The Good Shepherd (37 page)

“That’s very good, Guilio,” Matthew Mahan said, smiling in the hope of restoring Mirante’s sanity, “but I hope you’re not suggesting -”

“No, no. I am in an extreme mood, but not that extreme.” He even came close to smiling, but it faded away with the last word.

What should he do with this unhappy man? There was an air of innocence about him that was touching. It reminded him of Dennis McLaughlin. Innocence and bitterness, with Mirante’s bitterness more extruded, more Italian. “Excuse me a moment,” Matthew Mahan said.

He went into the bedroom and returned with his checkbook. “The first thing you need is some money. Here’s $500. It ought to keep body and soul together for a month or so. Write to the Archbishop of Calabria and tell him you’ve decided, with his permission, to go to America. When you arrive, I’ll have something lined up for you. Maybe at the university. Maybe in a parish. Our Italian-Americans are awfully conservative. I’m not sure how you’d get along with them.”

“I see what you are thinking,” said Mirante. “This fellow has proved himself a fool once. What happens if he does it again in my archdiocese and embarrasses me? Let me assure you, Eminence, the loyalty of the beggar is to the man who lifts him from the gutter. So it will be with this beggar, I swear it.”

“I’m sure it will, I’m sure it will,” Matthew Mahan said, too embarrassed to deny what he was thinking. “I just want to make sure you don’t see me as another John. I’m not. I have no pretensions to that kind of holiness. A bishop - at least an American bishop - has to run his diocese with the greater good of the greater number in mind.”

He stopped, somewhat appalled at the implications of what he had just said. But wasn’t it true? Did all the emotion of the last two days wither in the cold, rational light of this premise? No, somehow both realities must be sustained.

“That interests me greatly,” Mirante was saying. “Is it because the great majority of American Catholics actively practice the faith? You are not faced with the dilemma of empty churches as we here in Italy?”

“Yes, that’s partly true.”

“I am told they are literalists. They take the folk religion and practice all of its precepts. But not the latest, on contraception. Why is that?”

“Because it makes no sense to them. Even the folk religion, as you call it, has to be in touch with the heart. With their experience. Well” - Matthew Mahan stood up - “I’m afraid I’m too tired to make much sense on this subject. Let me know your plans as soon as you complete them, and we’ll do our best to make you useful. For the time being, I wouldn’t say a word about this to anyone.”

“Of course not, of course not.” Tears suddenly filled Mirante’s eyes. “I can’t tell you how grateful -” He knelt and tried to kiss Matthew Mahan’s ring.

“Oh no, please, Guilio, it isn’t necessary.” He helped the fragile, sad-faced man to his feet and threw his right arm around him. Where have you seen someone else do that? In a movie or - As he closed the door, he suddenly remembered. It was John. The way John had greeted him in the Vatican on his first visit.

Driving through Rome. Darkened streets, then squares flashing with lights from every century. Neon twentieth. Renaissance candle glow. Beside him, Bishop Cronin was strangely silent. Above Cronin’s head, which only reached the Cardinal’s shoulder, Dennis could see Matthew Mahan’s somber profile in flashes as the lights alternately filled and fled the gliding limousine. You would almost think we were going to a funeral, Dennis mused. What was it Cronin had said three days ago? Wait till you hear the oath they take.

The old boy probably knew what he was talking about. A Cardinal was the Pope’s man. It was a special relationship. Old Davey did not want to see Matthew Mahan become anybody’s man. Because he wanted him for himself? No, nothing quite so cheap or obvious. There was something mysterious between them, a common understanding that they shared about the Church.

It was visible when the Cardinal came into their room last night and told them to forget about their trip to Isolotto. He and Goggin had been outraged, but Cronin was amazingly mild about it.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Matt,
he had said.
No point in stirring up the animals.
If they wanted to find out more about Isolotto, Mahan had suggested they call the Jesuit, Father Mirante, whom he had just seen. An ex-Jesuit, actually. But Matthew Mahan had wryly observed that he considered such a being a metaphysical impossibility. Once a Jesuit, always a Jesuit. “What do you think, Dennis?”

They had kidded for a few moments. Then Mahan had become serious, almost sad, and had urged him to go see Sister Helen Reed. “Talk to her about her father. I’ve never seen anything so cruel -” He told them about his impromptu visit to Helen’s pensione with her father in tow.

Go
see Sister Helen Reed.
An episcopal command, no less. Why had he tried to make excuses, while Goggin eyed him mordantly? Was he afraid of what might happen? Did fornication in the shadow of St. Peter’s dome guarantee damnation? Childish, mocking questions, along with buffets of intense anxiety. Torn between sex and your priesthood. When there was no conflict, no reason for a conflict in the new order, in the Church of tomorrow, where every act of love would be equally valued. Dennis squirmed in his seat, as if hands were seizing, caressing his flesh. He did not believe it. Too much history in his head. The mind, that unique analytical tool, mocked hope as well as faith.

