The Prudence of the Flesh (3 page)

On that enigmatic note she left him, and Father Dowling stared after her as if he had just moved some small fraction of the way into the equivocal position in which a woman's accusation had put Gregory Barrett. Of course, Marie was of an age, and whatever bloom she had known in youth had long since faded away—but we live in odd times when public sensuality of a kind that would have shamed the pagan Romans goes hand in hand with puritanical moralizing.

He went back to his study and had another pipe.

Amos Cadbury had spent a long lifetime in the practice of law and had become a student of his profession's history. Anton Chroust's two-volume account of the legal profession in the United States had for him the added attraction of having been written by one of his old professors, but it was to Cicero that Amos went for some rough parallel to his own situation. As the republic dissolved and gave way to Caesar, Cicero had to plead for justice in a society where justice was only a word, and that largely the word of one man. Of course, it was the oldest challenge of all: how to do well in circumstances that often leave everything to be desired.

Such thoughts had enabled Amos to continue into advanced old age until he was now one of the venerables of the Chicago area bar, many of whose members he could no longer admire. The parlous condition of the legal profession was one thing—a comparatively minor thing, Amos would think in the privacy of his own mind—but what was happening to the Catholic priesthood in the media was a grave matter indeed. In his lifetime, Amos had known many priests. Many he had liked, and others he could only venerate for their office, but never to his knowledge had he known a libertine priest of the kind that was now almost daily thrust upon the public. It was so painful a subject he had never even discussed it with Roger Dowling, although the pastor of St. Hilary's was Amos's favorite counterexample of the tragic clerics now being paraded before the prurient public eye.

Amos had never dreamt he would be professionally involved in this tragedy, but when Robert Barfield asked him in the bar of the University Club if he would help the chancery in this case, he could scarcely refuse.

“My first thought was to include his in a cluster of cases we are negotiating.” Barfield spoke into his brandy as if a microphone might be hidden in the balloon glass.

“Negotiating.”

“It is surprising how money soothes the victims. But Madeline Murphy was not interested in money.”

No wonder Barfield was known as Bartering Bob. His idea of law was to avoid court as much as possible, and a jury like the plague. In the case of abusive priests, this might have seemed the counsel of prudence.

“What did Barrett think of negotiating?”

“He refused. He didn't even hesitate. Maybe he is innocent.”

“Maybe.”

“Doesn't the accused always protest his innocence?”

“Would you?”

Barfield allowed a slow smile to form on his wide mouth. “That's a logical trap, isn't it?”

“A variation on the Liar's Paradox?”

Barfield sent him what he had on Gregory Barrett, and then Amos met the accused. In the meantime, he had listened to a number of his radio programs and had been surprised by the tone of his oral essays on authors and books he loved. The program was unashamedly personal. If Barrett always offered the basis for his likings, he never elevated this estimate into an absolute standard.
“De gustibus,”
he once began, and then quickly corrected himself, putting the thought into English. On another occasion, when he might have said
corruptio optimi pessima
, he offered a beautiful poetic equivalent:
Lilies that fester smell worse than weeds.
Before he met him, Amos wondered if Gregory Barrett had found the appropriate motto for himself and other shepherds who had turned into wolves.

“How long were you a priest?” Amos had begun, all business.

“Oh, one is always that, you know.”

“You believe that?”

“It's not a personal opinion.”

“And yet you left.”

“You must remember what it was like, after the council. It was hard not to be influenced by all that commotion. Nuns were leaving, classmate after classmate left, it became a flood. I began to
wonder if I would be the last one left and have to turn out the lights.”

Amos thought about that. It was difficult not to see the parallel with his own misgivings about the legal profession. The thought of retiring to his cabin on the shores of a Wisconsin lake was powerfully attractive. Cicero would have been well advised to do what Horace did: get out of town, away from the wicked city. Horace managed to die a natural death. Barrett made his leaving sound like something less than desertion.

“Now, this woman, Madeline Murphy. You don't remember her?”

“I am certain I never so much as knew her.”

“She was a parishioner at St. Bavo's when you were an assistant pastor there.”

“I must have been shown a recent photograph.”

“How so?”

“I thought she must have been a child all those years ago.”

“She was sixteen.”

“Sixteen!” Barrett sat back.

The woman had said it all began when she went to confession to then-Father Barrett. That would have added sacrilege to mere moral turpitude. Many of the current accusations against the clergy made Boccaccio seem deficient in imagination.

“And I am guilty until proved innocent?”

“It is difficult to prove a negative.”

“Then all it takes is an accusation. The chancery lawyer actually advised me to come to terms.”

“I know. Apparently the woman was unwilling.”

“I would have thought that was all she wanted, money.”

“I understand Barfield's suggestion. Keeping such things out
of the media is a way of protecting the Church.”

“And of encouraging blackmail.”

“It isn't always blackmail.”

