Chameleon

9

Christmastime traditionally brings a bumper crop of suicides. People plagued by depression find that depression intensified when they are isolated amid the surroundings of the joyful majority who give and receive gifts, wax sentimental over the seasonal music, party and make merry with relatives and friends.

Fred Stapleton was not one of the depressed minority. Now in his early sixties, he was satisfied with his work as a psychologist in private practice. He was happily married to a former nun. Irma, their only child, a gifted pianist, who was a high school junior at the internationally famed Interlochen Music Academy, was home for the holidays. Fred enjoyed adequate to good health.

Yet Christmas was a difficult time for him. Fred Stapleton had been a Catholic priest, and as much as he missed his prime calling, he missed it most in this season. And this even though he’d been an inactive priest now for almost as long-seventeen years-as he had been a functioning priest-twenty years.

Tonight, his wife, Pam, an excellent cook, had served roast beef, one of his favorite dishes. He had only picked at it. She knew why. But there was nothing she could do about it.

Now, seemingly satisfied, he sat in his favorite rocker, puffing on his pipe. Pam was chatting with Irma about the future and her plans for after graduation next year. They were aware that Fred had long since been lost in his own thoughts.

Irma broke off her conversation with her mother and turned to her father. “Daddy … Daddy!” She had to repeat it several times before she got his attention.

“Uh … yeah … what is it, honey?”

“You’re on your own private planet again.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Won’t you join Mother and me in the land of the living?”

“Sorry again. Are you going to play for us? Play for your supper?”

“Later, Daddy.”

Fred shook his head. “Can’t be later, sweets; I’ve got a meeting to go to.”

“Tonight? A patient?”

Pam answered. “No, CORPUS.”

“Dad! You don’t have to go tonight. They have so many meetings. What’s the harm in missing one?”

CORPUS was an acronym for Corps of Reserve Priests United for Service, an international organization of former priests who, though married, want a return to their ministry.

“These meetings are important, Irma. And they’re getting to be more important by the year. By the month. By the day!”

“Dear,” Pam said, “this group is very, very important to your father. You’ve got to understand that.”

“Daddy, it’s been … what?… seventeen years since you were a priest. You’re a successful doctor. I know you’re good at what you do. You help people. Isn’t that enough? You don’t need to be a priest anymore.”

“You don’t know. You weren’t a priest for twenty years. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“You make me think you regret leaving. That you regret marrying Mother. That you’re sorry I came along.”

“Don’t be silly, honey. You know that’s not true.”

“If you hadn’t left you wouldn’t have had me. I wouldn’t have happened.”

Fred smiled briefly. “You’d be in pure potency.”

“Well,” Irma said, “once and for all: Are you sorry you stopped being a priest?”

“No, I’m not sorry, honey. But you’re not getting the point. Just about every priest who leaves really wants to stay. Most of us left to get married. As if the two were incompatible … as if marriage and priesthood were mutually exclusive.”

“You sent me to a Catholic grade school,” Irma interjected, “and I didn’t see any married priests.”

“Ah,” Fred responded, “but that’s because you happen to live in this country and because you’re a Latin Rite Catholic. If you’d been living anywhere that the ancient Oriental Rite has been functioning you’d have found married Catholic priests. You can even find Catholic priests with wives and families here in this country.”

“Where?”

“In parishes where married Protestant ministers have converted to Catholicism and have been ordained to the Catholic priesthood.

“The point I’m trying to make, honey, is that in the first place there’s no reason-Biblically, historically, or just about any other adverb-for us not to be married and still function as priests. And on top of that, they need us. They need us desperately.”

“If they need you so much, how come they don’t know it?”

“Irma,” her mother admonished, “don’t be flip. Your father is very serious about this!”

“Just playing devil’s advocate,” Irma said. “Daddy always says I’m good at that.”

“You are good at it,” Fred said. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t quite so good. ‘How come they don’t know about it?’ They know about it all right; they just won’t admit it.”

“But, Daddy, if they won’t admit it, they won’t admit it. What’s the use of your struggling, going to meetings, trying to convince them, if they’re just so stubborn they won’t admit they need you?”

Fred Stapleton hesitated, lips compressed in a thin line of anger and resolve. “There are times,” he said, finally, “when you have to do something you would have sworn you’d never do-if only to get their attention.” As he spoke, there was an aura of foreboding about him that was completely out of character for this ordinarily gentle and compassionate man. Neither Pam nor Irma could bring herself to break the spell.

Finally, Fred tapped out his pipe in an ashtray, rose, and announced, “It’s time. I’m going to the meeting.” He softened as he studied his daughter. “You will give us a concert before you go back to school, won’t you?”

