The Good Shepherd (42 page)

Skimming rapidly through the rest of the Constitution, he saw that hardly any part of the mass remained as it was a decade ago. The Pope said that he hoped this new mass meant the end of experimentation while obeying the order of the Second Vatican Council to leave room for “legitimate variations and adaptations.” However, all variations and adaptations must be submitted by local episcopal conferences to the Holy See for approval.

Again, Matthew Mahan found his jaw clenching. Why? After telling his fellow bishops repeatedly that they were his brothers, Paul was treating them like children again. Roman law, Roman legalism, couldn’t they see how much damage it had already done to the Church? Didn’t they realize, as old Davey was fond of pointing out, that the ancient Romans had gone out of their way to allow as much local autonomy as possible in their conquered territories? These new Romans were the heirs of Justinian, the Byzantine relic of the original Empire, centralized into a frozen defensive against a hostile world. It was not the way to run a church that only a few years before had gathered her bishops from all corners of the world to proclaim themselves in favor of holy freedom. Cronin was right. Brick by brick, the Curia was building a mausoleum around the Vatican Council II, entombing it in traditional architecture that proclaimed business as usual.

Matthew Mahan snapped his briefcase shut and thrust it under his seat. Forget it, forget it, he told himself. You are Cardinal Mahan now. Aside from your recent vow, where did you get this grandiose vision of yourself as the reformer of the Church? If some series of miracles put you on the papal throne, perhaps you could begin to take your ideas seriously. Perhaps you might reasonably assume that God was sending them to you for a purpose.

Back in the economy-class cabin, Dennis McLaughlin and Bishop Cronin were looking rapidly through a diary that their now mutual friend Goggin had smuggled out of the Vatican Library, photocopied, and returned. It was the private journal of Cardinal Antonelli, the Secretary of State during Vatican Council I. He had opposed the council and deplored the idea of infallibility, but had had to swallow his objections under the imperious commands of Pio Nono. In revenge, Antonelli kept a scrupulous record of the Pope’s constant efforts to control the council. Cronin was wildly excited by the material. But the more Dennis read, the more uneasy he became.

What were they really proving? Old Davey hated Pio Nono with such a passion. Anything he could find to blacken his character was automatically wonderful. But did the evidence prove what Cronin was hoping to prove? Just because Pio Nono was an SOB who wanted his own way - that is, infallibility at all costs - did that really invalidate Vatican Council I? There was not as much freedom as there should have been at Vatican I. But there was still a lot of it. The opponents of infallibility had fought ferociously against the declaration. There seemed to have been as much freedom of debate of the council as there was in the U. S. Congress.

If infallibility was to be denied on scholarly grounds, the challenge had to come from another direction. It had to include the history of Vatican I - and go beyond it. It had to stress the too often ignored fact that Vatican I was an incompleted council, disrupted by the outbreak of war between France and Prussia, and finally dispersed by the capitulation of Rome to Italian armies that had invaded the papal states to make Italy a nation at last. Thus the first Vatican Council had never really had a chance to address itself to the relationship between the bishops and the infallible Pope, and Vatican II, as Matthew Mahan had recently told him, was repeatedly frustrated by curial and papal maneuvers in its attempts to tackle this fundamental problem. Perhaps the council fathers of Vatican I had never intended infallibility to enhance the administrative and canonical powers of the papacy. The fathers of Vatican II had clearly demonstrated their hostility to these powers.

Dennis turned to discuss this insight with Cronin. The old man’s head nodded toward his chest. For a moment, Dennis was amused. Rome had worn Davey out. An odd droop at the corner of his mouth suddenly troubled Dennis. “Bishop, are you all right?” he asked.

Instead of answering, Cronin fell forward, scattering papers off the tray in front of him. He was sliding toward the floor when Dennis seized him by the arm and shoulder and lifted him back into the seat. He was shocked by how little the old man weighed. “Bishop,” he said, frightened now.

