicopters taking off from the Saigon embassy roof. It’s a messy business.”

“How is marriage different,” Melissa asked.

Arthur laughed. “Geez. How is marriage different? How much time do you have? Mainly, it’s considerably more intimate than being a priest. I mean if he’s married to the church, for instance, or to Jesus — wait a minute, that’s not write. Whatever. If he’s married to the people of God, in the same way I’m married to you, then he’s one hell of a polygamist, sexual switch-hitter and — the old tried and true ghetto word mother-f —.”

“O.K., O.K.,” she interrupted, seeing the word coming.

“Ah me,” he said, looking out the window on to their cul-de-sac, “when shanty became lace curtain, they changed their language too.”

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Ginny’s story on the psychiatrists was long gone and put away. She’d reported and written it, and it sat in her desk in hard copy taken off the printer. But more importantly, it sat in the memory of the computer, stored for future use every bit as much as nuts and things were stored by the squirrel for the hard winter. The city editor liked her story; so he squirrelled it away for a rainy day, preferably a Monday. SHRINK was safe in the machine. It was buried and would rise again on a rainy day, then to live again in glory or abuse, depending on reaction from sources and readers. There was no telling which would result, Ginny knew from years experience. In any event, it was out of her mind, and she was on to the next triumph.

Not entirely out of her mind, however, because Doctor Margo Gibson remained there, a woman with a mind of her own, used to probing others’ minds and hearts.

“You want to know how he’s hitting me right now, Margo? He’s hitting me like a pain in the rear. He’s nothing but trouble,” Ginny said.

“Trouble? But you love him,” Doctor Gibson said as they sat in her office on Michigan Avenue.

“But loving someone doesn’t mean he’s no trouble. Do I have to be the one who tells you that, Margo?”

“Yes, you do. I know it happens, but I don’t like it, and I don’t think it should happen or must happen.”

“He’s been a celibate so long,” said Ginny.

“He’s been a bachelor, a bachelor priest. Most are.”

“He hasn’t played around. He’s led a consecrated life. Am I, a Protestant, the one who has to tell you that too?”

“Yes and no. I assume, no evidence to the contrary, he hasn’t played around. I know he’s been consecrated. But I also assume, barring evidence, to the contrary, that he has ended up a bachelor priest. As I say, most are,” said Margo.

“Are you against celibacy?” asked Ginny.

“I have my doubts, but I wouldn’t go that far. But it’s Father Devlin we’re talking about, your bachelor priest.”

“Something about that phrase irks me,” said Ginny. “It’s . . .” She hesitated. “. . . contemptuous.”

“No it isn’t,” said Margo. “It’s a balancing phrase. Puts things in perspective.”

“But a bachelor is so everyday. Priests are special.”

“Priests have what specialness we give them. We can be unfair to them, and to ourselves, if we give them what they don’t deserve and can’t use.”

“You want to make them everyday creatures?”

“For the most part,” said Margo. “It’s better that way. For them and for us. We should be sparing in our elevations and go light on the mystery. Are you put off by the mystery part?”

“Yes and no,” said Gimny. “Hah. See? I can talk that way too.” She smiled.

Margo smiled and said nothing.

“He’s mysterious in his own right. That’s r-i-g-h-t,” she said, spelling it out. “Rites, r-i-t-e-s, — are another matter.”

“Do you attend mass?!

“No.

“You should attend his mass.”

“Margo, that’s bizarre. Should I dress in scarlet and sit in the front pew?”

Margo laughed. “You reporters do have a way with words,” she said. “No,” she continued. “Be unobtrusive. But it’s part of his life. You have a right, r-i-g-h-t, to take a look.”

“Why do I have a right?”

“Because he’s on your mind, if nothing else. Anyhow, you are probably going to cast your lot with him. Right? R-i-g-h-t? So you deserve a look at what’s going on in his life. How would he feel about your attending one of his masses?”

“We’ve never discussed it, but I can’t imagine him objecting.”

“Good. Then do it.” Margo sat back with a smile on her face.

(end of chapter 20)

Devlin’s friend Ginny had a fair idea what the story was supposed to be but not a hundred-per cent clear one. It had something to do with psychiatrists and the troubles they have with patients. It had everything to do with that. But she was not sure what the troubles were, beyond the strain of dealing with mixed-up people.

