Defenders of the Faith

Defenders of the Faith.

                                                          Old  Hull. June 16, 2005.


For a man of sixty-eight with a serious heart problem, Father Ted was obviously drinking far too much whiskey. There were three of us together that evening in the living room of the Montreal apartment that Oliver and I had shared for decades.

The apartment took up the ground floor of an old and weather-worn two-story, brick house on a run-down side street off St.Joseph Boulevard,  in a block of a dozen such dwellings dating from the nineteen-twenties. The neighborhood had originally been middle-class English Protestant, but several waves of immigration had since turned it into what we had learned to call a 'multicultural mosaic'. This made no difference to me, of course; I didn't care who lived next door, so long as they left me alone.

We had spent the day at the theological conference that was an annual event at the local College. Oliver and I still taught remedial English there, although we had both passed what used to be the age of retirement. Father Ted --- as everyone called him --- was a former member of the faculty who was now visiting the city to speak at the conference. Over the years, he had become fairly well known in theological circles as a specialist in the area of fundamental methodology, whatever that might be. I had glanced at one of his papers, but found it impenetrable. He had once described his subject as being "something like metaphysics only with less popular appeal".

Oliver and I have no academic background in theology, but as former religious brothers we felt it to be incumbent upon us to attend the conference each year. In the old days our attendance would have been mandatory, of course; but the Order had handed the college over to the province many years ago. Not long after Father Ted's burgeoning reputation had led him to a post at a prominent Catholic university in the United States, the Order itself had begun to disintegrate around us. The few of us who remained at the end were offered the choice of relocating to the Mother House across the border or of being released from our vows. Oliver and I had no desire to change our lives very much. We had always been close, and we chose to remain together as laymen, though we kept the names we had borne in religion.

For some reason, Oliver had taken it upon himself that day to invite Father Ted over for drinks before dinner.  Oliver is more at ease with people than I am, but we do not feel the need for friends, apart from each other. Father Ted had never been more to us than a pleasant, easy-going acquaintance, but he accepted Oliver's invitation with alacrity. He excused himself from attendance at a fruit-punch party  organized by one of the faculty wives by pleading an engagement with 'a pair of old comrades'.

For the last hour Oliver had been plying our guest with whiskey and questioning him as if he were really interested in his opinions. These were turning out to be much more liberal than I would have expected. As far as I knew, Father Ted had never written about doctrine. I had not realized that there was anything in the study of  method that could lead to new ideas, especially ones so dangerously unorthodox!

"Rome," he was saying, "has finally apologized for its treatment of Galileo. It has taken three centuries to realize that it was wrong about science. But Rome has not learned from that mistake. In our time, it is ferociously resisting the progress of contemporary culture beyond theory into the realm of interiority. That error needs to be corrected immediately, not centuries from now."

I had never heard anyone use the word 'interiority' before, and was not at all sure what it might mean. I did know that the Pope had condemned 'contemporary culture' many times, and that was enough for me.

"In terms of ethics and bioethics," he went on, "the hierarchy continues to defend principles that do not reflect human experience: in the area of divorce, for example, or contraception, or protection against AIDS, or the  alleviation of suffering at the end of life."

This was no way for a priest to talk. Was he saying that the Church should approve of evil just because sin is popular? I listened with mounting horror as he continued.

"It is most regrettable that the Church --- including the Canadian Church, I am sorry to say --- should take such rigid and intransigent stands on sexual morals. Its unwelcoming attitude toward homosexuals, especially, represents a regression from the evangelical perspectives advocated by Vatican II."

Now this was really too much. I do not claim to be an intellectual. I attended a religious teachers' college in the 'fifties. I lacked the training necessary to refute what he was saying; but my whole being revolted against it as false, outrageously and intolerably false.

"What about the new Catechism?" I objected.

"You're quite right, Ambrose!" he answered.  "The new Catechism is a perfect example of Vatican foot-dragging, isn't it?"

I didn't know what to say in reply to this misunderstanding of my intention.

"I think you are working up to a really dramatic gesture, aren't you, Father?" said Oliver. "I believe you are planning to go public tomorrow on the question of homosexual marriage."

'To go public!' I don't know where Oliver picks up these abominable expressions. I suspect him of reading People magazine.

"Somebody who is in a position to make himself heard has to speak up," Father Ted answered, pouring himself a generous measure of Scotch. "Bishop Spong is right, you know: Christianity has to change or die. Even the Canadian Army is ahead of the Church on same-sex marriage!"