“It feels like some blackguard angel friend of Pio Nono - clubbed me from behind. Wouldn’t you know -”

“Dr. Reed -”

Dennis looked frantically around the plane. No sign of Bill Reed in the rear. He bolted into the forward compartment and found him sitting on the arm of the first row aisle seat chatting with Matthew Mahan. “Bishop Cronin - he’s fainted,” Dennis whispered. The two men rushed into the economy class ahead of him. Cronin was slumped in his seat, his head turned toward the window, his breath coming in noisy gasps. Mr. and Mrs. McAvoy hovered over him with exclamations of dismay on their lips.

“By God,” Cronin gasped as Reed pushed the McAvoys aside and ripped away the white collar at his throat, “I sound - worse than you, Dennis. Maybe it’s one of your pills I need.”

“Take it easy. Take it easy,” said Bill Reed in a voice that struck Dennis as surprisingly gentle. While he spoke, he was taking Cronin’s pulse.

“If ‘twas easy,” said Cronin, “it wouldn’t be - so hard.”

His head flopped to one side, and his eyes rolled weirdly back until only their whites were visible.

“Cerebral thrombosis,” muttered Bill Reed. “Get the stewardess. Pull up the arms of these seats.”

The stewardess was already standing beside Dennis. She quickly pulled up the arms, turning the three seats into a narrow bed. Blankets and pillows were snatched from the overhead compartments. Bill Reed knelt beside the old man, his fingers still on his wrist.

“Is there anything you can do, Bill?” Matthew Mahan asked in a choked voice.

Reed shook his head. “You’d better pray.”

Matthew Mahan stood in the doorway between the two compartments and said, “Bishop Cronin, our old and dear friend, seems to have had a stroke. He’s gravely ill. Please join me in prayers for him.”

Dennis stared numbly at the rosary in the Cardinal’s big hand. It occurred to him that he did not even own a rosary. But he could not think of a better way to pray for Bishop Cronin.

“Our Father,” Matthew Mahan began.

“Give us this day our daily bread -” responded the voices of the pilgrims, Dennis’s among them.

“Hail Mary,” said the Cardinal, and once more came the low mournful response from over 100 voices, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, Amen.”

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” said Matthew Mahan again, his voice faltering ever so slightly.

Once more the response. In the tiny interval between Matthew Mahan’s part of the prayer and the reply, Dennis heard the harsh, painful sound of Cronin’s breathing.

Five more times the Hail Mary was said. More than halfway through the first decade of the rosary. Dennis McLaughlin stared at the black beads, the dangling silver crucifix at the end of them. Bill Reed stood up and said, “You’d better give him the last rites, Matt.”

“Get my briefcase, Dennis.”

Numbly he obeyed. By the time he returned, they had finished another Hail Mary. Matthew Mahan handed him the rosary, took the briefcase, and said, “Father McLaughlin will continue the rosary. I am going to give Bishop Cronin the last rites.”

Slowly, in the silence that was not really a silence, that was filled as it had been from the beginning by the jet engines’ pervasive throb, Matthew Mahan removed Cronin’s shoes and socks. There was a hole in the sole of the right sock. Dennis’s eyes blurred when he saw it. He fingered the rosary dazedly for a moment, then counted seven smaller beads of the first decade, pressed his thumb and forefinger on the seventh bead, and began, “Hail Mary . . .”

