The Good Shepherd (41 page)

The big jet poised at the head of the long sun-baked runway, like a sprinter waiting for the gun. They were off, racing down the concrete for a nerve-twisting sixty or seventy seconds, and into a forty-degree climb. At 3,000 feet, the pilot leveled off and said: “Thanks to His Eminence, Cardinal Mahan, we have been cleared to give you a last look at Rome. We’re going to circle the city so you can say goodbye to St. Peter’s, the Via Veneto, the Forum, the Colosseum, and all the other fabulous places you’ve visited during the past week.”

The plane resounded with unbuckling seat belts. Heads twisted, necks craned toward the windows. Cries, groans, of appreciation and excitement.

Matthew Mahan stretched out his legs and thought about the last three days. The anticipation of his evening with Mary had given him a curious feeling of freedom, a euphoria that had carried him through the concluding round of ceremonies. On the day after the mass in St. Peter’s, Pope Paul had held a special audience in the cathedral for the friends and families of the new Cardinals. The next day Cardinal Mahan had taken possession of his titular church in Rome’s suburbs.

The papal audience had been pleasant but perfunctory. Pope Paul had nothing in particular to say to the twelve apostles (as Dennis kept calling them) whom Matthew Mahan had selected for the thrill of kissing the papal ring. They included his sister-in-law Eileen, Monsignors Malone and Petrie, a nun, a student, and four or five big givers such as the McAvoys. When he introduced George Petrie, Matthew Mahan added: “Here’s the man I would like to have as auxiliary bishop, Your Holiness.” George had almost lost his vaunted composure as Paul nodded and smiled.

The Pope had obviously selected in advance something nice to say about each new Cardinal. He called Matthew Mahan the “master builder,” and for an irreverent moment he had almost replied,
Yes, they used to call me the patron saint of the contractors.
Instead, he disavowed the compliment. Looking at Mike Furia, Jim McAvoy, and the rest of his moneyed circle, he said that these dedicated people had made possible the miraculous multiplication of gymnasiums, parish houses, rectories, and parochial schools. He would have liked to add that they were now going broke trying to keep them all running. But it was neither the time nor the place to launch a discussion of American church policy.

The titular church was in a new Roman suburb and was named for America’s first saint, Mother Cabrini. The church had been donated by a wealthy Italian-American from San Francisco. It was one of those supersonic jobs with a roof that swooped upward to a knife edge, two wings that also swooped, and a great triangular stained-glass eye in the center of the facade to complete the resemblance to an exotic bird in flight. Cardinal Mahan had taken possession of it at the head of a procession of his own clergy and had warmed the president’s chair during a mass that he had insisted on concelebrating, not with his fellow Americans, but with the Italian pastor. The congregation was mostly American, but he gave a brief sermon in both English and Italian, stressing, he said, the universality of the Church, which knows no language barriers or geographical frontiers.

He had been unbothered by being given a church in the suburbs, instead of one of the more historic Roman churches, such as Saints John and Paul, which Cardinal Cooke had received as an inheritance from the late Cardinal Spellman. On the way out to the ceremony he had remarked to Terry Malone, “Maybe we can get out of this little rigamarole without spending a cent.” He recalled that Spellman had spent a million on Peter and Paul. Cushing told him that when he received Santa Susanna as his titular church he had had to cough up $50,000 immediately to prevent the roof from falling in.

But Matthew Mahan’s financial hopes had swiftly withered in the gale of sighs from the pastor of Mother Cabrini parish. It was a working-class district, he explained, pointing to shiny white high-rise apartments which did not look very lower class. Mothers, as well as fathers worked. The parish desperately needed another building which could serve as a nursery school in the morning and a recreation center for older children in the afternoons and evenings. Of course, there was no money. He had petitioned and pleaded at the
cancelleria
in vain.

Matthew Mahan had glumly reached for his checkbook as the pastor’s Italian hands turned palms upward m a mute appeal to heaven. How much would the building cost? The pastor had no idea Matthew Mahan declined to hand him a blank check. Instead, he gave him $5,000 now for an architect’s fee. The balance would come when he saw the plans.

