Chameleon

18

“Where’s father Benz?”

Cardinal Mark Boyle finished chewing the morsel of lamb before answering. “There is a gathering of his priest friends at the seminary this evening. I gave him the night off.”

“Good.” Archbishop Lawrence Foley was pleased to be able to spend the evening alone with his friend. Benz, secretary to the Cardinal, was a nice enough young man, but he was from a different era, two or more removed from these two old bishops. Without the young man, who, courtesy demanded, should be included in the conversation, the older men were free to retreat as far as they liked into history. And they would.

Foley lived in a condominium on Detroit’s far east side, He could have lived virtually anywhere he wished, but he wanted to reside in the city, though not in an area inhospitable to strolling the streets, and not in a rectory. He had reached an age where he would deal with people and the clergy in particular only when he wished. Not when they wanted him. Retirement, he thought, should have some privileges.

But this night-for he would stay over till morning-he would spend with his old friend Mark Boyle.

Boyle, at sixty-nine, was slightly more than five years Foley’s junior. They had met some forty years before in Rome when both were students. Both had been ordained-Foley for the diocese of Miami and Boyle for the diocese of Cleveland. As brilliant seminarians, both had been selected by their respective bishops to attend graduate studies in Rome. Foley majored in canon law, Boyle in theology.

Even as young men, they had enough in common to become friends. They were English-speaking United States citizens, at the peak of their youth; roommates, expected to achieve much by their appointment to graduate study-and they were strangers together in a foreign land.

Building on that, they formed an abiding friendship that had grown stronger and deepened over the years. Each was of Irish descent, as were so many American bishops. They both had become auxiliary bishops, Foley in his native Miami, Boyle in his native Cleveland. Foley had risen to the rank of archbishop when he was named ordinary of Cincinnati. Boyle was named archbishop of Pittsburgh, then archbishop of Detroit, then named a Cardinal by Pope Paul VI.

The two vacationed regularly together, usually in Florida, where Foley had so many friends and contacts. They golfed together, neither well, both mostly for exercise. They could spend evenings together chatting knowledgeably about many things or in companionable silence.

The piece de resistance having been finished, Mrs. Provenzano, Boyle’s housekeeper, removed the dishes and served coffee and sherbet.

“Delicious lamb,” Foley said to Mrs. Provenzano, who smiled and, thank God, was still able to blush at a compliment.

“She was a genuine find,” Boyle said after the housekeeper had left them. “She has only two rules by which to live: no beef and no chicken.”

Foley chuckled. “The martyrdom of today’s bishop, stuffed to death with rubbery chicken and leathery beef cooked by the ladies of the Rosary Altar Society on the occasion of parish confirmations.”

Boyle smiled. “Of course they are well-meaning people, but they surely need an injection of imagination. The beef is usually sliced thin enough that one can get by without having to consume very much. But whichever doctor it was who pronounced chicken a healthy food never tried the parochial mass-produced variety.”

Foley began toying with a spoon.

“Still miss cigarettes?” Boyle asked.

Foley studied the Cardinal, “Now what would make you say a thing like that?”

“Something to do with your hands. Toying with a utensil instead of handling a cigarette.”

“Doesn’t happen much anymore. But after a good dinner and with coffee …” Foley shrugged.

“Still?”

“There was a time, Mark, me lad, that I could not envision being on the telephone, getting through the daily mail, a hundred other daily tasks such as getting up in the morning or going to bed at night, without a cigarette. It’s down to this, after a good dinner. That’s not so bad, is it now? Nice bit of deduction though.”

“It just occurred to me. You used to say that you thought much of your reason for smoking was to have something to occupy restless hands.”

“True as far as it goes, but a bit of a simplification. There’s the nicotine, an addictive drug. But speaking of deduction, has anything new come up in the police investigation?”

“Into the death of Larry Hoffer? Not that I’m aware of.”

“What do you think? Isolated instances? Coincidence? Or is there a connection between the murders of that poor woman and Hoffer?”

Boyle finished the sherbet and carefully wiped his lips. “I feel very strongly that they are related. And that’s why I’m concerned about Sister Joan’s welfare. I believe that whoever killed Larry also killed Helen Donovan thinking she was her sister. And the guilty party is still at large, probably looking for an opportunity to attack Sister Joan.”