Mournfully the pilgrims responded with the same plea, to be remembered at the hour of their deaths. Matthew Mahan had the holy oil out now, olive oil in a small silver vial. Solemnly, he anointed Bishop Cronin’s eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, and feet, saying each time he placed his thumb on the old man’s body, “By this holy anointing and His most loving mercy, may the Lord pardon you for any sins you have committed.” Dennis could not hear him say the words. He only saw his lips moving. As the Cardinal finished anointing the feet, Dennis saw Cronin’s eyes flutter. The rest of the plane responded to the tenth and final Hail Mary of the decade. Dennis paused, and he heard Cronin whisper hoarsely, “The Church, Matt, the Church. The poor dear suffering Church. You must speak out - you must save it from them -”

Matthew Mahan’s response was so extraordinary, Dennis’s lips froze on the word “Our” as he began the second decade of the rosary. The big man bent his head low and without a trace of hesitation or embarrassment lifted the small, frail old man into his arms. Dennis had no idea how long he held him close. Time seemed to stop. As the Cardinal slowly lowered his friend back on the seats, Dennis managed to continue the rosary. “- Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done -”

Matthew Mahan stood up and asked Bill Reed a question. The doctor imperceptibly shook his head. Cronin was watching them. He saw and understood. Only then did Dennis see that he had a cross in his hand - the Cardinal’s pectoral cross. With both hands Cronin raised it to his lips and then rested it on his chest, his eyes closed.

For the next hour, Dennis continued to recite the rosary while Matthew Mahan knelt beside his old friend. The shadows deepened inside the jet as the sun outran them and dwindled unseen below the western horizon. They were scheduled to land at eight o’clock U.S. time. For a while, death and darkness seemed synonymous. The whole world seemed to be dying. Everyone in the plane seemed about to be swallowed by death’s immense dwindling, draining emptiness. Only the plane, the thing of metal and wire that felt nothing, seemed alive. The Cardinal was still kneeling upright, his head bowed. He was holding Cronin’s right hand now. The bishop’s other hand still clutched the gold pectoral cross.

As Dennis reached the final Hail Mary of the seventh or eighth decade of the rosary, the Cardinal stood up and signaled him to stop. “I think he’s gone, Bill,” he said.

Dr. Reed bent low over the shrouded body, illuminated only by the single ray of the overhead reading light. He pressed his fingertips against Father Cronin’s throat, held his wrist for a moment, and nodded. He began to cover his face with the blanket. Matthew Mahan stopped him. “No, please don’t cover him, Bill. Somehow that makes death seem shameful -”

“I’m sorry, but he has to be covered. We have the other passengers to consider. This could create hysteria.”

It was the stewardess speaking. For the first time, Dennis saw her. She was a baby-faced blonde with hair puffed out in curls on both sides of her head. Cardinal Mahan did not explode as Dennis feared. “Of course, of course,” he said, patting her shoulder. “But first we’d like to say a few prayers. There’s nothing against that in the regulations, is there?”

“No - of course not, Your Eminence. I guess - I’m more upset than anyone. I’ve never had this happen before.” She looked past him at Cronin and then turned her face away. “I’ve never seen anyone die before.”

Matthew Mahan took both her hands in his. “It’s all right, it’s all right. Sit down now and let me say a few words.”

He stationed himself in the doorway between the two cabins once more. “What has been until this moment a joyous experience has become a time of sorrow, and for no one more than me. I have lost one of my best, my oldest, friends. But even in this sorrow, I hope you can join me in finding a different kind of joy. David Cronin lived and died a priest. His thoughts were forever turned to others, forever offering them advice, help, love. Everyone who knew him came away richer in spirit. He brought the same self-sacrificing love to the Church. He never stopped thinking of ways to make it more holy, more responsive to the needs and the hopes and the sorrows of men and women everywhere. God grant us all the grace to follow his example.

“In a way, we have all been privileged to be present at his death. He met God’s summons with a faith that abolished fear. I would like you to come from your seats one or two at a time and kneel beside him with me, and say a personal prayer.”

One by one they came and knelt beside Matthew Mahan. Many of the women and some of the men wept, although, as far as Dennis knew, they did not know Bishop Cronin well. Death itself was enough to make them weep.

By the time the last one - Mike Furia - knelt beside the Cardinal and whispered, “I know how you feel, Matt,” it was totally dark outside. Matthew Mahan remained on his knees, gazing sorrowfully down at the silent, shadowed face until the pilot announced that they were beginning their descent.

