PAUL IRETON’S NICKEL was soon spent.
He swung off the trolley at the Medford carbarns and from military habit surveyed the terrain. He knew he was standing midway between two of the largest parishes in the Diocese—St. Vincent’s to the west and the Immaculate Conception about a mile to the east. Somewhere between the two, and within the dotted lines drawn by the Cardinal’s own hand, Paul Ireton must organize a parish of his own. By a series of diplomatic and financial maneuvers he must wean some two thousand Roman Catholics away from deep loyalties to their old pastors; he must persuade them to attend services in temporary quarters and, lastly, he must gently extract from them funds to build a new church. Because any man in his right mind would be slightly apprehensive about such operations, Father Ireton spent a bad sixty seconds wondering where and how to begin.
The month was June; a summer sun poured straight down on Father Ireton standing amid the network of car tracks, and dabbing with his handkerchief at a drop of sweat in the cleft of his blue-black chin. The light breakfast he had eaten five hours ago was quitting on him. As a minor ascetic gesture, Paul had intended to eat no lunch; but a swallow of liquid, he decided, would vastly benefit the parched membranes of his throat. Across the street he saw a row of stores: a barbershop, its red and blue pole symbolizing arterial and venous blood; an apothecary with red and blue vases symbolizing the same thing; a chain-store grocery, a bakery, and a fruit stand shaded by a wide-striped canvas awning. The shrill whine of a peanut roaster came pleasantly to Father Ireton’s ear. He crossed the car tracks to the fruit stand, stood in the grateful shade of the awning, and delivered up all his senses to the wares spread before him.
Oranges were piled in pyramids, bananas hung ripely; figs, tamarinds, dates, and lemons tempted his taste buds, and a jar of pickled limes started the saliva in his dry throat. He was taking a bag of peanuts from the copper roaster when he heard a clinking of ice against glass in the cool interior of the fruit shop.
The proprietor, in a dirty Panama hat, was ladling lemonade into a green-glass pitcher held by a customer wearing the uniform of the Boston Street Railway Company. The ladler was Nick Papagyros, and the pitcher holder was Bartholomew (“Batty”) Glynn, chief dispatcher of trolleys and theologian at large to the Medford carbarns.
“Six for the price of five, Nick?” Batty was asking.
Nick laughed at the whimsy of the thing. Old joke from old customer. Seeing the priest, Batty Glynn raised his hat with easy respect. “Five for the price of six would be cheap for Nick’s lemonade, Father. It’s the best tipple this side of Rainingpouria.”
“I’ll have a glass,” said Paul.
Mr. Papagyros poured a tall one for his new customer. Paul lifted the sweet citrus juice toastwise to the dispatcher, who responded with a gigantic tug at his green-glass flagon. Cool lotion of ice in his mouth, Paul nodded appreciatively. So much nice gulping pleased Mr. Papagyros. A modest man, he wished to assign credit where credit was really due. He picked up a lemon, bit into it and smacked his lips appreciatively.
Paul Ireton was not an easy mixer, but after such pleasures some talk was bound to follow. He handed Mr. Papagyros a quarter and asked:
“Do you happen to know of any vacant stores around here?”
Hairy fist in change bag, Nick shook his Panama doubtfully. “No stores empty. Business too good for vacancies,” he explained.
“A hall then?”
“How big a hall would you be looking for, Father?” asked Batty Glynn.
“Oh, something big enough to accommodate three or four hundred people at Sunday Mass.”
“Sunday what?”
“Mass,” said Paul quietly. “I’m starting a new parish here.”
Batty Glynn’s eyes popped like grapes. This was the weirdest heresy since the days of the Albigensians. Strict orthodoxy prompted his next question. “Does Pat Barley know about it?”
“Yes. He’ll announce it from the altar next Sunday.”
While Batty Glynn marveled into his flagon, Mr. Papagyros came up with a suggestion: “What’s that place—Mattakeesis—how you say it?—Mattakeesis Hall?”
“No, no,” said Batty decisively. “’Twouldn’t do.”
“Why not?” asked Paul.
Ever the purist, Batty set forth his objection. “A colored congregation used to meet there, Father. The police had to clean them out.”
Paul gave proper weight to Batty’s piece of information. “I’d like to see it anyway. Would you mind telling me how to get there?”
