The mosaic mirrored Steve Murphy’s own feelings. As he knelt in one of the pews, he realized he was angry, more upset than he had ever been in the past. Over and over again, he asked himself why this was being done to him. What had he done wrong, if anything? Didn’t he deserve an explanation? Ordained at twenty-six, and now forty-eight, he had given over twenty years to the priesthood. He thought of them as good years, productive years, but now his life and his chosen vocation seemed to be crumbling into ashes at his feet. His life was going down the drain. As he knelt in the church, he tried to pray, but the sickening depression he felt about the actions of the archdiocese kept bubbling up to the surface of his brain with a constant stream of questions that crowded out everything else. And he was helpless to do anything about it.
*****
“Now, about the religion course, do you know much about world religions?”
“Nothing except Catholicism,” Father Murphy said as he sat in Dr. Stanton’s cubbyhole office in McMahon Hall. “But,” he added sarcastically, “I know that the word ‘Catholic’ means universal—essentially worldwide. Are there any other legitimate religions?”
The Religion Department Chair, an elderly, patient oblate priest, ignored the comment. “Fall classes begin in two weeks,” he said. “If you are not well-versed in the precepts of the world’s other religions, I expect you will be quite busy for a time researching material for the course. Father Murphy, let me give you a bit of background. The university’s doors are open to students of all faiths. All students are required to take a minimum number of religion courses. The Catholics, of course, take courses in Catholic subjects, the non-Catholics take World Religion. You will be teaching a first semester course to Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and perhaps even atheists. The course is taught along the lines of comparative religion. And I am sure these students know a lot more about their own religions than you do. So you can expect to have some lively debates.”
“Sounds more like chicken fights than debates. You know the old saying: If you want to avoid arguments and hard feelings, avoid topics like religion and politics with people of diverse faiths and differing political philosophies. The reason is simple: you’re going to create endless controversy and you aren’t going to change any minds.”
“Well that may be, but the university feels it has an obligation to offer this course. An area to stress among your Christian students is the Ecumenical Movement. Are you familiar with that?”
“Yes, to some extent. It’s supposed to bring together the Christian Churches in sort of a unifying and healing process. In the sense that these churches band together to improve the human condition, I agree that the cause is worthwhile but as to real unification, despite the best efforts of the pontiff, I believe that goal is unattainable.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, I heard somewhere there are at least several thousand versions of the Christian religion—many with widely divergent views. When you add the further fact that each one, including the Catholic Church, and especially the Catholic Church, claims to be the one true faith, you hardly have a chance at unification. The sticking point, of course, is not so much different beliefs as the fear of many that their religion would presumably wind up under the jurisdiction of the pope.”
“Father Murphy, let me be frank,” the chairman said standing up behind his desk with growing annoyance in his voice. “The course is only expository. We are not attempting to solve the problem of unification and we are not trying to convert anyone. As the instructor, you will merely be encouraging the students to tell about their religions and to note differences in belief systems. You will avoid being judgmental. Is that understood? Do you want to teach the subject or not?”
Steve Murphy knew the game was up. The bishop always wins. “I’ll take the job,” he said quietly as he left the office.
*****
As he walked back to the Dominican House—his new home, Steve Murphy thought about the courses he would teach. The Latin course. Baby stuff. No point spending any prep time on it. But the other course could be a bitch. He realized he would be spending days and evenings in the university library researching other religions. How many major ones were there—twenty? A hundred? From the Catholic viewpoint it struck him as a colossal waste of time. As he entered the Dominican House, he was slightly amused as he thought back to the nuns he had had in elementary school. Hadn’t the good sisters preached over and over again there was only one true religion? Wasn’t all the rest of it baloney? Of course, they never used the word ‘baloney’ but didn’t they continually press home the point that the only sure way to heaven was through the Catholic faith?
Another thought occurred to him: Since I have only secular courses I won’t need any religious zeal. I don’t see anything relating to my lifelong vocation to strengthen the faith in Catholics or convert atheists. There’s one nice thing about atheists. They are like empty vessels waiting to be filled. Since they have no religion, you can offer them something to add to their lives—not like trying to transplant those who since early childhood have had their feet stuck in the cement of their parents’ chosen religion. He recalled that some pundit had said that religion is strongly related to geography. If you are born in Israel you are Jewish; if you are born in Saudi Arabia, you are Muslim; if you are born in Boston, you are very likely Catholic. On and on….
As he walked up the stairs to his room, he could smell dinner in preparation. The aroma was not appetizing. It hadn’t taken him more than a few days to realize that the food served in the Dominican House gave strong evidence of the vow of poverty—part of the sacrifice one makes when becoming a mendicant friar. He decided to eat most of his meals out.