They landed smoothly. As they taxied to the terminal, Dennis saw an ambulance waiting for them, its red dome light flashing. Bill Reed joined two airport policemen, who took Bishop Cronin’s body off the plane.

In the terminal, the pilgrims clustered around Matthew Mahan for a subdued farewell. Photographers and reporters swirled around them, snapping pictures and luring individuals and couples away from the group for swift interviews.

Jack Murphy invited the Cardinal to a V.I.P. lounge where TV cameras were set up. As they walked toward that destination, the newspaper reporters swooped around Matthew Mahan, firing questions. Did he discuss the state of the Church with Pope Paul? Was the Pope critical of the American role in the Vietnam War? Was there any hint that Rome might abolish clerical celibacy? The Cardinal parried these queries lightly. Then red-haired Tom Sweeney of the
Garden Square Journal
asked him: “Do you have any comment on the recent revelations about your finances and personal life?”

“What are you talking about?”

“There was a series of articles published during the past week in the Hard Times
Herald
- the underground newspaper.”

“About me?”

“Yes. Quoting a lot of confidential information leaked by someone in the chancery office.”

Already dazed by the intense emotions of Bishop Cronin’s death, Dennis McLaughlin now found himself numb. Leo, his brother Leo, had not waited to find out the truth. He had not waited. The truth was not important.

A black reporter was asking the Cardinal what he thought about the reparations issue.

“Reparations? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A fellow named Forman, a black man, walked into Riverside Church in New York today and demanded $500,000 in reparations for the injustices blacks have suffered in America. Father Vincent Disalvo’s Council for Peace and Freedom has backed the idea 100 percent. They’re demanding $50,000 from you.”

“Are you kidding me?” Matthew Mahan asked.

“Straight dope, Your Eminence, so help me. Father Disalvo says that, in the light of the revelations about your personal finances, it should be a million.”

Matthew Mahan laughed wryly. “If he can find 50,000 lying around in my bank account, he’s welcome to it.”

Don’t say that.
The words spoke themselves in Dennis McLaughlin’s mind. But he could not say them aloud.

“Can we quote you on that, Your Eminence?”

“Of course.”

“Does this mean you endorse the principle of reparations?”

“No. Of course not.”

“What do you think of the idea?”

“Now wait a minute. You people know where I stand as far as black Americans are concerned. I am behind their aspirations. I have tried to do everything in my power to help them move ahead. But this tactic is bad judgment and bad history.”

“Then you won’t consider the idea under any circumstances?”

By now they were only voices. Dennis had lost track of who was asking the questions. The joy in their eyes was blatantly sadistic. They did not care in the least that they were dealing with an exhausted, emotionally battered man.

As they entered the V.I.P. lounge, Dennis saw his brother Leo slumped in a chair just beyond the glare of the television lights. He was wearing his usual revolutionary outfit, a pair of muddy hiking boots, blue jeans, and a khaki jacket. Something about his smile disturbed Dennis. It was so brainlessly mocking. Almost immediately, he saw himself arguing in a new, more serious way with Leo. Something had happened to him in Rome, something very important.

Before the battery of microphones, Cardinal Mahan was telling Jack Murphy, who was serving as pool reporter for the city’s TV and radio stations, how glad he was to be home. They discussed the sadness of Bishop Cronin’s untimely death. The Cardinal said that Bishop Cronin’s last words to him had been full of concern for the Church. It was another reason why he had come home with renewed dedication to the people of the archdiocese. After a few more sentences in the same vein, Murphy introduced Mayor O’Connor, who welcomed the Cardinal home and said some effusive, totally insincere things about his importance to the “spiritual progress” of the city. The Cardinal replied warmly, and the ceremony was over. Dennis found himself almost ridiculously grateful for television’s superficial approach to news.

“What the devil are they talking about?” the Cardinal asked as the limousine rolled toward the city. “These articles about my finances?”