“Well, it is this time. You say my innocence can't be proved. At least it can be asserted. Even if she were paid off, there is no guarantee of future silence.”

“She would have to agree to that in any settlement.”

“And what penalty if she later broke that agreement?”

Amos found Barrett difficult to understand, but, of course, there was the enormous obstacle of realizing that the expensively dressed and distinguished middle-aged man was in fact a priest, a status that could not be removed by laicization.
Thou art a priest forever.
That made Barrett as much a priest as Father Dowling. It turned out that they had been classmates.

“So you know Roger,” Barrett said.

“I thought of him because he is a canon lawyer.”

“You don't imagine that this accusation will be tried by the Church?”

Once, of course, that would have been the proper venue of such a charge, but the churches had long since appealed to the civil courts to adjudicate internal matters, and that had made the civic arm less reluctant to look the other way when clerical misbehavior became known. He told Barrett that he would consult with Father Dowling and then they would meet again. “Maybe I'll go see Roger myself.”

“I was about to suggest that.”

So it was that Amos Cadbury got involved in a scandal that had caused him and the laity so much anguish. The bishops seemed
to have but two recourses in dealing with accusations against priests: to the civil law and to psychological counseling. It was the latter that had prompted them to cover up for erring clerics for so long, sending them off to clinics to be talked to and redefined in therapeutic terms. That many of the offenders returned to active duty and their old practices did not seem to dim the confidence of many prelates that a wayward priest was simply a mind in need of a few adjustments through counseling. No wonder the whole sad business had finally ended in the criminal courts. Now the bishops spoke of civic prosecution as if it were an arm of their own governance. The one word that was never mentioned was “sin.” Nor did the bishops seem to realize their own responsibility for what had happened. However small a percentage of the priestly population these sexual predators were, one of them was too many, yet some of the most egregious seemed enabled by the treatment they had received from their spiritual superiors. The bishops' response was now something called zero tolerance. This policy effectively put all priests under suspicion and elevated bishops high above the fray. Yet there had also been a few bishops whose pasts turned out to be vulnerable to accusation—a few, but was the percentage of bishops lower than that of the priests? No wonder it was tempting to imagine a flying squad of Swiss Guards swooping down and carrying all the offenders off to the Castel San Angelo, where oubliettes awaited them.

Those who saw Ned Bunting prominent in the aisles of St. Bavo's Church on Sunday at the ten o'clock Mass, imperiously signaling latecomers into the front pews, taking up the collection with something of the insistence of the IRS, would scarcely have realized that this restless usher was an aspiring author. It was, of course, a well-kept secret. The only person Ned had ever confided in was fellow parishioner Gloria Daley.

“What have you written?”

“I doubt you would have read it.”

“That dirty?”

He winked and looked away. Being thought of as a racy author was better than not being thought of as an author at all. Should he show Gloria some of his stuff? He frowned away the thought. It wasn't only that she might expect steamy fare and be disappointed. Ned's experience of letting others read his things was not encouraging.

Fifteen years ago, when he had decided that he would stop just thinking about it and get to work writing, he had sent a manuscript off for evaluation. For a fee, of course. The first evaluation
simply paraphrased what he had written and advised him to read Faulkner, and that was that. No suggestion at all that they would try to market the story, although that promise had seemed implicit in the advertisement that had induced Ned to enclose a fifty-dollar check with his manuscript. The evaluation ended with the suggestion that a deeper and more technical evaluation could perhaps be helpful. Ned took the bait. Before he was done, he had spent five hundred dollars and his manuscript was no nearer to being published. He had rewritten the story four times, following different and conflicting advice. Now when he looked back at his original version, he was sure it was better than any of the revisions. He swore never to be taken in again.

During the long disappointing years, he had kept his promise. He only broke it last spring when the notice of a writers' meeting announced that evaluations of one's work by editors and agents attending would be available. Ned looked over his collected works—he now had thirty-one completed stories in his files—picked what he considered the best, which was also the most recent, and sent it to the conference organizers with his check.

At the meeting, he was scheduled for an hour with Max Zubiri, an editor who had been on the staffs of a dozen magazines and was now a book editor in a famous old house. For a half minute after Ned sat across from him, Zubiri stared at him silently.

“This your first story?” he finally said.

“First! There are dozens more where that came from.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“If this was your first try, it would be easier for you to face the fact that you will never be a writer.”

Ned was more stunned than angry. “You call this an evaluation!”

“Oh, we'll go over what you've written.”

Maybe the Last Judgment will be like that, but Ned was sure it would be easier than the clinical way in which Zubiri pointed out the deficiencies in what he had written. The pages of the manuscript were covered with the editor's comments.

“But that's just technical stuff. Maybe someday you could learn what the hell a story is. It won't matter. Is English your native tongue?”

Ned managed to get to his feet, but no appropriately crushing response came to mind. His brain seemed to be on fire, all his hopes going up in the flames of his anger. He turned and got to the door of the room.