“Your request,” said Batty solemnly, “has the force of an edict, Father.” With his toe the dispatcher-theologian started to draw a diagram in the sawdust on Nick’s floor. Then he had a better idea. He consulted the butter-gold watch that had never lost more than two seconds a week for twenty years. “I’m on my lunch hour, Father. I’ll take you there myself.”
My first convert, thought Paul. If this pompous ox could be led, others would follow.
A short walk brought them to a three-story building bearing the legend MATTAKEESIT 1886 on the crest of its lugubrious brick façade. Long ago, Mattakeesit Hall had been the bon-ton thing in Medford—the smart rendezvous for social affairs, top-cut weddings and dances. Until 1910 it had served the K. of C. as their meeting place, but when they moved to their new home, Mattakeesit Hall had been cut up into offices for chiropodists, dollar-a-filling dentists, fortunetellers, and similar gentry. Holy Rollers had held services on the top floor until their noisy rituals attracted police attention. And it was this top floor—dusty, littered, and long unused—that Sol Seidelbander, the renting agent, now showed to Father Ireton.
A glance told Paul that it would do. Having said Mass in trenches, tents, garages, and at the tailboard of commissary trucks, he felt no queasiness about celebrating it in Mattakeesit Hall. The dirty floor and grimy windows could be cleaned; the taint of Holy Rollerism (if any) could be removed by blessing. After all, it was the Mass that mattered. Where Batty Glynn’s eyes saw only dirt and debris, Father Ireton beheld a well-swept upper room and the faces of his people.
“What rent are you asking, Mr. Seidelbander?”
“With heat in winter, twenty-five dollars a month.”
Paul gave Mr. Seidelbander the full treatment of his severe gray eyes. “I’ll take a year’s lease … on one condition.”
Sol Seidelbander, who hadn’t had a penny from the hall in five years, said he’d listen to any reasonable proposition.
“The proposition is this,” said Father Ireton. “Instead of paying the first month’s rent in advance, I’ll give you my note for thirty days.”
The renting agent knew a customer when he saw one. “Why bother about notes, Father? The word of a Catholic priest is good enough for me.”
BATTY GLYNN put the news on the grapevine. Every trolley that left the carbarn carried headlines, full reportage, and editorial comment supplied by Eyewitness Glynn. He told his story a dozen times that afternoon, larding it imaginatively until his hearers might have thought that Batty Glynn himself was the Cardinal’s right-hand bower. His best and final version was reserved for the ear of Motorman Dennis Fermoyle as the latter sat down for a pipe and chat after stabling his sixteen-wheeler for the night.
“Courteous and reserved he was,” said Batty, “as he lifted his glass of lemonade to me, and I drank back at him without the faintest notion of who he was or what he was doing in Nick’s shop, except that I could see that he had ecclesiastical business uppermost in his mind. Well, Din, when the nature of that business came out you could have knocked me over with the fumes from your pipe. ‘I’m looking for a place to say Mass,’ he said. ‘Say what?’ I asked. ‘Mass,’ he said, ‘and would you be knowing of any vacant stores or halls in the vicinity?’ Then before I knew it I was leading him down to Mattakeesit Hall, telling him at every step what a bad name it had. But when he saw it—I was standing right behind his shoulder—a kind of determination stiffened him, and he said to Seidelbander, ‘I’ll take it.’” Batty paused in his circumstantial narrative: “Then came the queerest part of all. He didn’t have the first month’s rent in his pocket, so he had to throw himself on Seidelbander’s mercy for thirty days’ indulgence, as you might say. Can you tell me now why a rich diocese obliges a new pastor to start off penniless?” The question being rhetorical, Batty continued without waiting for an answer. “Anyhow, that’s the way it happened, Din. Beginning next Sunday we’ll all be hearing Mass in a former den of Holy Rollerism. Off with the old, on with the new. Barley must be bitter about it.”
Dennis Fermoyle brought the news home to Celia, who straightway carried it upstairs to Ellen.
“The Cardinal has split Monsignor Barley’s parish at last,” said Celia. “There’s a new priest named Father Ireton down at Mattakeesit, fixing up a temporary church.”
A private excitement took possession of Ellen when she heard the news. Fearful currents stirred within her; prayer did not quiet them. Like a distracted girl who knows that she is being challenged by womanhood, Ellen paced her room in agitated colloquy with herself.
“Have I the strength to undertake this long-awaited labor? Physical strength, yes; I am well enough to perform light tasks. It is courage of soul that I lack. Courage to leave this sheltered room, and pick up the strands of life that I laid down—where?—why?—how long ago?”