Confess? Dennis asked himself. Confess now? No, it would only make the Cardinal look foolish. Mike Furia was sitting beside him in the car. The McAvoys were sitting on the jump seats. Bill Reed was sitting in the front with Eddie Johnson. Why embarrass him when you can admit the truth in private and disappear quietly. No need to tell the world, even the friendly world, that His Eminence had naively employed a betrayer in his own office.

In the episcopal residence, Dennis McLaughlin was distressed to see Matthew Mahan head for the office the moment that he put down his bags. “Call Joe Cohane,” he said, looking at the carpet of mail about a foot thick on his desk. “Ask him what he knows about this series attacking me.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Dennis said in a leaden voice. “I can tell you. My brother wrote it. Here are the clips. He gave them to me at the airport.”

Matthew Mahan sat down in the familiar leather chair behind his desk and began to read them. The author’s by-line, Leo the Great, made him almost smile. But that was the last kind thought he was able to summon for Leo the Great. The columns were sneering attacks on the way he ran the archdiocese. When it came to money, wrote Leo, Cardinal Mahan “behaved remarkably like a Renaissance prince or a Borgia pope.” Leo described the “outrageous sums” he gave to “favorites” who were working as missionaries - really colonialist emissaries of American power - in Brazil. Other columns focused on His Eminence’s personal finances which were described as “a smelly mystery.” No accounting was ever made of them. But the cost of running the episcopal residence came to $32,567.80 last year and “travel expenses” for His Eminence came to $26,896.50. Equally “staggering sums” were funneled to his seven nieces and nephews who had charge accounts at all the city’s department stores paid by the chancery office. In fact, tongues often wagged in the chancery about the Cardinal’s long and frequent visits to his widowed sister-in-law who was “an attractive matron in her forties.” Then there was the svelte divorcée, Mary Shea, whom the Cardinal visited regularly in Rome. As for Matthew Mahan’s pastoral rating, Leo the Great found it almost as low as his finances and his personal morals. He was pictured as a conscienceless careerist, in secret disagreement with the Pope on birth control, but greedy enough to sell his convictions for the price of a red hat. At heart, he was an authoritarian of the worst kind - interested only in maintaining his personal power.

Complicated things began happening in Matthew Mahan’s mind and body. One part of himself, no, something more total, one version of himself, a man he had come to accept rather complacently and even to cherish until he went to Rome ten days ago, filled the room with roaring rage. Another self, a vision not yet real, faced Leo McLaughlin with tears on his cheeks and asked him why he inflicted these wounds. Both the version and the vision were useless, images out of chaos. He looked up at Dennis McLaughlin’s stricken face. Echoes of the anguish that had erupted when he knelt before Pope Paul to accept his ring vibrated in his flesh. “Dennis,” he asked, “do many people know who Leo the Great is?”

Dennis nodded and said, “Can I sit down?”

He slumped into one of the armchairs in front of the desk.
“I - I
want to confess something that will - probably end our relationship. Those columns are my fault. I knew how he felt about you. I - may have encouraged it. May have even caused it. I mean - I was the older brother. I was the one who filled him with bitterness about the Church, America, everything.”

Matthew Mahan saw pain, essential pain, on Dennis McLaughlin’s face. “Maybe I was changing when I came here. Or it started here. I don’t know. I didn’t really know what I felt about you until - until Rome. I had visions of this happening - with an exchange of mutual insults. And now -” Dennis shook his head, his eyes wet. “All I can say is I’m sorry.”

“Wait a minute. Visions of what happening?”

“Of your firing me.”

“I’m not firing you.” Matthew Mahan was pleased by the sound of his own voice. It was sad, calm, perhaps even gentle. Maybe that roaring rager, that primary self, could be conquered yet. “You and your brother are not one and the same person, Dennis. No matter how much you love him, don’t start thinking of him that way. I went through absolute hell with my brother because I let him maneuver me into that frame of mind. A man is not condemned for what his brother or his friend does or says. He shouldn’t condemn himself either.”

