No Greater Love (10 page)

And now he had a son to indoctrinate in the
vera doctrina
—the True Doctrine.

The end product Bill Cody wished to form was a priest.

Bill had attended the Chicago seminary, where he had reluctantly concluded that the clerical life was not for him. He regretted his decision to this day, yet did not repent of it; he had no doubt that he had made the correct decision.

It would be different with Al. Bill would make certain that his son would have no doubts about being a priest.

Al would not be the type of hippy-dippy priest that you found in so many parishes. Bill would see to it that his son was familiar with the Latin Tridentine Mass, frequent confession, baptism as soon after birth as possible. Black and white in doctrine: God was He, Jesus was He, as was the Holy Ghost. Black and white in morality; none of that situation ethics garbage.

Granted there were exceptions that simply could not be avoided. The vernacular Mass was inescapable. An abomination compared with the old Latin, it now was the least common denominator.

As Bill coaxed the infant to wrap his tiny fingers around his father's thumb, he pictured his son the priest. Like the macho men of the past who weren't embarrassed to wear the clerical outfit. Who hung out together. Who hunted and fished on vacation together. Who displayed the pelts, the skins, the heads on their rectory walls. Who were portrayed, in movies by the likes of Spencer Tracy, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, Barry Fitzgerald, and Bing Crosby. Men's men.

That was Bill's mission—to turn out a priest in this mold.

He did not stop to consider that he was only one of two parents.

Eileen had dropped out of college when she became pregnant, happy to be a full-time mother. But her plans for her son did not mirror her husband's.

When little Al wantonly killed a small bird, his mother gave him a lecture on the sacredness of all life.

Albert was confused.

When Al played in neighborhood games, he objected to letting girls join in. He got a firm lesson from his mother on the equality of the sexes.

He was confused.

When a black family moved in, Albert refused to play with the neighbors' son, though they were the same age. He got a talking to from his mother on the equality of the races.

He was confused.

Bill gave Albert, now approaching his teens, an air rifle—over Eileen's most strenuous objections. One day he grew tired of the stationary target mounted on the garage. He began shooting at rabbits and squirrels. His mother scolded him, and confiscated the gun.

That led to the worst argument between his parents that Albert had witnessed to that point in his life. He was frightened by it. He would never forget it.

And he was further confused.

Albert's father never wavered in his determination to lead the boy into the priesthood—Bill's kind of priesthood.

Albert's mother steadfastly opposed this career choice.

It was a strange turnabout from the traditional Catholic family, in which, if there was any impetus to a boy's entering a seminary, almost without fail it was the mother who encouraged the child, while the father sought to discourage him.

Eileen, however, felt that entering a seminary at the present time was like booking passage on
Titanic.
This whole system of a cultic priesthood was going down the drain; anyone could see that. The priest shortage was nearly worldwide. It was reaching drastic proportions in America and was becoming critical even in Ireland, one of the most Catholic of nations.

Eileen could not begin to guess how it all would end. She wouldn't even have been concerned except that her husband was brainwashing her son to climb aboard what she considered a dead-end vocation.

In subtle ways Eileen tried to tip the scales away from the seminary. Meanwhile, Bill continued to take for granted Al's eventual ordination.

Albert was confused.

Ten

By the time Albert was ready for high school, his father had become a well-heeled attorney in one of the area's top law firms. The family now lived in the pricey suburb of Bloomfield Hills.

Albert was accepted by St. Mary's Preparatory at Orchard Lake.

There was method in the elder Cody's choice for his son. The complex of Lake schools included, in addition to the high school, St. Mary's College and Sts. Cyril and Methodius Seminary.

The religious atmosphere was almost palpable.

Though Bloomfield Hills was not far from the Lake, Al needed transportation. His mother became the designated driver. She was free to be such while Bill took on the rush-hour commute to and from downtown Detroit.

When the elder Cody had attended the Chicago seminary high school, there was not a girl to be seen. Now, Detroit's St. Joseph's Seminary did not even have a high school.

But St. Mary's covered both counts: It was all male and had a thoroughly religious atmosphere. Thus at a time when a youth's testosterone is raging, temptation is not at hand.

Now and again there might be a bit of masturbation. But masturbation didn't carry the threat of pregnancy. Fathering a child was definitely a no-no for a priest candidate. One more potential impediment to holy orders forestalled.

Eileen rather enjoyed her chauffeuring duties. Al didn't ordinarily run off at the mouth, but he did confide in his mother on their daily drives.

Later, the Codys moved to a high-rise in downtown Detroit. It was a move conveniently close to Bill's practice. But not at all convenient to Al's school at Orchard Lake. No matter. Bill insisted his son complete his high school education at St. Mary's Preparatory. In effect, all that changed was the length of Eileen's drive.

Actually, she treasured the extra time spent with her son. Eileen tried to sway her son away from his father's conservatism-bordering-on-fundamentalism. She endeavored to accomplish this without undermining the bond between father and son.

For they had bonded and it was a beautiful relationship qua relationship. But without his mother's strong humanizing influence, Al would have been merely a younger Bill: careless of life values, blind to the threat of racism and/or sexism.

Eileen had a difficult time identifying what it was about her husband she tried to shield Al from. In many ways Bill was a decent, even admirable man. Surely he was deeply committed to Catholicism, even if his faith was outdated. Indeed, that may have been at the root of the problem. His early training taught, for instance, that man was the head of the home and woman its heart. His interpretation of that gave a husband complete control over his wife. The husband made all important decisions autocratically. And the wife was supposed to love him for it.

According to Bill's determinate creed, God had placed the animal kingdom on earth for mankind's use or abuse. Animals were at the complete disposition of humans.

