Common Ground (74 page)

Many of his parishioners—who had never heard anything like that from the pulpit before—recoiled almost physically from Buckley’s admonitions. After a few minutes, one man rose to his feet, moved to the back of the church, and stomped back and forth, muttering angrily under his breath. After Mass, Buckley was summoned to the rectory, where his agitated pastor was trying to mollify an elderly woman who was nearly speechless with rage. “Larry,” said Father Anderson, “
you
answer Mrs. Gould.” Later, on his way back to the church, he was assailed by three more women. “Nigger lover!”
they shouted. “You dirty little priest, why don’t you go back to Roxbury! Go back to the Virgin Islands if you liked it so much!”

Alice McGoff hadn’t attended Mass that morning, but within hours she’d heard four versions of what Father Buckley had said, each more horrifying than the last. She wasn’t surprised—she’d already had one run-in with Buckley. When a friend at the housing project tried to enroll a child at St. Catherine’s parochial school, she’d been turned down, ostensibly for violating the Cardinal’s order against using the Catholic schools to escape busing. But one Sister at the school had disparaged her parish contributions, implying that she hadn’t given enough to earn a place there. Outraged, Alice called Father Buckley to accuse the Church of “extortion.” Buckley said that her friend was a “bigot” and that the Church wasn’t going to be used as a “refuge for racists.” Since that episode, there hadn’t been much communication between them.

As Larry Buckley waged his crusade for racial justice at St. Catherine’s, three priests in Charlestown’s other parishes were mapping a different strategy. Bob Boyle, Bill Joy, and Jack Ward had known each other in the South End, where Boyle had been principal of Cathedral High School when Joy and Ward came to the Cathedral as young deacons straight out of the seminary. Their immersion in that district’s social cauldron had lent them a sense of common purpose, a “mission” to the inner city. Largely by coincidence, all had found their way to Charlestown—Joy arriving first, in 1972, as a curate at St. Mary’s; Ward, in 1973, as a curate at St. Francis’; and finally Bob Boyle, named pastor of St. Mary’s in September 1974.

Pleased at being reunited, they met frequently—usually at St. Mary’s rectory, where Boyle and Joy both lived—to share a meal, a drink, or simply the warmth of their friendship. But as Charlestown’s busing crisis loomed nearer, their gatherings took on a more earnest tone. The three men felt a special responsibility, for they sensed that most of Charlestown’s other priests wanted nothing to do with the racial crisis. That was confirmed at an abortive meeting of the Charlestown clergy called by Bishop Joseph Ruocco, the Cardinal’s principal lieutenant on school desegregation matters. Ruocco, who had been touring Boston’s neighborhoods to prepare for the fall, invited Charlestown’s priests to meet with him at St. Mary’s convent, but of the eleven priests stationed in Charlestown, only six showed up. Among the absent were the other two pastors, Anderson from St. Catherine’s and Albert Cuttress from St. Francis’—both traditionalists who instinctively shunned such problems. Of the other curates, only Larry Buckley displayed real commitment on the issue.

Buckley had expressed interest in cooperating with the trio. Clearly disconcerted by the parishioners’ anger at his sermon, and knowing that he could count on little help from his own pastor, he sought Boyle’s assistance. “We can’t do anything alone,” Buckley said. “We’ve got to act together. The priests of Charlestown should issue a pastoral letter stating how we feel on school desegregation.”

Boyle, Joy, and Ward did what they could to support Larry Buckley, but a pastoral letter didn’t appeal to them any more than endorsements of busing
from the pulpit. They admired Buckley’s courage and honesty, but his head-on approach struck them as counterproductive; it reminded them of the Church’s intervention in Charlestown’s renewal—which may have produced a few victories, but ultimately lost the war, leaving a bitter residue of anticlericalism in the Town. Recognizing how deeply Charlestown resented the Garrity order, their strategy was precisely the reverse of Buckley’s: rather than support busing as such, they focused on public safety, calling for measures to prevent violence and protect schoolchildren, both white and black; instead of confronting their parishioners’ racial feelings head on, they tried to demonstrate their love and concern for the Townies, thus accumulating emotional capital to be spent in the difficult days ahead.