Should he tell him the whole truth?
Dennis McLaughlin asked himself miserably. No, whispered a voice that was probably the instinct for self-preservation, but it utilized some very effective higher arguments. Tell him everything, and you have destroyed your chance to prove to yourself and to this man that you love him.

The truth, Dennis, time for the whole truth, murmured an opposing voice lancing deftly through the usual ironic smoke screen to the quivering self.

“It’s worse than that,” Dennis said. “I gave him things. From your files. I wrote him letters suggesting - things.”

Too late, thought Matthew Mahan, too late. You had sensed a chasm between you. But was it really too late? There was still the knowledge, the memory of what had happened at the cemetery in Nettuno, the moment in the elevator after lunch with the class of 39.
They didn’t understand. I did.
Matthew Mahan lit a cigarette. The match trembled slightly as it approached the white paper tube. Dennis McLaughlin found it easier to watch the trembling flame than to look the Cardinal in the face.

“Give me ten minutes to think this over,” Matthew Mahan said.

Dennis nodded and silently departed. Matthew Mahan sat in his swivel chair for a moment, staring down at the smoking cigarette between his fingers. He started to stub it out in the ashtray, then suddenly crumpled it into a ripped, broken little pile of tobacco and paper. Rage came storming up through his body into his arms, his hands. He raised his big clenched fists and brought them down on his antique table desk with a tremendous crash.

Call him back, flay him alive, whispered a voice.

Desperately he prayed. Lord, give me wisdom, give me the grace.

For another five minutes, he paced up and down the office, struggling for self-control. Slowly, the rage ebbed from his body. Finally, he was able to light another cigarette, sit down at the desk, and call Dennis back into the room.

“I think what hurts me the most about these,” he said, picking up the sheaf of columns and letting it flop back on his desk like a dead snake, “is the stuff about me giving money to my sister-in-law. It can’t be more than 3,000 or 4,000 a year. When old Hogan went to the Bahamas each year, he always stopped off in Palm Beach on the way back. He only had one relative, a niece, a single girl who had a very good job as an executive secretary. But the old fool would spend $10,000 or $15,000 on her. He’d buy her a whole new wardrobe, the latest styles. One year for Christmas he gave her a mink coat that was worth 10,000 all by itself. Year in, year out, he spent at least 30,000 on her. And she didn’t need it!” Matthew Mahan sighed and shook his head. He was sounding silly. He was too hurt, too tired, to think straight. “I guess it’s an old story. You tell yourself you’re doing better, a lot better than the previous regime. You never stop to think about how you look to the next generation. Until the day they cut off his head, Louis XVI probably thought he was doing a better job than old Louis XV, right? Poor old Paul probably tells himself he’s doing better than John in some ways - and Pacelli in other ways.”

He tried to smile, and failed. Dennis McLaughlin shuddered inwardly. The man was suffering so visibly, simply witnessing it was a punishment.

“Cohane will want to fire Leo for these,” Matthew Mahan said, fingering the tattered columns.

“He’s already quit. As far as that goes, I’m glad he’s out of it. He’s too involved with the Church. It’s almost - sick.”

“For a layman, you mean,” Matthew Mahan said with a tired smile. “It’s interesting that an apostle of the younger generation like yourself should reach that conclusion. I’ve had the same feeling myself about other people. Then I hear a voice reminding me that we’re always begging laymen to get more involved. But ultimately I’m afraid there’s a limit. I think it has something to do with priesthood. A layman can’t understand that idea, really, not the depths of it. No matter how much we try to get in step and join the twentieth century, we’re still men apart. There’s a terrible loneliness in that truth, Dennis, but maybe there’s a little glory, too. Our kind of glory.”

Matthew Mahan took a deep drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out. “How are you feeling?”