4
She was probably one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Soft waves of silken chestnut hair tumbled down lightly touching her shoulders. When she glanced up at him and their eyes met, he had a nervous momentary reflex to look away lest he get lost in the wonderland of her deep blue-eyed gaze. He was never completely comfortable in the presence of women and beautiful women almost made him tongue-tied. When he looked at this woman, he realized that for a moment he had stopped breathing.
She was sitting in the Shrine cafeteria eating lunch with another young woman, Maria, one of the students in his Latin class. He noticed that every man who passed by the table looked at Maria’s friend somewhat wide-eyed and admiringly; the women who passed had a look of envy mixed with discomfiture.
“Mind if I join you, Maria?” he asked, holding his lunch tray.
“Certainly, Father, as long as I don’t have to respond in Latin. Only joking. Please sit down, Father. By the way, let me introduce you to my friend Janet. She’s a graduate student in the School of Social Work.”
“Grocery bags to indigents?” he asked the beautiful young woman sitting across from him who seemed to be staring at his face. He wondered if he had shaved well enough. He ran his hand over his chin wondering if there was a bit of stubble he had missed. “They teach that in graduate school?”
He was instantly sorry for the comment.
“No,” Janet replied, briefly flashing a smirk at his comment. “Clinical Social Work—psychotherapy, specifically Family Systems Therapy.” Janet had a confident attitude that spoke contentment with herself. Unlike a good many others, Catholics especially, she was not shy in front of a priest. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Father,” she said with a curious smile. The sun came out. But was she really smiling?
“Good, I hope.”
Maria wondered where this conversation was headed.
“Not really,” she said, her smile vanishing. To him it was if the sun had gone down. “In fact, just the opposite,” she said. “They tell me you have the makings of a tyrant in class. Your zeal runneth over.”
His student, Maria, shrank down in her chair. She was taken aback at Janet’s frankness, yet she couldn’t disagree with what her friend was saying. It occurred to her that the priest probably knew that J
anet had heard some of the complaints directly from her.
“I am heavy handed,” he admitted, as he took a bite out of his sandwich, “but I didn’t think it showed so much.”
“They tell me it shows,” Janet answered. “The word is you act as if you’d rather be someplace else.”
“I’d rather be someplace else,” Maria said softly.
“You’re right,” he admitted, but immediately regretted saying it in front of one of his students.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Janet said, getting up. “I have a class coming up.”
As Janet and his Latin class student walked away, Steve Murphy found himself unnerved by the brief meeting. Was it the brusque accusatory manner of the beautiful young woman who had stared at him with her penetrating blue eyes as she was calling him a tyrant or was it something more? Was he embarrassed? If so, why? It was certainly no secret that he was feared and disliked by his students. In the past, he had had other confrontations that were easily dismissed. Why did it bother him that this young woman knew about his reputation and openly confronted him? In his years as a parish priest, he had worked with many women in handling church affairs. It was always in the context of pastoral work. During all these years, he never let himself entertain thoughts of a personal nature about any of the women. He was a priest, dedicated to God and the celibate life. He was above all that. But this young woman intrigued him, challenged him in a way he had never before experienced.
After the brief meeting, Steve Murphy began to take the first really introspective look at himself since the day he had opened the transfer letter from Bishop Rhinehart. He knew the young lady was right. Absolutely everything he had done since his transfer sprang from his disappointment. It was consuming him. He was cool and cynical with others and when alone, he studied or marked papers with gritted teeth, but he was at a loss to know how to lift his feelings of depression and loneliness.
He was directed to say early morning Mass in a side chapel in the crypt church of the Shrine, side-by-side with a dozen other priests at an array of small altars. A production line of Masses. Here in the Shrine he was alone without an altar boy or a congregation. How unlike his morning Masses as pastor at Holy Rosary in the large, comfortable, well-lighted church, before an altar bedecked with flowers, assisted by one of his regular altar boys and giving communion to parishioners he had come to know and love. Here, alone at the small altar in the dim basement church, it was a struggle to keep focused on the mystery of the Mass. It was depressing that his life had all come down to this. Still, he knew that before God, he had to suppress his feelings and had to keep faith that an unfair move made by the archdiocese, might soon be corrected.
*****
Steve Murphy stood in the open doorway.
“Come in, Father Murphy. Please take a seat.”
The priest took a seat and glanced around Dr. Stanton’s cubbyhole office. He remembered his first visit to the office and concluded that it still smelled of a pungent mixture of leather, after-shave lotion and mold. The chairman did not have a pleasant look on his face. “Father Murphy,” he said slowly, as if measuring his words, “I had a delegation of your World Religion students in here earlier today. Frankly, they were here to complain. Their specific complaint was your all too obvious bias against any religion other than Catholicism.”
“I’m a Catholic priest,” he said. “If I weren’t strongly biased towards Catholicism, I would make a hell of a priest.”