I was about to ask who Bishop Spong might be, and what the Canadian Army had to do with Church doctrine, but he gave me no time.

I'm sure you two will agree with my position on that subject," he added to my stupefaction.

What could give him that idea, for Heaven's sake? And what did he mean by 'you two'? Was he implying something?

Father Ted refilled his glass as carefully as he did everything else, with an attention to detail that bordered on fussiness.

Perhaps it was his specialization in 'method' that made him so meticulous. Before sitting down he had carefully adjusted the angle of his chair and made sure that the end table was placed exactly parallel to the wall. Despite the heat and the humidity, he refused to remove his jacket. The bottle and glass were placed on the table just so. At one point he even got up to adjust the mirror on the opposite wall, carefully pulling up the knees of his pants as he sat down again, all without interrupting what he was saying. This behavior was evidently the result of ingrained habit.

The heat --- not to mention the whiskey --- had brought out beads of sweat on his bald head, and his complexion had turned an unhealthy shade of pink.

Half choking with resentment, I stepped out of the living room to get away for a moment. Frustration had led me to imbibe a little too much, myself, and I had to grab the handle of the basement door in order to steady myself. That door was locked, as usual. Oliver had taken to locking it ever since a visitor mistook it for the bathroom door and fell halfway down the steep stairs. Only the banister had saved him from cracking his skull on the concrete floor at the bottom.

I passed by the bathroom door and made my way through to the kitchen, where I opened the rear window to let in some air. It was only the middle of June, but the city was sweltering through a massive heat wave. A starling flew across the yard with a worm in its beak. A pair of rather young-looking sparrows landed on the telephone wire and proceeded, shockingly, to engage in copulation. For some reason I found myself wondering how my students were spending the evening.

On my way back to the living room I paused in front of the bathroom door and examined the picture of the Virgin Mary hanging above it. It was one of those cheap and vulgar Fatima souvenirs that Oliver brings home from trips. He refers to it sentimentally as his portrait of "Our Blessed Mother". One cannot imagine Saint Paul using such a fatuous expression. Oliver had hung the picture crookedly, and had stuck a pin into the wall under one corner of the frame to hold it straight. I noticed that the pin had become loose, and raised my arms to adjust it.

I froze for a moment in that position. A line from one of John Adams's letters to Abigail swam into my mind: "And things must take their Course. We must wait for Things to arrange themselves...."

"I don't understand you," Oliver was saying as I reentered the room. "You have always confined your writing  to purely scholarly questions of theological method. Why create a stir now by objecting to this? The subject of unnatural vice is outside your specialty. Please, can't you just leave it alone?"

I could tell that poor Oliver was terribly upset.

"It isn't just that particular doctrine that he objects to," I said coldly. "He rejects the authority of Rome. He has never really accepted the goad. Now he is getting ready to kick his way out of the traces."

Father Ted's serenity was not in the least disturbed by my accusation. He merely chuckled in response, exhibiting that sickening tolerance so typical of the liberal relativist. He could tolerate anything except authority. He might almost have been an Anglican.

"Whatever my motivation," he said,"it's true that I'm planning to say something on the subject tomorrow. It's the final day of the conference, so there'll be a couple of local reporters there. My statement will probably make a small wave."

"It will do more than that," said Oliver. "It's happened before, after all. A respected theologian publicly attacks the Holy Father. It doesn't matter that most ordinary people have never heard of you. A speech like that makes headlines around the world and does untold damage to the Church."

Oliver looked stricken. He left the room for a moment, presumably to visit the bathroom, then came back and began to plead once more with Father Ted to change his mind. For my part, I had fallen silent. What was there to say? Even Jesus remained silent when speech was pointless. I excused myself, saying I needed a short nap, and went down the passage to my room.

Father Ted thought nothing of all this coming and going, of course. At our age, we were all used to conversations being interrupted --- put on hold, as Oliver would say --- by abrupt departures occasioned by the needs of nature. In any case, he didn't need an audience this afternoon. He could sit and enjoy his whiskey and think how famous he would be tomorrow.

I lay down on the bed fully clothed and stared at the ceiling. It was cracked with age and slightly stained. The old house won't last many years longer, I thought. But it should see us out. Meanwhile, "Things must take their Course. We must wait for Things to arrange themselves...." I began repeating the words in a hypnotic monotone until I fell into a troubled doze.