“As a newspaper reporter, you should find the subject very familiar,” said the city editor. “I know that as a city editor, I would. Only difference is, I deal with them on the run, one after the other. The shrink deals with them sitting down in an office. Or lying down, as the case may be. Go to it, Ginny. You can do it. Tell you what. Get the shrink to lie down while you ask him questions. It should be a pleasant switch for the guy.”

“Or woman,” said Ginny.

“Of course. Goes without saying,” he said, looking back down at papers on his desk to signal end of conversation.

“He has the nicest touch,” said Ginny, returning to her desk.

“Inspiring, that’s what it is,” said Betty Smith, at the desk next to hers.

She got on the phone to the Chicago Medical Society, told the p.r. man what she needed, and left her direct number with him for a callback. Measuring the intensity of his boredom as shown in his voice tone, she decided it was acceptably low, and she ought to leave her line free. He might just be calling back.

Her phone rang almost immediately.

“Devlin here.”

“I thought you were the flack.”

“No. I’m your friendly parish priest.”

“I can’t talk now. Waiting for an important call.”

“I wanted to tell you the good time I had Saturday. Met this wonderful woman, and so forth.”

“I’ll bet you did. Sister Ophelia? Of the holy Punch Bowl? Listen. Let me call you back later. I’m waiting to hear from a flack.”

“O.K. Just one more thing. I’m straightening out.”

“What does that mean?”

“You know what that means.”

“No, I don’t. You’ll have to explain it. But not now. I’ll call you later.”

What on earth is he talking about, she asked herself when they hung up, then looked down at some articles about psychiatrists she had got from the library. One of them hinted at big trouble for the one whose patient had an attack of the violence-prone anxieties while they were going at it face to face.

Oh? thought Ginny. The patient gets violent? In the presence of the good doctor, who is only trying to help? She remembered the story Devlin told her about the priest-clinician whose patient went at his throat with the peculiar strength of craziness in his hands. The priest, who was also a musician, as calmly as he could suggested that the two listen to some of the nice music they had on tap for that session. The priest was a student of how music calms the beast within us.

Distracted, the throat-clutcher relaxed. He did too want to hear that nice music, it turned out, and the priest got off with a sore throat.

The joys of psychotherapy, thought Ginny. Find out what I’m doing with this crazy priest, who is too distractible and too relaxed for his own good.

The phone rang, and it was the Medical Society flack, aroused enough from his lethargy to sound actually interested. He had “these two guys” who were willing to talk. “Well one of them is a woman,” he said. Ginny appreciated that touch. He gave her names and numbers, she thanked him and hung up.

The woman was free that afternoon, the man not until Thursday. It was Monday. She decided she could wait that long. She looked them both up in clips and found to her great interest that the woman was a former nun who had made a splash with some articles about celibacy.

Two months before, she wouldn’t have cared. But now, with a celibate manqué as part of her life, she did.

She caught the woman psychiatrist at her office that afternoon. It was on the umpteenth floor of an old Michigan Avenue building whose elevators represented the apex of twentieth-century technology: buttons that lit up when you pressed them and a single small screen above them on which flashed the floor numbers as you rose or fell or stopped.

The first time Ginny ran across the buttons you pushed to light up, she had gloves on, and the heat from her fingers, needed to activate the light, etc., didn’t get through. So she pushed harder and harder, and the damn thing still didn’t light up. A senior editorial writer saw her struggling, raised one finger, getting her to back off, and laid it gently against the button. Presto! A little body heat, and the light went on, and progress picked up its dizzying pace.

Ginny had the presence of mind to smile and thank the man, a kindly. soul who refused to recognize her embarrassment. Ever since, she took her glove off when she came to such a button, and such buttons became her friends in the midst of a scurrying world, ready to light up when she touched them.

Doctor Margo Gibson shook Ginny’s hand and invited her to sit on her couch, an L-shaped affair that Ginny noted would suit her living room quite nicely. Ginny expected somebody very serious and self-assured — if you took people’s psyches into your hands, you must be self-assured — but instead found Dr. Gibson a petite woman with expressive eyes.

“You found me all right in this corner of the floor?” she asked Ginny, smiling.

“I followed the signs and arrows,” said Ginny. “You are tucked away, though.”