“Yes, I understand that, Father. But it would be extremely helpful if you could approach the subject with more of an open mind. This is a university. Our mission is academic. Your students say you engage in arguments with them as if you’re trying to dissuade them from their own religions and convert to Catholicism. You were expected to conduct classes that are understanding of other viewpoints, intellectual, academic—not pastoral.”
Steve Murphy crossed his legs, folded his arms. “I find that hard to do,” he said. “I have tried, but my mental transition from pastoral to academic thinking is slow in coming. What do you suggest I do?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that if I keep getting large delegations of your students trying to crowd in here with complaints, I’ll have to remove you and bring in a substitute. And this is hard to do now that the semester is well underway. But I will do it if I have to.”
“Is that all?” Father Murphy said crisply as he got up to leave.
“Yes, that’s all.”
*****
Steve Murphy’s next stop was no better. Another delegation of complaining students—this time about his method of teaching Latin by ‘total immersion’.
The Chair of Foreign Languages leveled a steely gaze at him over the reading glasses perched on her nose. “This is not Berlitz,” Sister Francine said. “Our students do not have to learn to speak a new language in five days. I understand you permit not a word of English to be spoken in your classes.”
“How many complained?”
“The entire class.”
“Well, that’s not so bad,” he said jocularly. “It means only ten students complained.”
“Reverend, I am Chair of the Foreign Language Department. I am not some timid novice nun teaching in a parish elementary school under your thumb. You will follow the outline for the course or I will drop you in a heartbeat. Have I made myself clear?”
*****
He was sitting alone in the Shrine cafeteria. He played with the food on his plate. Why had he ordered anything when he wasn’t hungry? He was thoroughly miserable. Crowding the front of his brain was the loss of his parish and his expected promotion to Monsignor. He had been suddenly dumped in a job he didn’t like, and, from the looks of it, one he was performing poorly. He had made no friends at the university. There was no one he could really confide in except in the confessional and kneeling at the altar—reminding God, who certainly already knew. But these refuges for a lonely priest were not now uplifting or comforting—certainly not as they had been through the years. God and his confessor did not now seem terribly interested in his problems.
He was part way through his lunch in the Shrine cafeteria when she walked past him with a lunch tray and a book. He barely had time to acknowledge her presence with a nod of his head as she brushed by his table on her way to a far corner to study while she ate. It happened so quickly, he wasn’t really sure whether she had recognized him or whether he was being snubbed. He suddenly felt undesirable, unworthy. Perhaps he was merely too old to attract the interest of a younger woman. But more likely, she had been turned off by the student gossip about him. He berated himself for feeling hurt. What did it matter whether she noticed him, whether she liked him or not? What difference did it make? He was a priest. He was at the university only because he had been dumped there.
As he left the cafeteria the thought crossed his mind that he might pass near her table, say hello, and strike up a conversation. He knew his loneliness made him vulnerable to needing a friendly smile, but an approach could also lead to rejection.
As he approached, she did not look up. She was engrossed in her book.
He decided not to bother her. He walked out. He went to class to do battle with the world’s other religions.
*****
Another week passed without seeing her. Her lunches in the cafeteria seemed to be sporadic. She probably lunched occasionally at the Pryzbyla Student Center. The next time he saw her she was with a young man. They appeared to be good friends, perhaps more. She laughed merrily at some of the things he said. At one point, the young man leaned over, put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a kiss on the cheek. So that was it. They were more than friends. He was disappointed. But wondered why he cared. He certainly could never have seen any possibility of establishing a relationship with her. As she and the young man left the cafeteria, they passed very near his table. She brushed by without so much as looking over at him. He glanced up momentarily but seeing no glance in his direction, no trace of recognition in her
face, resumed staring down at his plate as he played with his food.
After all he had gone through, all he had lost in recent months, whatever feelings of self-worth he had left, ebbed like an outgoing tide. His anger began to fade. He started a long slide down a slippery slope to bottom out in depression. Of the two conditions, he felt depression was far worse because it trapped him in a helpless state. He had always been able to use his anger to stimulate action. It had helped him crawl out of some tight spots. Depression, on the other hand, was a trap—a deep pit lined with slimy walls.
*****
He was at an evening faculty cocktail party. She was standing on the other side of the room a few feet from the bar with a drink in her hand. Three men, probably professors, surrounded her. Each seemed to be vying for her full attention.
Her shimmering blue silk cocktail dress matched the blue of her eyes. She wore high heels. He had to restrain himself from ogling her trim figure and her legs. He smiled to himself as he remembered what the guys in high school used to call a beautiful woman—‘drop dead gorgeous’.
He walked over in her direction. She slowly eased her way past the other men. She smiled. Was she smiling at someone coming up behind him? He twisted around, looking over his shoulder. But he quickly realized there was no one directly behind him. She was smiling at him. Heaven only knows how much he appreciated that smile.
“I saw you in the Shrine cafeteria the other day,” he said, “but I don’t think you recognized me.”
“I recognized you. I was punishing you for being so hard on your students.”