I was awakened half an hour later by Oliver banging on the door and frantically calling my name. I rushed down the hall to the living room. By this time Oliver was phoning for an ambulance. Father Ted lay unmoving outside the bathroom door.

Oliver rode to the hospital in the ambulance, while I followed in a taxi. Not long after we arrived, we were told that Father Ted was dead. There were questions to answer, forms to sign, people to call. Finally, hours later, someone else took over. We came home, exhausted, and went to bed.

The rituals of death took several days to wind to an end. Oliver made a spectacle of himself at the funeral, of course, weeping hysterically. I was quite without feeling. People remarked on my self-control. Some went so far as to congratulate me upon my dignified demeanor.

The day after the funeral, I was reading quietly in my room when Oliver came in  and asked to speak to me. He was obviously still upset. I gave him a drink and made him sit down.

"Ambrose," he half sobbed. "I feel so terribly guilty. I wanted to kill him, and now he is dead."

"You are imagining things, Oliver. Father Ted had a heart attack; nothing to do with you. Do try to calm yourself."

"He was going to make that speech, Ambrose.  He couldn't be allowed to do that, could he? I felt I had to do something."

"But you didn't do anything, did you? It's just your nerves again."

"Yes I did, Ambrose. That's why I invited him. I'm not as strong as you, you know. I'm affected by atmosphere. I catch bits of what people are saying to each other. I pick up things. There was a rumor going around the conference that he was going to make a statement about same-sex marriage that would rock the Church. It made me feel so anxious, Ambrose.
 
The night before I invited him, I removed the banister on the basement stairs, just in case. I prepared some plaster and paint as if I were doing repairs. Then when he was here, and he definitely said that he was going to make that statement, I tried so hard to get him to change his mind, but he wouldn't. So I went and unlocked the basement door. With all he'd had to drink, I knew he would need the bathroom eventually. He was almost bound to assume it was the first door. If it hadn't been for Our Blessed Mother I would be a murderer."

"What do you mean by that?"

"As he was leaving the room, he turned and said to me, "First door?" I was going to say Yes, but then through the open doorway I saw the portrait of Our Blessed Mother hanging crooked. It seemed to me like a warning; the pin could hardly have fallen out by itself. So I said No. Father Ted turned away, and then he raised his arms to straighten the picture. I heard him gasp just before he fell. 

"They told me in the ambulance that a man with his condition should never raise his arms like that. And then at the hospital, the almoner said that he had read, in a recent biography,  that Evelyn Waugh died the same way. Waugh was a heavy drinker with a bad heart,and just raising his arms was enough to bring on a fatal heart attack. I'd never heard that, had you? I do know that Evelyn Waugh was  devoted to Our Blessed Mother. He was a saint, you know, in spite of his failings. Perhaps I misjudged Father Ted, after all. It's all so upsetting. Do you think I should tell the police what I did, Ambrose?

"No, I do not. I think you should forget the whole thing. You've just built it all up in your mind. There's nothing wrong with repairing a banister. Nobody was going to fall down the stairs. You're mixing it all up with your feelings. Now try to forget about it. And forget about Evelyn Waugh, too. I advise you to go and lie down to calm your nerves."

"You're right, Ambrose. You always are. It is very kind of you not to reproach me for failing to consult you. I think I will go and lie down. Do you have anything pacifying I might read? That's a new book on your shelf isn't it? Perhaps you will lend me that one. What is it? Why, it's Evelyn Waugh, a Biography, by Christopher Sykes. But that's the one the hospital almoner said he had read. Good Heavens, Ambrose! Ambrose ... ? "

"Don't be silly, Oliver. Now take the book; then go and lie down. Try not to let your  imagination run away with you."

I watched him as he walked down the hall. Just as he got to the the living room, he turned and came back.

"Ambrose! There was something else I wanted to ask you. Do you remember what you said when you saw Father Ted lying on the floor? You sounded so strange. You said,'Things must take their course.' Why did you say that? Do you remember?"

I pointed down the hall.

"Oliver," I said. "Please go!"

I stepped back into my room, a little unsteadily, and lay down on the bed. I had no reason to reproach myself. That loose pin would soon have fallen out by itself, anyway. After that, things had just taken their course. Nothing to do with me.

I gazed up at the stains on the ceiling. For a moment, they seemed to fall into a pattern; but, when I switched on the light, it had disappeared.



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