What am I afraid of?
Sleepless that night, Ellen could not answer these questions. When morning came, she arose and went to her window. Over fences and clotheslines, over the domestic gear and straggly vegetable gardens, a new day was beginning. Another day in His eternal cycle—a day that would be filled, like all His days, with a meaning above and beyond the commonplace appearance of things. Unbidden came the lines:
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see
And what I do in any thing
To do it as for Thee.
“I will go forth this day and accept whatever task He assigns me,” said Ellen.
After breakfast, while Celia was busy in the kitchen, Ellen stole out of the front door and walked rapidly down Woodlawn Avenue. She passed the carbarns and after a few moments came to Mattakeesit Hall. Some remnant of terror counseled, “Turn back,” but a deeper instruction said, “This is the time and place.” She climbed the dark stairway, opened the door of the upper room, and saw a man in a white collarless shirt swinging an awkward broom at the dirty floor.
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
Makes that and th’ action fine.
Billows of dust whirled out the open windows; the sweeper sneezed, blew his nose in a handkerchief. Ever conscious of her lungs, Ellen wanted to say, “You should sprinkle first. No one dry-sweeps any more.” Actually she said, “I’m Ellen Fermoyle, one of your new parishioners.”
“Ellen Fermoyle? Not Steve’s sister?”
She nodded timidly. “And you’re Father Ireton. Stephen has told me a lot about you. He says you’re the best priest he knows.”
“I’ll go Steve one better. He’s the best priest there is.”
In the littered hall they stood wordlessly recognizing each other. Paul Ireton saw the invisible nimbus over Ellen’s head. And in the ascetic jut of Paul Ireton’s chin Ellen saw the man become priest. The covenant between them was instant, unbodied, and binding.
“When do you plan to say your first Mass here?”
“I wanted it to be next Sunday.” Paul waved a dubious broom at the floor. “But that’ll take a miracle.”
“Four days is time enough for a small miracle.” Ellen’s brown eyes surveyed the black hall, ticked off the necessities. “You’ll need some kind of temporary altar, with linens, of course. I’ll manage that if you’ll let me.”
“Let you? My dear girl …”
“How about vestments?”
“I’ve been promised the loan of some from Monsignor Barley—of all people. The things I haven’t got, and can’t seem to borrow, are a chalice and a Mass book. I guess some ecclesiastical supply house will have to extend me credit. If Seidelbander can do it, others can, too.”
“Then all we’d need right now is a pail of water, a mop, and some soap powder.” A proprietary glow flushed Ellen’s cheek. “We’ll make it shine, Father.”
Almost, they did make it shine. Paul Ireton scrubbed the floor while Ellen washed the windows. Sometimes they forgot each other’s presence, then remembering, they would look up, smile at each other, and fall to work again. All day they scrubbed and scoured; Ellen went home exhausted and fell asleep on a short prayer.
Next day she persuaded Celia to hand over a damask tablecloth won ten years ago at a whist party and still lying unused in the bottom of the linen closet. Ellen cut the prized fabric in two pieces, and hemmed them on the sewing machine. Laundered, they made acceptable altar cloths. The altar itself was improvised from a dry-goods packing case that Ellen found in the Fermoyle cellar. Bernie lugged it on his back all the way to the hall, then gave it two coats of flat white paint. Candlesticks, a pair of cut-glass cruets for wine and water, and three linen napkins were contributed by other parishioners. By Saturday noon Paul had completed his credit arrangement and appeared with a gold-plated chalice and a new Mass book.
Together they dressed the altar. “It’s beautiful,” breathed Ellen. “Nothing was ever so beautiful. The people will love it.”
“I hope so,” said Paul.
At ten o’clock on Sunday morning two hundred people climbed three flights of stairs to attend Father Ireton’s first Mass in Medford. They sat on chairs loaned by Tim Noonan, the undertaker, and saw their new pastor, an austere, gray-eyed priest in his early forties, emerge from behind a screen in borrowed vestments. They felt the loving severity of his manner, and when they heard his first announcement from the foot of the improvised altar, they knew he meant business.