The doctor smiled. “Well, I’m not selling jewelry or eyeglasses; so I can do without prominence. Then maybe a patient might feel better finding me in a corner of the floor, where I go into corners of his mind.”

“Is it scary?” Ginny asked, surprised at her own jumping into the issue.

“You can run from corners of the mind, but you can’t hide. Joe Louis said that, more or less, talking about himself, in there. It helps you forge ahead.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Ginny. “It might inhibit you.”

“That’s where someone like me comes in. I’m a traffic policeman, giving stop and go signals. It’s a labyrinth, after all. A head-doctor — I shouldn’t talk that way — a psychiatrist presumably has been through it, many times. She knows her way, again presumably, and has developed a feel for the terrains.”

“Of the mind. What about emotions?” .

“Ginny — you don’t mind if I call you Ginny, I hope. I’m Margo — there are times when I want to ask, ‘What’s the difference? It’s the Great Inside, one way or another.”

“Inner space,” said Ginny.

Margo pointed in agreement. “Yes, that’s good. Inner space. I’ve heard that, and it’s good. To be explored. But not to get lost in.”

“You explore it with care, do you?”

“Ginny, I do everything with care,” Doctor Gibson said.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Mimi Skelton had called Carol Goodman and said, “Let’s talk.”

Carol, in the midst of putting up strawberries, had wanted to say no, but Mimi had insisted, and they were sitting in Mimi’s kitchen on the last day of school, seizing the moment before children came home for the summer.

“T feel like I’m waiting to go over the top, having my last smoke before we fix bayonets,” said Mimi.

Carol laughed. “It’s just as well I’m not in the middle of strawberries.

“I said I wanted to talk.”

“Talk,” said Carol.

“My friend Father Devlin,” Mimi said.

“Is giving up fatherhood.”

“How’d you know? Does everyone know but me?”

“He and Nate talk. You know. They’re old friends. I don’t pry, but I ask Nate how Father Devlin’s doing, and he gives me what he considers an evasive answer. There are no evasive answers in marriage, not in ours anyhow. Plus he’s different. Father Devlin. A likely prospect for quitting it.”

“Oh my.”

“I shouldn’t be so matter of fact. He’s your priest. I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. Do others know?”

“I don’t know. I suspect. Do you know?”

“He told me.”

“Oh my.”

“He wouldn’t be specific.”

“Is he happy, upset, what?” asked Carol.

“He’s Father Devlin. Same old Father Devlin.”

“Does he have a girl friend?”

“A girl friend? What a thing to say! She stopped. “I never thought of that.”

“Well that proves you’re Irish, Mimi.”

“But he’s a priest.”

Carol didn’t say anything. Mimi gazed out the window at nothing.

“You think he might have a girl friend?” she asked Carol.

“He wouldn’t be the first,” Carol said, then bit her tongue.

“Now wait, Carole You don’t know – – – ”

“The first man, I mean. He’s a man for all that, Mimi, priest or not.”

“Oh Carol, I’ve got to say you’re out of your depths on this one. Or sailing in strange waters or something.”

Carol didn’t say anything.

“Priests are different, is what I mean.”

“Different?” Carol screwed up her face.

“I don’t mean queer. I mean different. They have a commitment. They can handle it. Besides, he’s forty-five if he’s a day.”

Carol shrugged. “A lot of priests have gotten married, Mimi.”

“Well they left when they thought God wanted them to begin a new life, I know that. They moved to a new vocation. Marriage,” she said convincingly.

“Well I can’t quarrel with what people think God wants them to do. It’s always struck me as pretty high-flying stuff. But some people fly that high, I suppose.”

“It isn’t all that high-flying, Carol. Every Christian is supposed to do it.”

“Well every Jew isn’t, as far as I know. But then my rabbi might have a different view. I remain suspicious, however.”

“Of people who do God’s will?”

“Of people who think they do,” said Carol.

“Even if they’re sincere?”

“The more sincere they are, the more suspicious I am.”

“Oh my. And once we were going to write a Catholic-Jewish column.”

“Whatever became of that, by the way?”

“Father Devlin was going to ask . . .” She stopped.

“Pardon me?” Carol thought she missed something.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

They both sat, silent. A robin twittered in the yard. Carol’s look of mystification began to melt away. As it passed, her eyes widened for a second or two, and then she turned towards Mimi, intent.