The three priests agreed on a division of labor. Joy and Ward took to the streets, developing what some called a new form of ministry, though they thought of it as a throwback to an earlier era in which the priest was a visible presence in every corner of his parish. Dressed informally, often without a clerical collar, they wandered up Breed’s Hill, down Bunker Hill, and through the Valley, chatting with housewives on their stoops, teenagers in the playgrounds, men in drugstores and taverns. They didn’t proselytize or preach, they listened, for they knew that half an hour across a kitchen table with most Townies was worth five hours in the pulpit.

Meanwhile, Bob Boyle dealt with the public sector—the Mayor’s office, the police, courts, schools, and community groups like the Charlestown Education Committee. Though quietly paving the way for Charlestown’s desegregation, he tried not to take formal positions which would limit his ability to work with Townies of all dispositions. When the Education Committee addressed its pleas to Judge Garrity, Boyle respectfully declined to sign them. And when summoned to testify in June 1975 before the United States Civil Rights Commission, he struggled for words to acknowledge the feelings on both sides. “I do not have any absolute answers to the dilemma of our beloved city,” he told the commissioners. But he was certain of several things.

But even Boyle wasn’t prepared for the ingenuity with which the mothers of Charlestown would solicit God’s grace, nor for the exquisite bind in which he and his colleagues were to find themselves.

As the Powder Keg contingent advanced up High Street toward the waiting cordon of police on that second day of school, Boyle, Joy, and Ward stood ready on the sidewalk, anxious to prevent a bloody confrontation. But when the mothers knelt on the street, rosary beads in hand, reciting their “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys,” the three priests grew acutely uneasy. Then from the rows of bowed heads came a cry: “Father Boyle, come pray with us!”

Others chimed in: “Come join us, Father Joy!” “Here we are, Father Ward, lead us in our prayers!”

For one terrible moment the priests stood frozen, unable to move toward the mothers or away from them. How could they turn their backs on these women, how could they refuse to pray with their own parishioners? But how could they join them, knowing to what end their prayers were dedicated? Either option seemed intolerable.

When Superintendent Carpenter asked him to address the women through a bullhorn, Boyle was relieved. It gave him a chance to step out of his clerical role and urge the women to avoid a clash with the police. But the mothers wouldn’t let him off so easily. One of them looked up at him with hurt and anger in her face and asked, “Oh, Father, why are you against us?”

Boyle felt tears welling in his eyes. Squatting on the street next to the woman, he placed his hand on her shoulder. “Madam, I’m not against you. How could I be against you?”

“Then why won’t you pray with us?” she asked.

“I pray for you every day.”

“No,” the woman persisted, “I mean pray
with
us. Now. Here and now.”

“Oh, God,” Boyle said, “how I wish I could do that! But I simply can’t. Please try to understand that.”

Then, as the tears began to come, he turned away.

A few yards away, her throbbing neck encased in its protective collar, Alice McGoff looked on in mounting rage and incomprehension. Why couldn’t the priests pray with them? After all, these were the men she confessed to; in them she confided her most secret thoughts, things she never told her husband, her father or mother. Yet here she was, at the most desperate moment in her life, fighting to protect her family, and her own priests wouldn’t pray with her!

As the prayer marches went on day after day, the pressure on the priests grew more intense. Filing past St. Mary’s rectory, the processions were a daily reproach, a challenge to the Church’s relevance. After the first one, the priests learned to stay off the streets at that time of day, though they couldn’t resist peering through the curtains. Once, as the marchers went by, a woman hurled her defiance at the rectory windows. “See,” she shouted, “we don’t need you anymore. We deal with God directly.”