“In this upper room,” said Father Ireton, “we begin a shared adventure in the new parish of St. Stephen’s. The Cardinal has laid upon us—upon you as well as me—the responsibility and privilege of starting a new parish. To me it means the opportunity that every priest longs for. To you it means the severance, painful perhaps, of old loyalties and the shouldering of fresh burdens. But I can assure you that those burdens will be divided between us. I shall hold my stewardship strictly accountable to you in all things. In return, I shall expect your help and confidence. Though our financial needs are pressing, we must not permit ourselves to be overborne by them, or forget the purpose of our work here. That work is primarily of the spirit, and as long as I am rector of St. Stephen’s, it shall remain so. I shall now read the Gospel for the day …”
LAWRENCE GLENNON’S faculty for surprising people who thought they knew him was a character trait that gave the Cardinal some of his best effects. As Chancellor Mike Speed put it to Stephen (in a figure borrowed from baseball), “Just when you’re saying to yourself, ‘Well, I’ve solved the man’s fast ball,’ he fools you with his knuckler.”
Soon after this, the Cardinal’s knuckle ball caught Stephen flat-footed. In the middle of a routine morning, His Eminence looked up casually and asked: “Father, do you remember a manuscript that you left in my keeping after our first interview?”
“The Ladder of Love?”
Glennon nodded. “I happened to glance through the work last night and discovered a certain literary elegance about it.” Recalling his earlier strictures on the subject of “mystical moonshine,” Glennon had the good taste to cough. “You’ll find the manuscript on the refectory table with my imprimatur written on the title page. I suggest, Father Fermoyle, that you start looking for a publisher.”
FINDING A PUBLISHER for The Ladder of Love proved to be a fascinating but somewhat thorny business. Though Glennon’s imprimatur was canonically essential, it did not, of itself, guarantee an interested body of readers. Stephen sent his manuscript to a couple of Brahmin firms on Beacon Hill and promptly received courteous letters of regret from editors who expressed themselves as being personally anguished because they “could not see their way clear at this time to bring out a volume so patently limited to a special audience.” Reardon & O’Neill, the Catholic publishers, were eager to get the manuscript, but Stephen had no in-tention of seeing The Ladder of Love lumped together with a basketful of devotional tracts and hortatory pamphlets. As he explained to Chancellor Mike Speed: “Quarenghi’s work deserves literary treatment. I’ll shop around till I find a publisher willing to handle it on a belles-lettres basis.”
This shopping around ran into months of correspondence with various publishers. It was Mike Speed who finally brought the manuscript to the attention of Whateley House, a New York firm with a reputation for doing good things with essays and poetry. Whateley House offered Stephen a modest contract calling for a two-hundred-dollar advance against ten per cent royalties on the first twenty-five hundred copies; twelve and one half per cent thereafter. Stephen signed gladly and in due time received from Whateley House two sets of galley proofs in Caslon Old Style, a pleasing though conservative type face. He mailed one set of proofs to Quarenghi, accompanying it with a brief note:
MY DEAR ALFEO:
At last I have found an American publisher for La Scala d’amore. Your light still shines through my opaque journeyman translation; I think you need not be afraid of the reception your book will receive from readers and critics. Please go over this set of proofs, making any changes that occur to you, and mail the galleys back to me as quickly as possible. Too much time has passed already; Whateley House wants the book to be on their spring list, and if we move rapidly I think we can make it.
Love and homage to you,
STEPHEN
Quarenghi sent back the galleys without a single correction and a letter that said in part:
…I am deeply touched, Stefano, by your kindness and persistence in bringing about American publication of my work. Do I say “my work”? You have succeeded, dear friend, by the elegance of your translation, in making The Ladder of Love your own. Be the bearer of my heartfelt thanks to your Cardinal for his gracious imprimatur. And for yourself, Stephen, choose for permanent lodgment the innermost chamber of my heart.
Affectionately in Cristo,
ALFEO
The Ladder of Love, published in April, 1921, received glowing notices in the literary and religious press. A two-column review in The New York Times linked Quarenghi’s name with that of Santayana and Ortega y Gasset; not forgetting to give the Reverend Stephen Fermoyle a puff for his polished translation. The staid Boston Transcript went into critical dithyrambics: “Here at last is a writer who combines mystical insight with the too-long-neglected art of the essay. It is as though St. Bonaventura and Agnes Repplier had joined forces to produce a work of authentic spirituality—and impeccable taste.”
Catholic reviewers were unanimous in welcoming the book. The official journals of Dominicans, Benedictines, Jesuits, and Paulists assigned their sternest writers to the task of appraising the literary form and theological content of Quarenghi’s mysticism. No flaws of doctrine or lapses of style were uncovered. Stephen breathed freely when a Jesuit critic commended The Ladder of Love for having avoided “the pitfalls into which well-meaning but weakly endowed mystical essayists sometimes stumble.”
