Our house was across the street from St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church. The cool darkness of the stone church was lit by the twinkle of red votive candles in the corners and the smell of an intoxicating incense emanated from the walls. Solemn confessional boxes stood like upright coffins, despising and dispensing people from the threats of eternal hell with measured regularity. The choir loft was perched beneath the giant blue and red stainedglass windows and the powerful soprano dominated the background of the choral voices singing “O Holy Night” with an intensity that made the hanging chandeliers quiver and the eyes water.
It was a cool dark place to speak to God in the privacy of your heart and mind, a quiet place often filled with the Hail Mary’s and the Glory Be’s muttered by penitent sinners. The plaster statues of saints stood motionless in the alcoves, saints whose lives were to be an example to us all: the young virgin who died rather than submit, the tired old man who protected the travelers, the unworldly goodness of the Mother, the frozen suffering of the Christ demanding gratitude for redemption from the high altar. The stations of the cross spiked the walls of the nave in regular procession and during Lent young virgins and tired widows prayed for their release from the temptations of the flesh.
The old Irish priest had been a boxer in Boston before he joined the Church. He learned to preach in the School of Exhortation and every Sunday his parishioners knew they would be subjected to at least 30 minutes of shouting, condemnation and warnings that if they did not mend their ways, they were doomed to the everlasting torments of hell, if not to the semi-eternity of Purgatory.
He was short, no more than 5’6” and in his later years became decidedly stocky. He had a barrel chest that probably helped him to endure in the ring, and very fair, almost white skin that flushed a deep red when, during his sermons, he reminded his sinful congregation, that “many are called, but few are chosen.” His hair might have been any color in youth but was snowy white which made his blue eyes even brighter behind his glasses.
His strong personality was made up only of black and white, no grays were permitted. He spoke out fearlessly and he gave no quarter and expected none. The same rules he laid down for others, he scrupulously observed himself. He was as stern and unforgiving as an old Testament prophet. He hated hypocrisy, indecision and cowardice. He frequently had the nuns who taught Saturday catechism classes in tears and even the most masculine of his parishioners were terrified of him.
He once spoke of being present at an exorcism and seeing a priest go in the room with black hair and walk out of it with white hair. Many wondered if it is a story of his own life. Others say he was a chaplain at a Georgia prison and served the men on death row. Both stories were easy to believe for those who knew him.
He was a priest of the old school and he died just before Pope John’s reform of the Church. His successor was a Monsignor, one of the elite of the church, who was temporarily assigned to the parish to oversee the development of an area Catholic high school. He was a patrician, cool, aloof and formal. Meticulous in dress, his eyes were also blue and his gray hair carefully combed. He had a politician’s smile without the warmth and he scalded with coldness, not with fire.
It was his mind that glittered. He was one of several children and because he was ambitious, used the priesthood as a means to obtain the higher education he so much wanted. His intelligence and sophisticated good looks had served him well over the years and he had become one of the diocese’s best movers and shakers. Some said he has the makings of a bishop.
He had only one fault- he liked young girls too much. He tried to fight against it. But, after all, he doesn’t want that much, a kiss on the sly, a feel in the dark was enough to make his cool edges warm. It might be wrong but there was also a feeling of justification for had he not sacrificed his masculinity for his education. He wore his celibacy like a crown of thorns.
His cool disdain was seen in his straight back and hooded eyes, but his troubled blood was belied by a whiff of nervous energy that shot through the trembling fingertips that brush my breasts when he sat beside me on the front porch swing and talked of Aristotle, the summer I was 18. I probably let the other boys do it, he says, so why not him too.
After that, when I saw him walk across the street for a friendly evening’s chat, I hid in the bathroom and pretended I was not at home. When my aunt asked me why, I say I have lost my taste for philosophy.
It took several years for the Catholic High School to be built after which time he was rewarded for his hard work by a transfer to an all-girl college. After two years, an announcement was made one Sunday morning that the monsignor was ill and had retired from active service.
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