“Father Devlin was going to put in a word for us, wasn’t he? With that reporter? What’s her name? Morgan?” she asked.

‘Mimi wore a strained look. “What reporter?” she asked.

“You know. The one that wrote him up a few months back.”

“Oh. Her.”

“He was going to have her ask what happened to our columns over at the paper. Remember?”

The phone rang and it was Devlin. “Mimi?”

“Yes,” she said, recognizing the voice.

“Pat Devlin.”

“Yes, Father,” she said.

“Ginny found out about your columns,”

Mimi kept quiet.

“They got lost in a pile of things. But the editors are interested.”

“They are?”

Yes. They’d like you and Carol to come downtown and talk about them. Ginny could meet you and take you in to see them.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Mimi.

Devlin hesitated. “Well it won’t be necessary, I suppose. But I thought you’d like it.”

“No, I wouldn’t like it,” she said

Devlin gave her a name at the paper and a phone number. They hung up.

Mimi turned to Carole “It was Father Devlin.” She told Carol about the breakthrough with the editors. Carol raised both her hands in tight little fists about ear-high, in delight.

“Ginny Morgan’s his girl friend, isn’t she?” Mimi said.

“I think so,” said Carol.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Terry Dolan was not having a good day. A woman from outside the parish boundaries had signed up as a member of St. Emma’s because Dolan, the pastor, had been good to her when her husband committed suicide some months before. Dolan did not object to this parish-hopping, which was once anathema to a good Catholic but was now acceptable. But in the case of this Mrs, McGee, he was beginning to wonder whether the old ways weren’t better.

What he had in the person of this red-haired, stout, bereaved woman was a personal fan, flattering but threatening at the same time. Where an ordinary territorial parishioner showed up at the front door with a problem, it was an appearance at the church door, as it were. The confidence was in the church as such, meaning the 2,000-year-old institution. In that case someone in Dolan’s position mainly had to be there and not do something stupid.

But when a personal fan showed at the rectory door, it was to feed off an individual. Such a fan put the individual priest, etc. on the spot. He — or she where a nun had the fan — had to produce from his or her own personal riches. But Dolan often felt as if he had no riches to spare. He had trouble enough making it to bedtime some days, without squandering his resources on a fan.

Mrs. McGee was a fan. “She’s after my meagre riches,” he told Devlin, who downplayed the idea.

“She loves you for the two thousand years you represent,” Devlin said.

“In that case, she should have at St. George’s. It’s a scandal the way people feel free to shop around these days. Don’t they know the sacraments don’t depend on who administers them?”

“They never did know it, Terry. It always was a hoax. An illusion, I mean. Cherished by the clergy. People always knew the difference between a priest who cared and one who punched a clock.”

“But they weren’t so blatant about it. They grinned and bore it and stayed with the institution where they found it. They weren’t so intent on instant relief of whatever ailed them. Whatever happened to good old Catholic stoicism? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“It disappeared with Protestant, Jewish and atheistic stoicism, Terry. There are no stoics any more, just people looking for relief,”

“Is that good, Dev?”

“Who am I to say, Terry? On the face of it, it’s bad. It means we’re effete. We’re ripening on the tree for some Marxist bastard to pick off, easy, without resistance. Or.” He stopped for emphasis. “It means we’ve decided there’s no point in beating our heads against the wall.”

“And besides us two clerics sitting here on St. Emma’s front porch, there is almost certainly no one else in Oak Park worrying about it,” said Dolan.

“Oak Park?” said Devlin. “Hell, the entire metropolitan area.” He laughed.

It was 10 o’clock or so on a mild midweek June evening. The village appeared to be sleeping already. St. Emma’s rectory was set back from a through street by a long, narrow, lush lawn that ran next to the Gothic church. Not even the through street had much traffic. The side street had almost none. If crickets were chirping, however, neither priest heard them, having long ago tuned out such sounds of nature. They did hear a breeze rustle some leaves in the big tree on the lawn. Otherwise it was silent.

“How’s Mrs. McGee doing anyhow?” Devlin asked.

“The shock’s been over for a few months. It was more than bereavement, of course. Self-shooting in the living room and all that.”

“At least they missed the trial.”

