The Good Shepherd (30 page)

Monsignors Malone and Petrie left early, as if they sensed that they were outsiders, compared to the rest of the party. This troubled Matthew Mahan a little - but not as much as Mike Furia’s obviously hostile mood. Throughout dinner, they had scarcely exchanged a word. Mike had persisted in talking to Dennis McLaughlin and Mary Shea, and from what Matthew Mahan could hear, it was largely a cynical diatribe against the Church in Italy. He had been pained, at one point, to hear Mary nod and say:
“Il Vaticano riceve - manon da a nessuno.”
(The Vatican gets but never gives.) It was one of the oldest clichés in Europe, and it was very upsetting to hear Mary repeating it and Dennis McLaughlin smiling in approval. Jim McAvoy with his stubborn, if not always intelligent, loyalty had been the only one within earshot to disagree with Mike, and poor Jim had promptly been buried by a barrage of negative statistics.

At a signal from Matthew Mahan, the waiter poured another round of Asti Spumante, the best Italian champagne. Bill Reed eyed him ominously as he took a swallow of it. Avoiding his glare, Matthew Mahan smiled at Mike Furia and asked: “What did I hear you saying about the Church in Italy?”

“Oho,” crowed Davey Cronin. “I told him he was talking too loud.”

“Listen,” said Mike, trying to sound offhand, even jocular, in response to his challenge. “If this kid is any good with a pen, I’m the one he ought to talk to. Nobody gives a damn about old Pio Nono and the Vatican Council of 1870. They’re interested in today’s scandals - and I’m the guy that’s sitting right in the middle of them.”

“Much as it pains me to admit an Eyetalian can be right on anything,” said Bishop Cronin, “this builder of Towers of Babel may have a point.”

“Have you ever heard of the Societa Generale Immobiliare?”

Mike was not even looking at Matthew Mahan. He was talking to Mary, clearly challenging His Eminence, deliberately preaching a contrary gospel.

“I’ve heard it mentioned by one or two friends at the Vatican.”

“It’s the biggest construction company in Italy. In fact, one of the biggest real estate and building companies in the world. It’s capitalized at 67 billion lire. In 1967, they spent 30 billion lire on projects in Italy alone. I’ve made joint bids with them on a couple of dozen jobs. The Vatican owns 25 percent of the shares and about 98 percent of the control. When you go into a deal with those guys, you need the best lawyers in the world behind you.”

“You mean they’re crooked?”

“Oh no. They just press the contract to the outer limits.”

They’re working for the Pope. It’s their duty to get everything they can in every deal - and a little extra.”

“What sort of things do they build?”

“Well, let’s see. We’re just finishing up the final stages of the Watergate Apartments down in Washington, D.C. It’s running about 67 million. Seventy percent of the common stock and 50 percent of the preferred is owned by Immobiliare. Then there’s Immobiliare Canada. They own the Stock Exchange Tower in Montreal. That came in for about 50 mill. Have you ever seen it? It’s the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. Immobiliare owns about 85 percent of a Montreal outfit called Red-Brooke Estates. They just finished a huge thirty-three story apartment building up there. It has a big piece of Lomas Verdes, which is building a satellite town outside Mexico City and a connecting superhighway, the Superavenida.”

“But Italy, that’s the real story, from what you told us at dinner the other night,” said Davey Cronin.

Mike Furia grinned. “We’d be here until dawn if I started listing what SGI has built since the war. In 1966, in Rome alone, they put up three apartment houses, two or three office buildings, a dozen or so luxury homes, and a couple of suburban developments. In Milan, they did even better - eighteen offices, a shopping center, a seven-building apartment complex. In sixty-seven, they showed a profit of 6.2 million. Not bad when you consider that they only paid 1.5 million to get operating control in 1949. Around the same time, they also bought Italcimenti, which happens to be the biggest cement and construction material maker in Italy. And then there’s Pantanella, just about the biggest pasta manufacturer - assets of more than 15 million. And about twenty other companies, not all of them winners.”

“What’s the one that’s a real loser?” Cronin asked. “The toilet bowl outfit?”

“Manifattura Ceramica Pozzi. They’ve lost about 14 million in the last six years, but they’ll come around. Last year the Vatican put Count Galeazzi, one of their toughest boys, on the board.”