The sweetest triumph of all was the feature article appearing in The Monitor, the home paper of the Archdiocese of Boston. In this article Quarenghi’s career as a savant and diplomat was colorfully handled; Boston readers might easily have got the impression that Monsignor Quarenghi was a privy councilor to the Sovereign Pontiff himself, and an alter ego to Cardinal Giacobbi, the papal Secretary of State. This exalted prelate was on terms of closest intimacy (the story ran) with Cardinal Glennon’s secretary, the Reverend Stephen Fermoyle, a local boy from Maiden who had studied under Quarenghi in Rome. The Monitor then went on for several paragraphs describing Father Fer-moyle’s arduous labors of translation, and ended on a note of gratitude to Lawrence Cardinal Glennon for having recognized the outstanding merit of the work.
Reading the article, His Eminence beamed.
Felicitations poured in on Stephen like spring rain. At the May meeting of archdiocesan consultors, Chancellor Mike Speed gave him a hearty clap on the back—and even Auxiliary Bishop Mulqueen thawed out long enough to shake Stephen’s hand. Mulqueen hadn’t read the book and didn’t wholly relish Father Fermoyle’s success. Dick Clarahan was his fair-haired boy; privately Mulqueen wished that his protégé might be wearing the literary laurels that bound Stephen’s brow. The Bishop coolly minimized the whole business and continued to plump for Clarahan whenever comparisons were made between the talents of the promising pair.
Among the congratulatory letters that Stephen received were warm notes from Dollar Bill Monaghan, Milky Lyons, and Paul Ireton. The warmest note of all came from Dick Clarahan—who could well afford to step aside momentarily while Stephen took the plaudits of the crowd. “May I use your charming chapter entitled The Pears of Augustine’ as material for my sermon next Sunday?” wrote Dick. To this sincerest form of flattery Stephen replied, “You may add your luster to any of the poor pearls you find in my book, but I warn you I’ll be in one of the back pews when you cast them forth in your sermon.”
Stephen kept his promise. He sat in the rear of the Cathedral the following Sunday and heard Clarahan spin an opulent web of rhetoric that delighted every listener. Afterwards in the sacristy, Stephen showered praise upon the oration and was somewhat surprised when Clarahan seemed avid for more.
“Did you think my style too ornate?” he asked eagerly.
“Rich but not indigestible,” was Steve’s comment.
“I wish,” said Dick, “that you could hear one of the lectures I’m giving Wednesday evenings at Boston College. The series is called ‘False Prophets of Modern Materialism.’ Not quite so florid as my Sunday stuff. More matter with less art, you know.”
“What’s your subject next Wednesday?”
“I’m taking Darwin apart for the multitude.”
“I hope you’re not saying that it’s an insult to God and man to believe that Homo sapiens once lived in trees?”
“You don’t think he did, do you?” asked Clarahan.
“All the evidence isn’t in yet. I’m reserving judgment. But supposing man did swing from a branch at one time or another. He could still have had an immortal soul, couldn’t he?”
Clarahan took the whole thing as a tease. “Perhaps you’d better not come next Wednesday. You might taint the atmosphere. But I think you would be interested to hear what I’m saying about Freud the week after next.”
“Freud? That does interest me. I’ll be there.”
In 1921 a lecture on Sigmund Freud was something of a novelty in Boston. True, The Introductory Essays translated some years back had long been discussed in the Harvard graduate classes that Clarahan attended. Stephen, fairly familiar with Freud’s general theories, realized that Clarahan was giving an index of alertness by preparing a talk on the subject.
One of the smaller halls in Boston College was three quarters filled by Catholic intellectuals on the night of the lecture. Stephen, accompanied by Dr. John Byrne, slipped into the back row. After a longish introduction by Bishop Mulqueen, who referred to the speaker as the “bright particular hope of Catholic thought in America,” Clarahan began his address. His platform manner was flawless; he possessed an exceptional voice—an instrument of many stops and colors—a ranging vocabulary, and a Jesuit-trained gift of organization. His exposition of Freud’s theory of the unconscious was, as far as Stephen could judge, accurate and well knit. Not until Clarahan came to the contents of the Freudian id did he really cut loose.