“Which must have been one purpose in McGee’s final act. He produced a final solution to his problem.”

“Too bad.”

“Yes,” said Dolan. “Well. As I say, she’s over the shock. The initial shot, as they say, and is now groping for guidance and comfort.”

“In the person of Father Dolan.”

“Yep. None other.”

“Is he doing his best?”

“Doing his best. Turning neither to drink nor women nor song.”

“Unlike some others you can name.”

“Unlike some others I could name, if I wanted to.”

The two sat in the semidark, silent.

“You think I’m a shit?” Devlin asked.

“Shit? No. You’re no shit, Dev. You’re my friend and you’re no shit. Let it be said that I, Dolan, do not think my friend Devlin is a shit.” He got up, shook Devlin’s hand, and sat back down.

“I’m touched,” said Devlin. “You say I’m no shit.”

“I’m figuring out another approach to your dilemma.”

“Tell me.”

“You are taking it on yourself to force a growth-leap of maturity on the Catholic community.”

“Me? I’d never do a thing like that. I like the Catholic community.”

“No. You are in the process of pulling away a support beam from the house of God.”

“Jesus.”

“Sure. And the house of God is just going to have to get along without you, that’s all. You go off with your bimbo and let the house of God fend for itself. And the house of God, the people of God, whatever, learns to stand up and be a man about it.”

Devlin threw back his head and laughed. Dolan looked at him expectantly.

“What do you think?” he asked.

Devlin came out of his laughter. “Listen. I’m still trying to get around this house learning to be a man.”

“My metaphor astound you?”

“Yes, your metaphor astounds me. All right. Me and the house of God. Pillar removed, house learns to stand without it.”

He paused, thinking. “I like it,” he said. “Salves my conscience.”

“Then it must be a good idea. Anything that salves a relatively upright conscience can’t be all bad. I’m glad I came up with the idea.” Dolan sat back.

Devlin thought he heard a cricket chirp. He dismissed the idea.

The two sat in silence.

“Terry.”

“Yes, Dev.”

“It’s not a hundred per cent clear to me.”

“That you’re leaving.”

“Right.’ I’m in a so-so mental condition.” He tilted his hands back and forth, palms down, in an uneven-keel gesture. “I don’t have my decks entirely cleared yet.”

“I didn’t think you did. The point is, have you reached the point of no return? That’s the big question.”

“That’s what I don’t know yet.”

“Oh,” said Dolan. “Hmm.”

They sat silent again. A heaviness descended on them. Peaceful in its way, but still a heaviness.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Dolan.

(end of chapter 19)

Consider the books on the subject, one of which has chapter and verse on the subject:

The papacy has long been linked to spiritual guidance and moral leadership for millions of Catholics around the world.

Yet history records periods when the men who occupied the papal throne acted in ways that shocked contemporaries and stained the Church’s reputation.

Some popes were accused of greed, corruption, brutality, or scandalous personal behaviour, and accounts from chroniclers, official records, and later historians reveal how these figures caused divisions within the Church and eroded its moral authority.

Among them, seven stand out for their notorious conduct…

Uh-oh.

1. Pope Stephen VI

Pope Stephen VI reigned from May 896 to August 897, during a time of extreme political instability in Rome.

His papacy is remembered for the shocking Cadaver Synod, a trial held against the corpse of his predecessor, Pope Formosus.

Stephen ordered Formosus’s body to be exhumed, dressed in papal vestments, and propped on a throne for judgment, accusing the dead pope of perjury and of illegally assuming the papacy.

After a mock trial, the corpse was found guilty, stripped of its vestments, and maimed, with three fingers cut off.

The body was later thrown into the River Tiber.

Etc. . . .

Another:

2. Pope Benedict IX

Pope Benedict IX, who reigned on three separate occasions between 1032 and 1048, is widely regarded as one of the most corrupt pontiffs in history.

He first became pope as a teenager, placed on the throne through the influence of his powerful family, the Tusculani.

Chroniclers described him as having a scandalous private life that combined immoral behaviour with violent excesses and acts of debauchery, although many of these accounts came from hostile sources.

Etc. . . .

3. Pope Alexander VI

Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, reigned from 1492 to 1503 and has come to represent the worst of the corruption of the Renaissance papacy.