In late September, the mothers found still another way to provoke the priests. One day, Pat Russell fell into conversation with the Reverend Isaiah
Sears, minister of the First Baptist Church, one of Charlestown’s three tiny Protestant congregations. Sears, whose legs were badly crippled from a childhood bout with polio, was a familiar—and cherished—figure in the Town as he hobbled up and down the hills on his aluminum crutches. When Pat complained that the Catholic priests wouldn’t even show themselves on the streets during the prayer marches, Sears responded lightly, “I’ve prayed over a woman’s new canary. I’ve prayed over an alcoholic too soused to know I was there. I’ve even blessed a Mother’s Day present. If I can pray with a drunk, a bird, and a box of candy, I suppose I can pray with anyone.”

“Do you mean it, Reverend?” asked Pat Russell. “Will you pray with us?”

Sears was startled. He’d never expected a good Catholic like Pat to ask help from a Baptist. “Oh no,” he protested. “You don’t want me.” But Pat saw her opening and she took it. “Oh yes we do,” she said. “We don’t want to come into the church. We don’t want your approval for what we’re doing. Just say a prayer with us.” Sears didn’t see how he could turn them down. On September 26, several hundred Charlestown mothers marched around Monument Square to the Baptist church, only two doors from St. Mary’s rectory. Hobbling onto the stone stoop, Sears delivered his prayer. Although they were of different faiths, he said, they were all children of God. Over the years, he’d come to know many of them and they were good, generous people. Now they were caught up in a desperate struggle. He prayed that God would show them a way through the darkness, so they could raise their families in peace and love.

Even with her head bowed in prayer, Alice McGoff had to smile at the abundant ironies. The priests of St. Mary’s had raised her to fear and distrust Protestants, yet here was a Baptist minister blessing a group of Catholic women, while the priests cowered in their rectory.

The ceremony at the Baptist church didn’t go unremarked at St. Mary’s. The next day, Bill Joy suggested that the mothers might care to conclude their prayer marches in the small grotto behind St. Mary’s Church. Some of the women wanted to reject the offer unless the priests promised to attend as well, but many appreciated the small gesture of reconciliation. A few days later, they made their regular loop around the Monument, then knelt in prayer before the statue of the Virgin in the grotto. Alice recognized it as the same statue she had helped to garland with spring flowers during the May Processions of her youth. Despite all her grievances, she felt at home there.

The prayer marches proved so effective that the mothers tried variations on the theme. Recalling that the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary fell on October 7, someone suggested that, instead of merely reciting the prayers that day, they should act them out in a “Living Rosary.” Rosary prayers are generally said while thumbing a set of beads. Working along the beads, the supplicant says the prayers in a prescribed order—an “Our Father,” ten “Hail Marys,” a “Glory Be to the Father,” and a “Sorrowful Mystery,” repeating the cycle until the last bead is reached. A “Living Rosary” would require seventy performers—
five “Sorrowful Mysteries,” six “Our Fathers,” six “Glory Be to the Fathers,” and fifty-three “Hail Marys.”

Two elderly women, devout members of St. Catherine’s, volunteered to organize the elaborate production, but as the feast day approached, few preparations had been made. At that point Alice McGoff and her friend Barbara Gillette assumed responsibility for the event. On the evening of October 7, the women, the children, and the few men taking part in the ceremony assembled in front of St. Catherine’s Church, carrying flashlights covered with colored crepe paper to match their roles: white for “Sorrowful Mysteries,” blue for “Our Fathers,” yellow for “Glory Be to the Fathers,” and red for “Hail Marys.” Led by two choirboys with a cross, they marched up Bunker Hill Street to the Ryan Playground.

Alice and Barbara had agreed that the Rosary should be performed on the slanting wooden bleachers, so that spectators could plainly see the colors outlined against the night sky. As they marshaled their forces on the football field, out of the dark appeared the two women originally assigned to run the performance.

“Okay, girls,” they said, “we’ll take it from here.”

“The hell you will,” said Barbara, “we’ve got everything organized.”

“But we’ve been appointed,” the women protested.

Soon small bands of colored lights were marching here and there across the field under contradictory orders from two sets of generals.