“It’s hard to hide, particularly in this day and age.”

“I’ve talked to her about going away. A vacation, study, virtually anything to get her away from here, somewhere where she could be safer.”

“She won’t go?”

Boyle shook his head. “She’s politely refused every offer. I get the impression she feels some sort of debt to her sister. She is certain the killer was looking for her and that her sister was in the wrong, place at the wrong time. With Sister it is the whole thing. That her sister was dressed in Joan’s habit. There’s a sense of desecration in a religious being attacked. In many ways, Joan feels that in death if not in life she is her sister’s keeper.”

Foley was tempted to fiddle with something, anything: spoon, knife, whatever. But having had his subconscious raised, he deliberately interlaced his fingers and rested his hands on the tabletop. “But, why?” he asked. “What possibly could be the connection between Larry Hoffer and Sister Joan-given the assumption that she was the real intended victim?”

“I’ve thought about that a great deal. Almost obsessively.” Boyle sipped his coffee. It was excellent; Mrs. Provenzano had experimented with the blend until she was satisfied. “I keep returning to the recent staff meeting-the last time they were together. Sister Joan as one who had escaped the grave, and Larry Hoffer at his final meeting-though none of us knew it at the time. I’ve even seen it in a dream. I can hear the angry voices, most of them directed at Larry. And I wonder: Could anyone at the meeting … a staff member … could any one of them …? But then I dismiss the questions as impossible speculation. Besides, such questions are better asked-and answered-by the police.”

“They need help!” Foley’s tone was forceful, urgent.

“Help? The police? From whom?”

“Us!”

Boyle looked startled. “You’re not serious.”

Foley was very serious. “These are officials of the archdiocese of Detroit. If there were only one victim-Larry Hoffer-we might suppose his enemy could have been … anyone. It’s not hard to suppose that he’s made enemies during his long career. He was, after all, a financier, and money is a common enough motivation for enmity, hatred, violence … murder.

“But that is true only if Hoffer were the only victim. It does not in any way address the selection of Sister Joan as a designated victim by the same killer. Whoever is doing this is doing it for some religious reason. Oh, I know to the police that might sound like a contradiction in terms. But we could list hundreds of examples through history when people were murdered for reasons connected to religion.”

“Well, I can assure you, Lawrence, that I am not going to volunteer my services, such as they are, to the Detroit Police Department.” A smile threatened to break through, but Boyle held it well in check. “Of course, if you …”

“Come, come, Mark,” Foley interrupted, “you know I wasn’t referring to a couple of old fogies like us! I meant one of your priests. You must have someone who could guide the police through the morass of Church bureaucracy.”

Boyle’s smile did break through. “There is someone. I don’t think you’ve met him yet. Father Robert Koesler.”

“He has some special training?” Foley was surprised that any priest would spring immediately to mind as a liaison with a homicide department of a major city such as Detroit. If anyone had challenged him to come up with such a priest in Cincinnati, he would have been hard-pressed to do so.

“Not training, Larry; experience.”

“This … this Koesler: He’s done this sort of thing before?”

Boyle nodded. “It’s uncanny, but it certainly has happened before. I’ve had occasion to speak with him about it, of course. I’m convinced a good deal of his involvement is not by design. He certainly is not in any way trained in criminology. But he has been called upon by the police to do just what you suggested: help them find their way through Church avenues and paths that seem to be an added mystery to the police.”

“Do you … assign him to this duty?” Foley found this difficult to comprehend.

“He seems to gravitate to this role quite independently of anyone’s commissioning him.”

“Well,” Foley said, “he certainly seems made to order for what I had in mind.”

“Shall we repair to the study?” With the meal ended Boyle thought Foley would be more comfortable in the well-upholstered study

Boyle rose from his straight-backed chair fairly spryly. Foley had a considerably more challenging time of it. But he managed. Boyle did not offer assistance. He knew Foley would prefer to be independent.

The study was exactly that. Just about every inch of wall space was lined with books that were read, consulted, treasured. Cardinal Boyle spent many a contented evening alone with his books, studying.

The two settled into comfortable chairs. Boyle offered a selection of liqueurs. Foley, claiming an advanced stage of fatigue, declined. They sat in silence for several minutes.

Foley was first to speak. “Have you given much thought to the future … to the future of our Church?”