Bill's war experience further had eroded his respect for life. This was reflected in his attitude toward wrongdoers. Was someone guilty of homicide? “Fry him!” Convicted of a lesser crime? “Lock him up and throw away the key!”

Precisely because he so loved the Church of his youth, he was intolerant of most of the changes that had affected it since the despised Council. He would accept the English Mass only because there was no viable alternative.

That which he could not accept he derided.

He was easy to understand, but difficult to live with.

Mr. and Mrs. Cody were the odd couple who packaged their son.

Albert Cody tried to please his father and his mother. It was like hitching two horses to opposite ends of a chariot and expecting someone to drive it.

If Albert came home from a hunting trip with no game, his father was disappointed in him. His mother was thankful that her son had not killed.

On the rare occasion that Albert had a date, his mother encouraged him to have a good time, hoping that this might be the girl who would turn his head from the celibate state. Meanwhile his father took him aside to impress upon him, in vague generalities, the trouble he could get into if he didn't keep his distance.

All this repeated conflicting guidance took its toll.

Albert was a sorely confused boy. And his confusion led to his being in a constant state of anxiety and fear—fear that he would offend someone by making the wrong guess as to the right decision.

Albert was a prime candidate for psychotherapy. But it would never happen. His mother would probably understand—possibly even approve. His father would not hear of it. Men did not get analyzed. Women were, the sole subjects for therapy, since women, by definition (from the Greek
hystera
[womb]), were the only ones who became hysterical. Men who sought or received therapy were “as weak as women.”

So, for example, when Albert went out on the rare date, he was gentlemanly and respectful (for Mother) and distant (for Dad). Girls found Albert safe and boring.

There certainly was nothing wrong with Albert physically. At approximately five feet eight and likely to add another couple of inches as he matured, he was slender but well built. He avoided contact sports, competing against himself. He excelled at track and swimming. That way, he could be alone with himself while setting his pace and making the turns.

And, like Dad, Al wore his hair in an almost military brush cut. It was a statement.

Before graduating from high school, he completed driver's training and got his license. His father gave him a new Volvo. It was an expensive gift. But Dad firmly believed that, as long as the priest was “good”—loyal to the Pope and
vera doctrina
—nothing was too good for Father. That byword included his son, who, without question, would be a good seminarian and priest.

With satisfactory academic marks, very little maturation, and his virginity intact, Albert went on to college and the seminary.

Had he lived back in the fifties, at this stage of his life he would have been one of some nine hundred and fifty seminarians, almost all of whom would have been of minimum age for their grade years.

As it was, he was one of seventy-some seminarians of widely varying ages. Of the nonseminarian student body, the vast majority were women, mostly women of Al's age.

Albert had not had female classmates since grade school. He quickly concluded that college women were a very different consideration from elementary school girls.

Albert was confused.

He needed someone older and wiser to guide him through this traumatic time.

Enter William Page.

Someplace along the line of accommodating the shrinking number of seminarians, a rule was made that candidates must spend at least six years preparing for priesthood. This law allowed for few exceptions. If Latin had not been reduced to an elective course, preparation time might well have been longer.

William Page had a degree from Notre Dame, a university with a stellar reputation for scholarship, even with regard to its athletes. He also had many years' experience in advertising. Here at the seminary neither mattered.

Page and Cody were juniors in seminary college when they first met at St. Joseph's. Now, five-plus years later, they had spent a goodly amount of time together. Class size, in any subject offered, was small enough that the students got to know each other well.

From the very beginning of their relationship, Cody had deferred to Page, in a dependent sort of way.

Page didn't mind. Cody's dependence was not of an annoying nature. Besides, Page enjoyed Cody's gradual metamorphosis into gofer, researcher, ghostwriter, surrogate son—in sum, a creature only a few steps up from a flunky.

Cody was glad to perform small services. He had so much to learn. As the years rolled by and ordination neared, he grew more and more aware of his arrested adolescence. It seemed to him the seminary system was designed to slow his development.

In only a few more months, I will be a priest, he thought.

He compared himself with his mentor, Bill Page, who was old enough to be his father.

When the two talked, as they frequently did, it was clear that Page was ready on all counts to assume the new clerical role. He was of an age that he could realistically be called “Father”—if parishioners wished to so address him. Sure, a lot of them would be older than he … old enough even to be
his
father. Still, the span of the mid-forties was, objectively, an age of maturity.

Page also was ready for ordination theologically. Though he had no independent conviction about such matters, he had learned to rely on the theological bent of the majority of his seminary professors. Thus he was in complete conformity with the magisterium, i.e., the Pope.

It was a safe, comfortable path. The magisterium instructed you what to believe and what laws to obey. Believe this and do that and heaven is guaranteed you.

Page was ready.

Cody was not.

At his ordination, Cody would be all of twenty-five. Not a child by any means. Yet nowhere near as mature as contemporaries in the big, bad world. He had so little experience. Out there, men his age had begun a distinctively adult life. They had to hold down demanding jobs, into which they had to grow.

They were starting families, undoubtedly their primary responsibility. They had to budget their incomes—and they knew how. They knew the rules and regulations that governed their lives in the workplace as well as in the home.

Some belonged to Catholic parishes and attended Mass on Sunday. These—the Faithful—could be divided roughly into three groups: the main body of middle-of-the-roaders, the liberals, and the conservatives. Both of the latter were deeply—sometimes intensely—committed and involved in the Church structure on the diocesan and parochial levels.

Meanwhile, Albert Cody was still a student. He attended school—much the same sort of school he had attended on the elementary, high school, and college levels. He and his fellow students seldom questioned what they were taught. They learned basically from the magisterium. There was enough of this to tide them over from year to year.