But he had gone to see Sister Helen while Goggin and Cronin were seeing Father Mirante, the living contradiction. Another lunch on the terrace overlooking the brown polluted Tiber. Helen was furious. There were only two women - two - employed in the entire Vatican. It was enough to make her consider becoming a Buddhist. She had not even come close to seeing Cardinal Antoniutti. A polite monsignor listened to her tale for an hour and a half, took copious notes, and assured her that it would be brought to the Cardinal’s attention. As for an answer before she left Rome - impossible, my dear Sister. The Cardinal’s duties - the week of ceremonies for the new Cardinals.

Dennis tried to joke her into a better humor. He told her why Matthew Mahan had sent him. With enough money to buy the most expensive lunch on the menu. They would start with champagne. Then discuss the solution to their parent problems. He had a mother, she had a father. Match them up, and let them haunt each other. But seriously, her father was a charming man. Why?

Yes, through all the mockery, the oblique intentions, there was a priest’s concern. What was it, exactly? Perhaps you are about to discover something essential. You are the enemy of cruelty, of hate, the apostle of compassion, forgiveness. Marvelous. So is Mother.

So is Pious Paolo. What if that’s all there was to it? No matter who else was for it or against it. To find out the precise tone your own soul struck. That would be something above mere knowledge, or beneath it. Beyond words, those razors that always cut flesh to clarify.

Then there were her hands. Leading you up the stairs to the blue-walled bedroom, the smoky Tiber flowing, sunlight on the quilted rose bedspread. Today what would it be? More half love, celibate caressing? No, no, no. Passion as the trembling hands shed clothes like leaves. Feet, legs, like roots deep in the ancient earth of Rome. No. Hands angry on the small snub breasts. Today would be the love of the man for the woman. Absolute, absolute, absolute sunlight and darkness there between her legs, dark hair, precious earth where seeds were summoned by nature’s blind will. What does God have to do with any of it? God is clarity, light, light, light. Why at the very climax was there a desire to weep? Poor old Goggin, a dry wind whistling through the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Suddenly tears, a trembling woman in your arms.
Hold me hold me hold me; please hold me. I’m afraid it’s sinful to make love that way. Hold me hold me hold me. Dennis can we really love each other?

For the first time, the appalling truth of her woundedness. For the first time, a glimpse of what loss of love, mother love, then father love, had done to her. Then strength, amazing, compassionate strength flowing from you into her, strength of touch, of paradoxical tenderness, and strength of word, of promise.
Yes
,
yes,
had been the sure loving answer. Where had this strength come from? A mystery. Or was the answer sitting beside you in this car, the big bulky man in red looking mournfully out the other window?

“Is there a reception after this?” Matthew Mahan asked. “I’ve forgotten.”

“Yes, but only a brief one, our monsignor says. No drinks.”

“Good. My stomach is killing me. Did you get anywhere with Sister Helen?”

Dennis’s chest tightened. For a minute, he thought he was strangling. “No. She is - obstinately convinced that her father is the personification of racist reaction.”

“God help us. What damn nonsense. Where do people her age get these ideas?”

From the newspapers.
But you will not say it, Dennis. No, the apostle of universal love will be silent.

A half hour later, Matthew Mahan sat in the Hall of Benedictions directly above the entrance to St. Peter’s Basilica. There were about 2,000 people in the huge room, and at least 1,000 of them were Americans. Their language predominated in the murmur of general conversation. The thirty-four new Cardinals sat on the right, the hundred or so senior Cardinals on the left. All were dressed in their red robes and ceremonial red capes and white lace rochets. Before them, on a platform about two feet above the floor level, sat Paul VI in white robes and a red cape fringed with ermine. Matthew Mahan had seen dozens of pictures of the Pope. Like almost every other Catholic American, he had followed on television his historic visit to the United Nations in 1965. But television images were no substitute for the living man. The television camera lied, just like every other camera. More important, those earlier images in his mind were faded with age. Now, at this moment in time, he wanted to know what he thought and felt about this man.

The huge armchair in which Paul sat made him look almost ludicrously small. His feet rested upon two raised steps on the platform. The Pope began speaking in Latin. Matthew Mahan was dismayed. He had hoped that the speech would be in Italian. His Latin was a patchwork job, propped up largely by his knowledge of Italian. During the Vatican Council he had joined Cardinal Cushing of Boston and many other American prelates who had pleaded with the Pope for a simultaneous translation system, so that they could follow the debates and perhaps contribute to them in their own languages. The request had gone unheeded, and Cushing, who had no backup Italian to help him, had finally gone home in disgust. The Pope was talking about the place of Cardinals in the structure of the Church. He declared them to be of great importance. The task, he said, was to build up the Church. He called on them to serve, to witness, to sacrifice for the truth. Above all, he depended on them for their unswerving support of the Prince of the Apostles. He hoped he would always be able to say, “You continued with me in my trials.”