“And the banks. What about the banks?” said Cronin.

“Well, they own one bank outright, the Banco Santo Spirito. They’re tied into three other big banks - Banca CommercialeItalians, Credito Italiana, and Banco di Roma. Those four account for about 20 percent of all the bank deposits in Italy, and they handle about 50 percent of all the foreign trade transactions. Only last year Italcimenti bought eight new banks through a financial holding company, Italmobiliare. Then there’s at least a couple of thousand small banks all over Italy that either the Vatican or the local parish or church owns outright.”

“And they all charge interest, do they not?” asked Bishop Cronin.

“Sure.”

“Which ignores the clear teaching of St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, a half-dozen Greek fathers, the Second Council of the Lateran, and numerous other councils, all of which specifically condemned charging interest on money - usury, they called it - as a serious sin. A half-dozen popes speaking ex cathedra made the same pronouncement, citing scripture from both the Old and New Testaments. But when it became clear that all Europe was ignoring them, their successors forgot about it to the point of getting into the business themselves. These are the same heroes - I mean Pius XI and XII - who refused to allow the Catholic couple with eleven children to touch a contraceptive, even though there’s not a single line of scripture to support them, and only two vague pronouncements by previous popes before 1930.”

All eyes in the room had turned to Matthew Mahan. For a moment, he felt only outrage. Why did they expect him to answer every charge that anyone - even an obviously crazy old Irishman - made against the Church? But then he saw something else on Mary Shea’s face. Not the desire for an answer but the assumption that no real answer was possible.

He sighed and sipped his champagne. “Before we all form up and march out of here to burn down St. Peter’s,” he said, “remember that the Church is more than an investment company - and a lot more than an enemy of contraception. No matter how wrong or right she is on any of these things, each day she brings into the world enormous amounts of God’s grace.”

“But if the vessel in which the grace comes is polluted, the grace itself may be of no avail,” Bishop Cronin said.

“I don’t believe that,” Matthew Mahan said. “I don’t think you do, either.”

“What else explains the gigantic failure of this grace in the world around us?”

The anguish on Cronin’s contorted face, in his trembling voice, was unavoidable. The conversation was off the rails.

“Let’s not judge by appearances. Let’s not be stampeded by panic,” Matthew Mahan said. “That’s - that’s almost a loss of faith you’re describing, Davey.”

“Call it what you will,” said the old man, slumping back in his chair. “Call it what you will.”

“Is it you or Asti Spumante talking? No matter how much we disagree - I can’t believe we’d ever part company on this point.”

“No, no, of course not, Matt.”

His automatic answer was more painful than defiance. Wasn’t he saying,
You’re not worth the time it takes to argue with you, Your Eminence?

“Dennis, why don’t you go upstairs with Bishop Cronin? We’ll take his word for the Asti Spumante, but I do think he’s overtired.”

“I am not in the least overtired. But I do think it’s time for me to shut up and go to bed.”

He got up and strode out of the room. Bill Reed glanced at his watch and announced that he was joining him.

“Well, I’m a bottle finisher myself,” said Mike Furia, holding up his glass for the waiter to fill.

“Likewise,” said Mary with defiant gaiety. Dennis McLaughlin said nothing, but he also raised his glass. Matthew Mahan waved the waiter aside and wondered if he should try to explain what had just happened between him and Davey Cronin. He tried, but from the expressions on the faces of his listeners, he was not very successful. “It’s a little like a father who can’t realize his son has grown up. I just can’t take his opinions and spout them anymore. I’ve got to think for myself. It’s part of my responsibility -”

“From what I’ve heard,” Jim McAvoy said angrily, “he’s practically a Protestant.”

“Not really, Jim. Underneath that scathing language, there’s a tremendous faith, a tremendous love for the Church.”

“I sense it,” Madeline McAvoy said softly. “I sense it very much.”

Matthew Mahan felt a surge of concern and affection for the McAvoys. These were the kind of people he was trying to save from the rising waters of chaos. The reasonably intelligent, the reasonably loyal. He turned to Mike Furia with new determination. “That stuff about the Church in business, Mike. There are two ways of looking at it. It costs about $20 million a year to run the Vatican. That means you’ve got to generate a lot of income from somewhere. You can’t just depend on contributions.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t cost 20 million, Matt,” Mary said, “if they didn’t have apostolic delegates all over the world and the Curia with its perpetually growing bureaucracy.”