“Sure, Daddy.”

In a few minutes mother and daughter were alone, gazing at each other wordlessly.

“I’m worried about him, Mother,” Irma said finally.

“So am I. He just hasn’t been himself lately.”

Irma hesitated. Then, “I’ve never asked you, even though I’ve wondered from time to time. But I have wondered.…”

“What? You know we can talk about anything you want to. What is it?”

“Well … what was it like when you got married? I mean … did you feel guilty about marrying a priest? Did Daddy?”

Pam smiled warmly. “I certainly didn’t. I don’t think your father did either. I’m sure he didn’t. I’d left the convent long before we married. We fell in love slowly … oh, so very slowly.” She obviously cherished the memory of their earliest days of a growing love.

“Our greatest hurdle,” Pam explained, “was his priesthood, of course. He’d been a priest twenty years. It was all he’d ever wanted to be from the time he was a small child. He loved his work. And he loved what his vocation had become just a little less-as it turned out-than he loved me. It wasn’t a matter of feeling guilty. It was a matter of feeling loss.”

“Seems like a case of seasickness and lockjaw simultaneously, to use the metaphor Daddy uses so often.”

Pam winced. “I guess so.” True enough, Fred did use the phrase with some frequency. But she’d always found it in poor taste.

“So,” Irma persisted, “how did he settle the dilemma? Or did you do it for him?”

“Oh, no. My only contribution was to urge him to stay functioning as a priest.”

“You did?” This came as a genuine surprise to Irma.

“Oh, absolutely. I could see down the line in the years ahead where that could be an insurmountable problem. I never wanted him to feel that I had put any pressure on him to leave the priesthood. I knew the way he felt about his vocation he would surely miss being a priest. And he has. So it had to be his decision. His alone.

“With me on the side of his remaining a priest, there wasn’t anyone even suggesting that he leave and marry me. No one but himself.”

“So it was his choice?” Irma asked.

Pam shook her head. “You don’t understand, dear. It’s what your Father was trying to tell you before, What he regrets is the Church’s inability or refusal to understand that there’s no contradiction in being a priest and, at the same time, being married.”

“I think I understand, Mom. He’s very comfortable about having married you …”

“And having you for a daughter,” Pam interjected.

Irma smiled. “Yeah. That’s neat. So he’s okay about all that. The problem is with the Church. He should be able to be a priest now-saying Mass and everything.”

“Think you’ve got it?”

“I think so. But I’ve got to think about it some more.”

“Good.” Pam began massaging her forehead.

“Headache? Let me do that for you.”

Pam smiled. “Know what you can do for me, dear? Maybe you could play something nice and soothing.”

Irma gave it a moment’s thought. “Sure.” She moved to the spinet and the beautiful strains of Franz Liszt’s “Liebestraunr” filled the room.

Pam relaxed, rested her head against the chair, closed her eyes, and let the memories flood over her.

Her daughter’s query had brought to mind those fateful days after she and Father Fred Stapleton had first met.

He was an attractive man, talented, handsome, well read, with an infectious sense of humor-and off-limits. On neither’s part was it love at first sight. She taught in the parochial school attached to the parish of which he was pastor. As a nun, she had taught for many years before leaving the convent. She was a gifted teacher.

Father Stapleton took an active interest in his school and, naturally, in its teachers. Of all the teachers, religious and lay, he managed to find more time for Pam Baldwin than for any of the others. She was such a good teacher, and attractive and fun-and off-limits.

Their relationship grew, as most authentic love does, gradually. By the time they realized they were, after all, an ordinary couple who wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, it was too late to turn back. If Pam had made the slightest suggestion that he leave the priesthood so they could marry, he would have started the process immediately. On the contrary, however, her resolve that he remain an active priest was far stronger than his.

So when the decision was finally made, it was his entirely.

In terms of staying in good standing with the Church, they were fortunate. Fred left at a time when the Pope happened to be lenient in granting laicization.

Pope Paul VI had inherited the legacy of his predecessor, John XXIII. The inheritance included the Second Vatican Council. There are those who believe Paul didn’t know what to do with it. Laicization, a modern phenomenon, at least in its frequency, was a case in point. Pope Paul vacillated from year to year in granting the request.

Laicization is the tortuous, complicated, and lengthy process by which a priest is “reduced” to the status of a lay person. And then some. Catholicism teaches that, “Once a priest, always a priest.” But in order to function-say Mass, absolve, marry, bury, etc.-the priest needs “faculties”-permission of his bishop, in the case of a diocesan priest, or of his religious superior, for a religious order priest.