Turning away from the pudgy, balding pastor, Matthew Mahan’s eyes had encountered Terry Malone’s financial frown. He could practically read the dollar signs in the thick glasses and hear the lecture that would soon emanate from that disapproving iron jaw. It would cost them $200,000 before they were out of it, if they were ever out of it, Matthew Mahan admitted to himself. But American Cardinals were supposed to be rich How could they disappoint their adopted parishioners?

So much for the great event, the culmination of his clerical career, as one of the speakers at the North American College had called the cardinalate. Matthew Mahan felt the precise opposite. Not culmination but collapse. The more he thought about returning home, the more uneasy he
became.
Resuming the old way of life - playing the smoothie - was out of the question now. But an alternative remained a mystery to him.

It was simpler to think about some of the specific problems confronting him. At the top of the list was the diocesan deficit. What was the answer? A direct levy on each parish, scaled to its ability to pay? A special fundraising drive later in the year? Tuition for the parochial schools, particularly the high schools? Already, some suburban pastors were charging modest amounts of money for their parish schools, or warning parents that it they did not appear prominently on the list of Sunday givers, they would be asked to withdraw their children from the school.

During visitations around the archdiocese, he had seen how deeply this troubled many pastors. They sweated mightily to exclude the poor from such prohibitions. But how did you deal with the almost poor or with the middle-class salaried man, overwhelmed by the cost of seven or eight children?

Mike Furia was sitting beside him reading
Business Week.
They had had very little to say to each other since their unpleasant exchange at the private dinner party. “Are we still friends?” Matthew Mahan asked as the pilot ended their circuit of Rome and began climbing toward their cruising altitude.

“I hope so,” Mike said, holding out his hand.

A crunching handshake, and they were almost the same. Matthew Mahan knew they could never again achieve their old camaraderie. That had been based on his complacent assumptions, his bland acceptance of appearances. They began discussing the deficit. He spread the alternative solutions in front of Mike and asked his opinion.

“They all stink,” Mike said. “Have you ever thought of the obvious solution?”

“What’s
that?”

“Get those parochial schools off your back.”

“It’s been suggested to me.” He gave him a brief summary of his acrimonious exchanges with Mayor O’Connor on the subject.

“That’s a good example of what I mean. Would O’Connor have it in for you if he didn’t go to Catholic schools? Look at me. My old man wouldn’t let me within a mile of a Catholic school. So I meet you and I think you’re a great guy, and we’re friends for life. Would I have felt that way if I’d had a couple of dozen nuns and priests yakking at me when I was a kid? I doubt it.”

Matthew Mahan shook his head. He was not buying this idea. But Mike was undeterred. “I’ve been thinking about saying this to you for a couple of years, Matt, but I didn’t have the nerve. From a business point of view, you’re like a company that’s putting out too many products. You’re into too many things. Education. Hospitals. Old age care. Marriage counseling. Housing. When a corporation realizes this, it cuts back. Sells off subsidiaries. Concentrates on what it does best. Now, this may make you mad as hell, but you don’t do education best. Yet, you’re spending 90 percent of your income on it. That just doesn’t make sense from a business point of view.”

Matthew Mahan suddenly remembered Steve Murchison’s wry Methodist voice on the telephone, warning him:
You Romans are too visible, you’ve got too many things for people to criticize.
But he still stubbornly shook his head. Mike was asking him to turn his back on a part of himself, Matthew the Master Builder, the very achievement for which the Pope had saluted him. Those were
his
schools, so many of them. And wasn’t that, asked another voice, precisely why you should be wary about clinging to them? Haven’t you said goodbye to the heroic chaplain? Why not to the Master Builder also? But he still kept shaking his head. “There are too many people involved, Mike. Too many people who’ve made sacrifices -”

“I’m not telling you to junk everything overnight. You couldn’t do that without throwing the city into chaos. But start phasing them out. . . .”