“Certainly. It won’t be long.”

“No, it won’t. Pretty soon all the priests-even the Pope, in nomine Domini- will be too young to remember what the Church was before Vatican II.” Foley shook his head. “That is if there are still any more priests.”

“I’m not inclined to be that pessimistic, Larry.”

“God will provide?” Mockingly.

“Yes …” Boyle drew out the word, “but not magically.”

“A married clergy?”

“I think it inevitable. We already have the beginnings of it with the sizable number of married Protestant clergy that have converted and are now functioning.”

“The transition is going to be difficult.”

“No doubt. But it has to happen.”

“There are going to be some angry Catholics. Some very angry Catholics.

“There are already some very angry Catholics.” Cardinal Boyle had had firsthand experience.

“But it works.” Foley resettled himself in the chair as if fighting off tiredness. “We’ve known it all along. Martin Luther, among others, was right. It is not only possible but beneficial to have a married clergy. The Protestant clergy-just about every sort of clergy but Latin Rite Catholics-have proven the naturalness of a married clergy. And now the converts among ministers and Protestant priests, they’re doing all right. And I almost forgot that other phenomenon, our brother priests who marry and then become Protestant-even Orthodox-priests. Quite a display of proof there. It is as you yourself just said: inevitable. Yes, yes, yes: We are going to have optional celibacy-the day after I die.”

Boyle chuckled. “Thus saving some poor woman from becoming Mrs. Lawrence Foley.”

“‘Mrs. Foley ” Even the name sounds peculiar. In that context,” he clarified. “The first and almost the only Mrs. Foley that comes to mind is my mother.”

“Besides, Larry, it is not as smooth a picture as you paint.”

“Oh, I don’t know”

“There’s the problem of divorce among the clergy:”

“I suppose,” Foley admitted, “You don’t have divorce when you have an unmarried clergy. But then, divorce seems to be part of life-a tragic part of life. Something we would better understand if some of us had to go through it.”

“You’re mellowing, Larry.”

“I’ve mellowed, Mark.”

“Another problem you’ve skipped over: the convert clergy with their wives and families, many of them, are not being accepted by all parishioners, even though the parishes they are assigned to are carefully selected.”

“Transitional, Mark, transitional. Our people are so used to the unencumbered priest that it’s going to take a while for them to adjust.” Foley cocked his head toward the Cardinal. “What is it with you, Mark? Are you merely playing advocatus diaboli or do you have serious reservations about a married clergy? You did say it was inevitable.”

“Inevitable, true. But … somehow … I regret the loss of what we had. It was, I think, nobly unique.”

They sat in silence for several minutes.

“Admirably unique,” Foley agreed at length.

“The seminary training,” he continued, “so strict and unyielding, yet the system formed men-good men, responsible, leaders. But,” he sighed, “that’s pretty much gone already.”

Boyle nodded agreement. But then he amended Foley’s statement. “The mere change to optional celibacy may or may not have its effect on the training for priesthood. But, in any case, it will no longer be necessary to produce that challenge to human nature, the asexual macho man.”

“Yes, yes, yes. No more Going My Way, or Bells of St Mary’s, or Keys of the Kingdom, or Father Flanagan of Boys’ Town. It’s probably just as well that Bing didn’t live to see this.”

Boyle smiled.

“But, more seriously,” Foley said, “and more positively: It will do away with our caste system. To be truthful, that has been a problem for me for longer than I like to think. It was that universal and mandatory celibacy that created a separate class in Christian society. Priests were not ‘ordinary people.’ They were ‘above’ the laity, not just because of their function in the Christian community but in the nature of their membership in the Church. Because of celibacy, the clergy were in a more spiritual, and ergo a superior, form of Christian life.”

“You’re right,” Boyle agreed. “It is more neoplatonic than Christian.”

“Strange,” Foley picked up the theme, “how much of our life is structured by celibacy. It’s not just a single life. My god, single people are looked upon more often than not as ‘odd,’ somehow failures at the sexual game. But with the distinction of celibacy-dedicated virginity, consecrated singleness-we are looked upon as different kinds of creatures. Mark, when you were a child, did you ever wonder whether priests and nuns went to the bathroom?”

Boyle chuckled, “I think when we were children that would have qualified as an impure thought.”