As he had done in the previous consistory in 1967, Paul was reiterating his conviction that the College of Cardinals was no anachronism, as many leading churchmen of the liberal wing had been saying. Cardinal Suenens of Belgium had recently suggested that an annual synod of bishops or an assembly of the heads of the bishops’ conference in each country should replace the Cardinals as the electors of the Pope. Paul was giving this idea the back of his hand.

It was easy enough to explain. Whether the explanation was sweet or sour depended on your point of view. Sour: The Curia had no intention of surrendering control of the Church to a bunch of unknowns. As long as they handpicked the Cardinals, they were almost certain to have one of their own in the Chair of Peter. True, the system wasn’t perfect. A secret saint like John XXIII might slip by them once in a century. But the odds were heavily in favor of keeping all heads turned to Rome. In line with this, Paul was obviously working on the principle, the more Cardinals, the more Romans in the Church. Sweet: When you have inherited a system that has worked smoothly for 400 years, you are not inclined to surrender it to critics who seem more than a little unstable emotionally and intellectually. Critics were hardly a novelty in the long history of the Church. Mater Ecclesia endures forever, the critics disappear.

On his throne, Pope Paul was comparing the synod of bishops and the College of Cardinals. He said both offices were consultative. Neither one interfered in the least with the Pope’s prerogative of personal universal and direct government. Basically, the Cardinals assisted him in this responsibility.

There it was, the note that had been sounded with ever more insistence in the closing sessions of Vatican II. The Chair of Peter had no intention of abandoning its claim to absolute authority over the entire Church. Wasn’t it, from Paul’s point of view, the only possible decision? The responsibility for abandoning authority might be more agonizing than the results of wielding it. As a wielder of authority in his own small world, Matthew Mahan knew that much. Was there a dimension between these two alternatives, was that where Michelangelo’s Moses was looking with that eternal spiritual hunger on his graven face? Was that where John XXIII lived? Why couldn’t Cardinal Mahan and the men around him - above all, the tiny figure on the huge throne - enter this Promised Land? O
Lord
,
tell us, tell us what we are doing wrong,
Matthew Mahan prayed.

Now the Pope asked each of them to take their traditional vow of fidelity to Christ and obedience to the Chair of Peter. There was, he explained, an additional passage added to the oath, in order to insure his access to the advice and counsel of all the Cardinals.

The priest standing to the right of the papal throne began to read the vow, and the Cardinals repeated it after him, inserting their individual names in the first line.

Matthew Mahan kept his eyes on the Pope’s face while he repeated these words. Again, he felt an intense desire to locate this man in his own soul. The words he had just spoken had enormous weight. He had vowed his personal loyalty, his personal obedience, to this man. It was a huge step beyond the loyalty and obedience he owed him as the head of the Church, and he was prepared, he truly was prepared, to say these words. But not the words of the added passage. The vow of silence traduced the first vows. A worm of nasty distrust entered with them. Why, why? Matthew Mahan knew what old Davey Cronin would say. The hallmark of authoritarianism. It always goes too far because it thinks in terms of power first and people second.

But Matthew Mahan did not see any of this on Paul’s face. He saw only sadness there, a film of sadness through which the personal man spoke and acted. Was it the sadness of defeat or the sadness of the ultimately lonely?

One by one now, as each Cardinal’s name was called, he mounted the platform and knelt before the papal throne. Solemnly Paul placed the red biretta on his head, repeating in Latin the ancient formula. “For the praise of the omnipotent God and for the honor of the Apostolic See, receive the red hat, symbol of the great dignity of the Cardinal, which means that you must show yourself to be fearless, even to the shedding of blood, for the exaltation of the Holy Faith, for the peace and tranquility of the Christian people, and for the liberty and expansion of the Holy Roman Church.”

Predictably, Cardinal Cooke got the biggest round of applause. At least 500 of the 1,000 Americans in the hall were from New York. Finally, Matthew Mahan heard his own name, and he rose to walk up the red-carpeted aisle. As he knelt before the Pope, he looked up at him, and their eyes met. The tiniest hint of a smile appeared on Paul’s lips.
“Frater noster taciturnus,”
he whispered. Taking the red biretta from the monsignor, he placed it on Matthew Mahan’s head, reciting the Latin exhortation once more.