As a member of the powerful Borgia family, he openly advanced the interests of his relatives by relying on nepotism, which granted them high positions in the Church and Italian politics.

Chroniclers hostile to Alexander described scandalous parties held in the Vatican, including the so-called Banquet of Chestnuts in 1501: although modern historians debate whether some vivid accounts of this event may have been exaggerated or made up.

Alexander fathered several illegitimate children, including Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, whose exploits became legendary.

He used papal power to expand his family’s political control in Italy and sanctioned military campaigns led by Cesare to seize territories.

Many contemporaries viewed Alexander as more of a secular prince than a spiritual leader.

His actions contributed to widespread calls for Church reform and increased criticism that would soon fuel the Protestant Reformation.

Etc. . . .

Enough . . .

Point being, if you think things are bad these days or if you’ve heard they are, consider this: Being a pope has never meant you are perfect, and Holy Mother Church has survived and will do so. It’s part of our Catholic belief, is it not?

The “lesson,” reading, on July 13 decades ago was from first Peter, 1 Pet. 5:1-4; 5:10-11: where Peter sent a message to his successors.

1 The ancients . . . that are among you, I beseech, who am also an ancient, and witness of the sufferings of Christ: as also a partaker of that glory which is to be revealed . . . :

2 Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking care of it, not by constraint, but willingly, according to God: not for filthy lucre’s sake, but voluntarily

3 Neither as lording it over the clergy, but from the heart.

4 And when the prince of shepherds shall appear, you shall receive a never fading crown of glory.

Moreover . . .

10 . . . the God of all grace, who has called us unto his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little, will himself perfect you, confirm you, and establish you.

11 To him be glory . . . for ever and ever. Amen.

Well. Such a goal he announced for successors, who are to look forward to the coming of “the prince of pastors.”

Then of course, the Gospel reading of this day so many decades ago, Matthew 16:13-19 . . .

13 Jesus . . . asked his disciples, What do men say of the Son of Man? Who they thought he was?

14 Some said John the Baptist . . . others Elias, others . . . Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

15 Jesus: . . . And you? Who do you say that I am?

16 Peter: . . . You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

17 Jesus: . . . Blessed are you, Simon. . . It is not flesh and blood, it is my Father in heaven that has revealed this to you.

18 And I tell you, Peter, He continued, it is on you, the rock, that I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it,

19 and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

The Savior spoke, it was settled.

And we? What do we think of all this?

Start with Ecclesiasticus 24:14-16 with which most of us are not familiar, Wisdom speaking:

14 From the beginning of time, before the worlds as people know them, God made me [Wisdom], unfailing to all eternity; in his . . . dwelling-place I waited on His presence;

15 and now, no less faithfully, I made Sion (Zion) my stronghold, the holy city my resting-place, Jerusalem my throne.

16 My roots spread out among the people that enjoy his favor, my God has granted me a share in his own domain; where his faithful servants are gathered I love to linger.

Thus spoke Wisdom.

Linger? We can call it meditation: Dear God, sweet God, I believe You, I trust You, I respectYou, etc. etc., fill in the gaps with short calls to faith, trust, love sweet love . . .

Same day’s liturgy, something from Luke, 11:27-28, who made the best of not having known the God-man Jesus by interviewing those who had known Him.

As Jesus spoke to the multitudes, a woman . . . lifted up her voice and said, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts that nursed You.”

But He said, “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.”

A line to remember, to say the least . . .

And then . . .

Isaiah 6:1-8

In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with the train of his garment filling the temple. Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet,
and with two they hovered aloft. They cried one to the other, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory!”

At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook and the house was filled with smoke. Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember that he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it and said, “See, now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” “Here I am,” I said; “send me!”

Great story here. Isaiah, the most willing of the prophets and co-author of the biggest of profits’ books, did not have to be talked into the prophet’s role, but was ready to go, confident in his leader’s help. Others were faithful to the Lord, but dreaded taking on the prophet’s role. “Here I am, send me,” Isaiah said.

Benedict, the world’s and history’s greatest when it comes to monasteries, said the same centuries later with fewer dramatics. He didn’t invent monasteries but immensely expanded them, giving monks a task that saved Western Europe, having them copy — by hand, my friend — the works of the Fathers of centuries past, literary giants of the East.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.