No Greater Love (2 page)

Now, with St. John's closed, one could fire a cannon down the hallways of St. Joseph's at most times, day or night, without hitting a soul. Most rooms were vacant; those in use served the majority who were either priest candidates for dioceses other than Detroit, or who were not headed for the priesthood.

For those who cared about and valued the priesthood and its future, this seminary was a sad case.

Bishop McNiff seemed to personify, at least in this present moment, the condition of the school he headed.

His ample white hair looked as if it had been subjected to an eggbeater. His eyes were bloodshot. Salt-and-pepper stubble, hobolike, shadowed the lower part of his face. His robe was ratty. A large toe protruded through a hole in his right slipper, which was scuffed to near disintegration. His smile was wry. “Well, if it isn't Father Bob Koesler, Senior Priest!”

“Excellency!” Koesler bowed deeply from the waist.

McNiff snorted. He stepped back from the door. “Come on in.”

Koesler didn't move. “I dunno … it looks as if you've got the bubonic plague. Are you quarantined?”

McNiff's smile didn't waver. “That would make you really happy, wouldn't it … if I had the plague.”

“Not really. You're just dumb enough to go around confirming kids and spreading the disease. Then the kids'd give it to their hardworking pastors. And then where'd we be with no priests? Just bishops. Then we wouldn't get anything done.”

McNiff's smile faded. “This is just the tail end of the common cold. Now, get in here!”

A casual onlooker might be surprised, if not downright scandalized, at such a colloquial exchange between a bishop and a mere priest. But Koesler and McNiff, seminary classmates and friends since their teen years, had always been close.

As he stepped forward, Koesler gestured toward McNiff's door. “What happened here?” he asked, in reference to the detritus splattered on the heavy oak door.

McNiff shook his head. “You should've been here a little while ago … matter of fact, if you'd been here, this might not have happened—”

“So …?”

“The cook, in his heart of hearts, was worried that I wasn't getting anything to eat. So he sent up some soup and some spaghetti with meatballs. I heard her pushing the cart down the hall—that's where you would've come in handy.”

“‘Her'?”

“One of our young lady students—Patty Donnelly.”

“And how might I have served Your Majesty?”

The episcopal grin reappeared briefly. “This cold has slowed me down. You could've gotten to the door faster than I.

“Anyway”—he shook his head—“she had a choice: She could have left the food on the cart on the landing”—he inclined his head—“and come down and knocked on the door. Or”—he winced—“she could have carried the tray down the steps and knocked on my door.”

Koesler, getting the picture, chuckled. “She came with the food … right?”

“Right. She was balancing the tray against the door and—” He stopped and shook his head again. “If you'd been here, Bobby, you would've gotten to the door before she knocked.”

“Maybe.”

“Anyway, I didn't have any alternative: She knocked; I opened the door.”

“All over?”

“Just so. As the door opened, the tray tipped and the food slid off all over the door.”

Koesler looked at the mess. The damp streak that ran from midway down the door to the floor was—or had been—the soup. The blob still oozing toward the floor was the spaghetti. The small, dumpling like heap at the bottom was the meatballs.

“What next?”

“She said, ‘Are you hungry?'” McNiff grimaced. “She must've been in shock—”

“Obviously. And you said …?”

“No.”

“Typical.”

“Typical?”

“Vintage McNiff.”

“Well …” The bishop seemed to be regaining his spirit. “… are you coming in, or what?”

“I've come all this way.…” Koesler, closing the door carefully behind him, entered and dropped his hat and coat on a nearby chair.

McNiff, as not only an auxiliary bishop but also head of this institution, would be expected to have a large suite. And so he did. The quarters only gave the appearance of confinement. McNiff was, to mix a metaphor, a pack rat, squirreling away nearly everything he had ever acquired. This ample room was a jungle containing too much—and badly mixed at that—furniture, as well as books, papers, knickknacks, and statuettes everywhere.

“You're not as sloppy,” Koesler observed wryly, “as you used to be before they made you a bishop.”

McNiff did not respond to the heavyhanded irony. The two had exchanged barbs too often through the years to take them personally.

McNiff shuffled to his favored chair. En route, he picked up a box of Kleenex, which he placed on the arm of the chair as he settled in. “Sit, down, tall, dark, and tall.” His deliberate decision never to use the word handsome in reference to Koesler was another of their playful insults.

Koesler tossed the paraphernalia from one chair to another, then eased himself into the spot he'd cleared.

As his host blew his nose, Koesler studied him with amusement. McNiff, at approximately five feet six, was a solid nine inches shorter than Koesler, who occasionally referred to him as Little Pat.

Although they had been classmates, McNiff was one year older—the result of his failing the English portion of the seminary's entrance exam, in the summer of '41.

After assiduously cramming for the English test, McNiff, the following summer, took the test for the tenth, rather than the ninth grade. He overlooked the fact that those who had entered in the ninth grade already had had a demanding year of Latin—a subject not taught in his public school—under their belts.

Since McNiff now qualified in English but not in Latin, he was accepted into the ninth grade—which is how he had become a classmate of Koesler's.

Vintage McNiff.

The bishop blew his nose again, then asked, “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Not really. I want to be clearheaded so I can pay close attention to whatever you've got in mind.”

“Fine. I haven't got anything but good, refreshing water.”

“Then I guessed right, didn't I?”

It was common knowledge—McNiff did not keep it a secret—that he was a recovering alcoholic. He'd been on the wagon for many years, and was rigidly faithful to the famous twelve-step program.