Another shake of his head and the conversation ended. Matthew Mahan waited a diplomatic minute or two and shifted from the public to the personal. “Mike,” he said, “would you consider taking some advice from me - even if I won’t take any from you?”

“Try me,” he said.

“Get a divorce. And get married again.”

Furia drew back in mock surprise. “I can’t believe it. After the way you worked on me - to make it a separation.”

“We were both being men of the world, Mike. I wanted to keep you around as a fundraiser. You wanted to keep on building schools and hospitals for me.”

Mike nodded almost imperceptibly. The truth was being exchanged for the first time. “When we get back, I’m starting a new program - for divorced Catholics. Receiving them back into the church if their divorce is in good conscience. I know that won’t mean anything to you, Mike. But it could mean a lot to your new wife.”

Mike stared down at his hands. “Funny you should tell me this. I was - I thought of getting married again, just the other night. That disaster with Betty - it hurt me more than I admitted to anyone - even myself.”

“To prove to you - and to myself - that I mean this for your sake - and only for your sake - I’m accepting your resignation as chairman of the Cardinal’s Fund.”

“Go to hell,” Mike growled. “You’re not getting it.”

“I want it.”

Mike shook his head and managed a smile. “You just missed a punch in the mouth the last time, Your Eminence.”

Matthew Mahan met his smile. “That’s a risk we brainless clerics take every so often.”

He left Mike alone to do some thinking and wandered through the plane chatting with various people. He apologized to those who had taken the one-day trip to Pompeii without him. He had begged off that ordeal, at the strong urging of Dennis McLaughlin. It had been almost touching, the vehemence with which Dennis had pointed out that the excursion involved about nine hours on the bus. “Listen, it’s just as well you didn’t come,” said Jim McAvoy. “With you along, they never would have let us in that room with all the dirty paintings.”

“They wouldn’t let me in,” said his wife. “Men only. I’m still mad!”

“Just think of all the time he’ll have to spend in Purgatory, Madeline,” Matthew Mahan said.

Many of the pilgrims were dozing. It made him feel better to discover that they were all as weary as he felt. Dennis McLaughlin and Davey Cronin were sitting side by side fast asleep. Matthew Mahan felt a rush of affection for both of them. “It looks like they’ll stay out of trouble for the rest of the trip,” he said to Bill Reed who was sitting in the aisle seat next to them.

Davey opened one eye and said, “The hell we will. I was just dreaming that you were crowned Pope.”

“That’s not a dream, that’s a nightmare,” Matthew Mahan said.

“Ah! Pope of the Reformed Catholic Church. Rome, you see, was destroyed by a natural cataclysm. Buried under tons of spaghetti with clam sauce -”

“Another word and you’ll be anathema.”

“I’ve been that for years. You ought to try it, Your Eminence. It’s a grand feeling.”

Back in his seat, Matthew Mahan read his breviary and then slept until the stewardesses began serving supper. He groaned inwardly when he saw that the main course was veal parmigiana. He had forgotten to notify the airline about his special diet. A moment later, a stewardess was beaming down at him, saying, “We’ll have your chicken ready in just another minute, Your Eminence.”

“How did you know I wanted it?”

“Oh, someone in your party - Father McLaughlin, I think - notified us about your diet.”

He dared a little wine with the chicken, and his stomach seemed to accept it peaceably. When the stewardess removed the tray, he took from his briefcase the Pope’s latest statement on the liturgy, Number 21, which was the final revision of the Roman missal. It was in Latin. English translations would come later. But he had enough skill with Latin to read it without difficulty.

Almost immediately, he found a phrase that made him grind his teeth. “We wish to give to all the force of law that we have set forth concerning the new Roman missal,” Pope Paul wrote. Why, Matthew Mahan asked himself, why that obnoxious phrase,
the force of law,
to something associated with worship, an experience that had value only when it was free? He sighed and told himself to stop thinking revolutionary thoughts. He had taken a vow of fidelity and obedience to this man that he was criticizing.