“You know,” Foley said, “I’ll bet most of our people think that an unmarried clergy goes back to the beginning of Christianity. Whereas, you know that, despite some early attempts at celibacy, we had a married clergy for about the first half of our history.”

“The Second Lateran Council, A.D. 1139,” responded Boyle, thus proving that the books in this study were used. “It was almost a textbook of simplicity in legislation. The First Lateran Council prohibited the marriage of clerics in major orders. And that did not do the job. So the Second Lateran simply pronounced such marriages invalid. And that is pretty much how things stand to this date.”

“That was a sad period for the Church, if memory serves.”

“Indeed it was,” Boyle agreed. “The tenth and eleventh centuries were shot through with weak Popes and clandestine clerical marriages or, more often, a very common concubinage. The time was ripe for an uncompromising move in one direction or another. Either the Church would have to abandon its effort to form a universally celibate clergy or come up with the sort of legislation that, as it happened, was promulgated.”

“Went for broke. Isn’t that the way of it?” Foley’s question was rhetorical. “In almost every crisis, historically, there was always a minority who could be depended upon to react and save celibacy. If they’d followed the will of the majority, more than once celibacy would have been discarded.” He paused. “Just as it was nearly discarded as a result of the Second Vatican Council. But,” he added wryly, “I surely don’t have to tell you. You were among the shakers and movers of that council.”

Boyle nodded as he recalled the seemingly endless meetings, the maneuvering, the lobbying. “There’s no doubt about that. Although few beyond the council participants were aware of what was going on, imposed celibacy was a burning’ behind-the-doors’ topic at the council. But pressure-pressure from that dependable entrenched minority-kept the topic off the formal agenda.”

“So now, here we are,” Foley summed up, “with the law of imposed celibacy, living right alongside a married clergy. Add to that priests becoming an endangered species, and it can’t be too far off before we will have optional celibacy.”

“Ah, yes,” Boyle said, “that is the question: when? It’s the question I doubt anyone has an answer to. When? Pope John, who began it all with his convocation of the council, with his call for a change in canon law, with his aggiornamento, with his openness to change … even he could not bring himself to make this reformation. On occasion, he even said as much: that with a stroke of his pen he could put an end to enforced celibacy. But he said he simply could not bring himself to do it.

“Then his successor, Paul VI, two years after the council’s conclusion, put another nail in the coffin with ‘Sacerdotalis coelibatus,’ which just repeated the standard explanations and dismissed all the arguments against obligatory celibacy.”

“So we are faced with a law that hangs by a single thread; tradition. A tradition that, as a law, is less than half as old as Christianity itself. But you know, Mark, you and I are not the only ones who are familiar with the background of this law. What of those who demand an immediate answer to ‘When?’ and those who insist ‘Never’?”

The Cardinal shook his head and stifled a yawn. It was getting late, especially for two elderly men who had had a busy day. “I don’t know. I simply do not know. But the situation puts me in mind of an earthquake waiting to happen.”

“Huh?”

“California, for example. The earth gradually, ineluctably, grinding in opposite directions, but the motion being encumbered by massive buildings. The stress keeps building as the earth continues to creep apart and the buildings sit there like Band-Aids-until, with unimaginable force and destruction, the quake occurs.

“That is what I am reminded of: We are moving toward great change in the Church, even greater than we’ve experienced as a result of the council. Celibacy is only one area where this is happening. The movement toward optional celibacy-a married clergy-is inevitable. And it’s being advanced by people who are tired of waiting, who know it will happen, and who demand that it happen now.

“But the opposition, that powerful minority of convinced conservatives, is digging in its heels.”

“There will be an explosion,” Foley concluded.

“It seems destined.”

“The law could be changed.”

“And,” Boyle added, “Californians could tear down their buildings and get out of the way of the earth’s movement. Of course, it would be far easier to change the law enforcing obligatory celibacy. But that’s no more likely than respecting the movement of land.”

“The Holy Father could do it all himself.”

“But he gives no indication that he will. And those who demand change recognize his intransigence.”

Foley was unable to repress his yawn. “Well, Mark, it seems we’ve settled most of the Church’s problems, if not the world’s. Time to retreat so we can fight another day.”

Boyle agreed. So, leaving some lights on for the return of Father Benz, they retired for the night.

Neither bishop thought to relate what they had discussed to a motive for murder.