“Or the Vatican radio,” Mike Furia said. “What the hell do they need a radio station for?”

“John told me the Vatican Council was costing $30 million.
Osservatore Romano,
the Vatican paper, loses 2 million a year.”

“Why do they need a newspaper? The Italian Government doesn’t publish a newspaper. No free world government does,” Mary said.

It was incredible, the defiance in her voice, in her eyes. Mary, of all people. Was he losing her as he had already lost Mike? Through no fault of his own but because of what they had seen and heard and felt about the Church here in the land of her leaders. What did it mean for him, for them all?

For another twenty minutes, he tried to explain the origin of the Vatican’s involvement with the business world. It had begun only in 1929, when Mussolini and Pius XI had signed the Lateran Treaty, ending the Church’s sixty-year argument with the Italian Government over the loss of the papal states. Mussolini had paid an indemnity of some $90 million, and with this money, the Pope had set up a special department, administered by a shrewd financier, Bernardo Nogara. It was Nogara and his successors who had multiplied this capital into a worldwide network of investments and business enterprises. Under Pius XII, the involvement of the Pacellis had led to scandalous nepotism. But now Paul was doing his best to retreat from this way of doing things. The Pacellis had largely been eased out. So had most of the other laymen.

His audience was clearly unimpressed. Not even the McAvoys responded to this historical approach. Matthew Mahan had to admit to himself that it was pretty uninspiring. The party broke up with lackluster good nights. It was an off-key ending to what should have been a very happy evening. Mary Shea sensed his emotion and with her good night said softly: “Don’t let it upset you so much, Matt. You can’t change the facts.”

Alone in his room, Matthew Mahan gulped a half-dozen Titrilac tablets to defend his stomach against the Asti Spumanti and decided Mary had given him good advice. He tried to turn his mind to tomorrow, Sunday. He had reserved it, thank God, as a day to relax, think, pray. He needed time to ponder the spiritual significance of this major event in his life as a priest. He thought of tomorrow as a mini-retreat that would, he hoped, recall memories of the five-day retreat he made before his consecration as bishop. Pope John had sent his own personal confessor, Bishop Alfred Cavagna, to see him each day to give him subjects for meditation.

The fragile old man had led him through the labyrinthine passageways of the human soul, with his eyes fixed on the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew Mahan had asked for and received profound advice in dealing with his chief failing, the sin of pride. With beautiful simplicity, the old priest had spoken to him of the necessity of letting go of every wish, every personal desire, of the importance of handing them over to God, so that whenever one was fulfilled, the victory belonged to God, and if it was unfulfilled, it was God’s will, as well as an opportunity to be embraced, a chance to learn through suffering God’s true intentions.

How hard it was to keep this wisdom in mind while sitting on an archdiocesan powder keg. Matthew Mahan took out the wrinkled list of maxims Pope John had given him. He had compiled them when he was a seminarist. It was ominously symbolic, the way they had drifted to the back of his dresser drawer, he thought, fingering the faded paper ruefully.

The emphasis, the recurring word throughout the list, was love.

Some of them made discouraging reading for Matthew Mahan. Number 34, for instance.
“The best remedy I know against sudden fits of impatience is a silence that is gentle and without malice. However little one says, pride always comes into it, and one says things that plunge the heart into grief for a whole day after.”

Or 47.
“The things that thou hast not gathered in thy youth, how shalt thou find them in thy old age?”

Fortunately, to console him, Matthew Mahan also now had Pope John’s book,
The Journal of a Soul.
This, too, had come to Rome with the Cardinal-designate. In it there were more than a few sentences underlined. He turned now to one that lifted his spirits a little, the entry for January 24, 1904.
“My pride in particular has given me a great deal of trouble because of my unsatisfactory examination results. This, I must admit, was a real humiliation; I have yet to learn my ABCs in the practice of true humility and scorn of self. I feel a restless longing for I know not what - it is as if I were trying to fill a bottomless bag.”
The extraordinary resemblance to his own feelings as a seminarist and young priest had inspired Matthew Mahan to jot an exclamation point in the margin of the book.