From his mid-twenties to his mid-sixties, McNiff had been what he'd always wanted to be—a parish priest. Then, seemingly out of the blue, he was named a bishop. Endless clerical gossip followed, speculating as to why this should happen to him at his age, in his state of health and with his unexceptional background.

Had he remained a simple priest he would have been eligible for retirement in a few years. Without the glitches in his seminary entrance tests, he would have qualified for Senior Priest Status a year before Koesler. As bishop, he now took on another five years in the active ministry.

He had no “Roman connection.” He had not spent a moment of study in any Vatican educational institution. And increasingly, the Roman connection carried ever more weight.

Perhaps most important there was his health—or lack thereof. He'd had several heart attacks. He'd had a quadruple bypass. And he had a stomach aneurysm that could pop at any time and conceivably end his life that quickly.

Priests and concerned laity could speculate to their hearts' content, but the fact remained: Father Patrick R. E. McNiff, sixty-five years old, a Roman orphan, with serious medical problems, had been consecrated a bishop. That was that.

Of course, Father Koesler had attended the ceremony—at one time referred to as consecration, more recently called simply ordination. Blessed Sacrament Cathedral was jammed with priests (mostly older ones), laity (mostly members of parishes McNiff had served over the years), and, of course, a few bishops.

Father McNiff became a bishop the way any priest becomes a bishop: in gradual crescendos. He was anointed, blessed, given symbolic implements, and attired in layered episcopal vestments. All the while, masters of ceremony, as well as other bishops, hovered about the fledgling. With all that going on, someone as vertically challenged as Pat McNiff from time to time disappeared from view.

Finally, with most of the prayers said and most of the vestments in place, the principal ordaining bishop positioned the miter on the new bishop's head and handed him the crosier—known irreverently as the walking stick—and Patrick R. E. McNiff was a bishop.

Then the masters of ceremony and the ordaining bishops stepped back from the newly outfitted bishop as if to say, “Look what we've created.”

At that point, in this specific ceremony, Father Koesler, from his distant vantage point, was struck by the resemblance of Bishop McNiff to a small, ornate statue—perhaps the Infant of Prague.

The new bishop did not wait long for his assignment. He was named rector of St. Joseph's Seminary.

And then and there, at least as far as Father Koesler was concerned, the bishop fell out of circulation. McNiff was swept up in his new responsibilities. That and continual meetings prevented him from maintaining prior friendships. Since becoming a bishop and a rector over five years ago, McNiff had not—unlike the Good Old Days—shared a single meal, or palled around, or recreated with Father Koesler.

During infrequent phone conversations, as often as Koesler fished for the seemingly secretive reasons for McNiff's elevation to the episcopacy, the bishop firmly evaded any semblance of a relevant reply. Thus, Koesler, on his return from the cruise, had been surprised by the summons to meet at the seminary.

But he would not hurry McNiff. The ball was in the bishop's court; he would serve when he was ready.

“I suppose,” McNiff said, “you're wondering why I asked you to come see me.”

“You suppose correctly, Bish—uh, Excellency … uh, Pat … uh—what the hell do you want me to call you, anyway?”

“Pat will do just fine.” McNiff looked at him in curious amusement. “I'm surprised you had any doubt. After what you used to tell me all the time …”

“What was that?”

“You don't remember?” McNiff chuckled, then made a face. “You used to say that if you had a dog that looked like me, you'd shave his ass and teach him to walk backward.”

“Oh, yeah …” With that youthful insult in mind, Koesler studied his friend more intently. The face squeezed into a map of Ireland, did, he thought, bear some resemblance to a Pekinese. “That's history.” Koesler inclined his head in a semblance of a slight bow. “Your present dignity demands greater respect—at least face-to-face.

“But,” he went on before McNiff could respond, “I'm much more interested in what's happened to you than what you want with me. Everybody in Detroit, Catholic or not—maybe everybody anywhere who knows about your appointment—wants to know—has been wanting to know for the past five years—why you were made a bishop at your age.

“So, ol' buddy, that's what I want to know—not what you want of me.

“After all, I'm retired—as you should be. It's not likely I'll do anything I don't want to. I mean, we didn't promise obedience to auxiliary bishops … just to the Ordinary.”

McNiff blew his nose again. “It's not without precedent, you know,” he said after a moment.

“Oh?”

“Fulton Sheen was in his seventies when he was given Rochester, his first diocese. And he quit after three years. Then there was Pope John Twenty-third, who was an old man when they elected him. And you can bet your bottom dollar
I
'm not going to get a diocese.”

“And they're not going to elect you Pope.”

McNiff winked.

“So, the question remains: Why? Why was little Father Pat McNiff made a bishop?”

“I intend to tell you, Bobby. The answers to why I asked you here and why I'm an auxiliary bishop are related.”

“They
are?”
Koesler was incredulous. “Tell me about it.” He could not help feeling elated that he was about to become privy to a tightly kept secret.

“What we're going to talk about now is just between us,” McNiff stated firmly.

Koesler shrugged. “If that's the way you want it.”

“That's the way it's got to be.”

“Did you have to get someone's permission to tell me?”

McNiff grabbed for another Kleenex and quickly raised it to his nose. But the anticipated sneeze didn't come. He shook his head. “No, not exactly. I know I can trust you.…

“Besides,” he said after a moment, “if you agree, you'll be involved in this thing.”

Three

Patty Donnelly had never been more embarrassed, and it showed. She was blushing profoundly.

She feared she was assuming some of the worst masculine traits. Balancing a loaded tray against a door that was most probably going to be opened! A typical male approach.