The bishop giveth as well as taketh away.

Permission to function is withdrawn if, for any reason, a priest’s superior punishes him with a penalty called “suspension.” Should a priest “attempt” marriage without having been granted laicization, he is automatically excommunicated, in addition to being forbidden to function sacramentally.

There were times when Pope Paul’s policy would grant laicization for good cause; times when he tightened the restrictions by granting it, say, only to homosexuals; and times when he would not grant it at all.

In Fred Stapleton’s case there was good and bad news. The good news was that at the time he applied, permission was being granted quite liberally. The bad news was that, outside of emergencies, such as when someone was in danger of death, Fred would never again be able to function as a priest.

They were married in the Church by a priest who was a mutual friend.

Fred continued teaching while he earned the degrees necessary for a psychology practice. Irma was not planned but she was made very welcome.

Fred became a very competent and popular psychologist-counselor. His clientele included many celebrities of the Detroit metropolitan area. Often he was quoted in the media, and his photo would appear in the paper or on TV. The Stapletons lived comfortably, though not lavishly. By Pam’s standards, all was well-with the notable exception of Fred’s attitude toward his enforced laicization. And that attitude had blossomed and hardened through the years.

In the beginning, laicization had been an O. Henry sort of gift. Fred thought Pam wanted everything to be kosher. Pam thought Fred would be distressed were he excommunicated. Neither assumption, as it turned out, was true. But each hesitated to talk about it. So Pam endured the months of delay and uncertainty and Fred endured the endless questions of the MMPI test.

Because he was put in the posture of a beggar, that which he sought-permission of the Church for him to function as a layman without the obligation of reciting the breviary daily, and a dispensation from his promise of celibacy-took on heightened desirability.

It was only after the permission had been granted and they were married that Fred could calmly and in clearer focus assess the “favor” the Church had bestowed. In the light of reexamination, it didn’t appear all that beneficent.

As a result of his research into the history and rationale of clerical celibacy, Fred grew increasingly certain that he and others like him had been robbed. He could and should have it all. So, when CORPUS was founded and established in Minneapolis, Fred became a charter member.

Pam was far less enchanted with the organization’s purpose.

Due to their status, Fred and Pam became familiar, and in many cases friendly, with other inactive priests and their spouses. By and large, thought Pam, these were excellent men. And, because it was so often true, she came to expect priests’ wives to be strong, intelligent, capable women.

In Pam’s eyes, CORPUS took a suppliant stance. Dear Church: Have you looked lately? You’re running out of priests. Have you noticed the current median age of your priests? Dear bishops and Pope: Unless you are theologically and historically naive, you know there is no legitimately compelling reason for mandatory celibacy in your clergy. And here we are, thousands of well-trained priests, waiting on the sidelines to go in there and win one for Mother Church.

What galled Pam most about CORPUS was that there was seldom any sort of demand on the part of its members to return to a fully functioning ministry. Rather, she felt the group was willing, almost eager, to settle for some-any-small crumb of their once full ministry.

In short, she felt that good men were demeaning themselves by pleading for something each of them believed was due them by right.

But she sensed Fred’s dedication to the organization and the cause. So she kept her feelings to herself, pondering them in her heart.

So lost in these thoughts was Pam that she was unaware that Irma had concluded “Liebestraum” and had added the unsolicited encore of Schumann’s “Traumerei.”

Irma had turned on the piano bench and was looking at her mother. Pam had no clue as to how long this had been going on. But now, conscious of Irma’s gaze, she said, “Thank you, dear; that was marvelous. Just what the doctor ordered.”

“You didn’t hear a note I played.”

“Oh, but I did. I found it so soothing I got lost in my own reverie. It helped, dear; honest it did.”

Irma wore a concerned expression. “Mama, would you do something special for me?”

“Of course, sweetheart.”

“Would you make sure Daddy doesn’t do anything foolish?”

Pam was startled. “What?”

“He scared me tonight when he was talking about doing something he never thought he would do. It wasn’t so much his words as his tone of voice. I was almost afraid of him. I’ve never felt like that before.”

“You’ve got to have more confidence in your father, dear. Of course he wouldn’t do anything foolish. Just put that out of your mind.”

Pam would not mention it to her daughter, but Irma had put into words the exact fear that increasingly plagued Pam. She could not nor would she worry her daughter. But Fred had changed in subtle ways. Pam was concerned. She would do her best to make sure Fred did nothing foolish. She shivered as she prayed that even now it was not too late.