“We are asked to believe by this self-styled scientist (who, incidentally, began his career as a dabbler in hypnotism) that the basic drives of the human soul—prepare yourself for a shock, gentlemen—are incest, cannibalism, and murder. Yes, these are the ingredients of the Freudian psyche. From infancy our only motives are three: to achieve sexual congress with our mother, murder our father, and devour whosoever prevents us from attaining our objectives.”
Clarahan paused to let the horror travel about the room. In perceptible shivers, it did. “But the common observations of mankind,” he continued, “prove that these monstrosities do not in fact occur. To account for this discrepancy between fact and fancy, Freud advances another absurdity: the theory of repression. He concedes that the individual learns to suppress his frightful urges toward incest and murder, but at what a cost! Crowded to the bottom of the psyche, these urges crop out, says Freud, in the masked forms of dreams, anxiety states, and neurotic disturbances.
“Catholics will ask, ‘But what of free will?’ In Freud’s structure, free will—the keystone of moral choices—is abolished. Man is a creature of will-less compulsion, driven by sexual gases, so to speak, rising from the psychic cesspool that Freud would substitute for the soul.”
Clarahan pulled out the deepest stop of his voice box. “Can such things be? In place of St. Thomas Aquinas’ testimony concerning the divine origin and nature of the soul, must we substitute the Freudian nightmare of libido and repression?”
Clarahan warmed to his peroration. “We shall be increasingly urged in the years ahead to teach these infamous doctrines to our students. At this moment, in a lay university not a thousand miles from here, professors are attempting to dissect the soul as though it were a mass of pathologic tissue. I urge you, as educators faced by the responsibility of training young Catholic men and women, to extirpate from Catholic schools and colleges the works of Sigmund Freud.”
Enthusiastic applause greeted this close. In the question period that followed, not a great deal of new material was brought out. Few of Clarahan’s hearers were equipped to make a critical analysis of his remarks. Stephen wished to inquire into the relationship between Aquinas’ “concupiscence” and Freud’s “libido,” but knew that Mulqueen would mark him as a heretic for even suggesting the comparison. It was a nameless priest who asked the most perceptive question of the evening.
“What distinction might be made, Father Clarahan, between Freud’s id, with its predispositions to lustful violence, and the Catholic doctrine of original sin? Does not each attempt in its own way to account for the hereditary stain on the human soul?”
With Mulqueen’s admiring eye on him, Clarahan was all unction. “A searching question, Father. Both Freud and Catholic theology do take into account man’s tendency to evil. But need I point out to you, Father, that according to Catholic doctrine, original sin is at bottom nothing more than a withholding of God’s sanctifying grace—a condition that can be remedied by baptism? Whereas Freud would have us believe”—Clarahan’s timing and intonation were perfect—“that the condition can be remedied only by psychoanalysis.”
Laughter greeted this clever hit. The questioner sat down.
As the meeting broke up, Stephen congratulated his old classmate. “A clear and reasoned presentation, Dick. I’d like to talk further about this id business. Can’t we all ride downtown in my brother-in-law’s car?”
At a lunchroom in Copley Square they had crackers and milk. Dr. Byrne ventured the opinion that Freud would one day be valued by physicians and clergy alike for the light that his theories threw upon the dark crevasses of the soul. When Clarahan vehemently opposed the notion, Stephen asked:
“Why are you so afraid that Freud will get into general circulation?”
Clarahan attempted to make an honest answer. “It’s not so much his stressing of sex, though he does terribly overdo that part of it. No, it’s the emphasis Freud places on sheer pathology. After reading him, one gets the impression that the human soul is a poor, sick thing. I claim that the nature of the soul cannot be learned from a study of its diseases.”
John Byrne interposed quietly: “I don’t know that I agree with you about that, Father. In medical school our basic courses are two: biology, which concerns itself with healthy tissues; and pathology, which treats of morbid ones. From my experience as a surgeon and physician, I’ve found that one learns as much about the body from disease as from health.”
“But we aren’t talking about the body,” said Clarahan. “I thought we were discussing the soul.”
Stephen was happy when John Byrne replied: “I know, Father. Man is a creature composed of body and soul. But for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you where the body ends and the soul begins. I wouldn’t go so far as to say with Walt Whitman: The body is the soul’—but they’re wonderfully and fearfully connected somehow.” Dr. Byrne expanded his thought. “Patients come to my office with bodily symptoms caused by obscure psychic troubles. There is a host of ills—drunkenness, for example—that penalize the body for some defect in the soul.”
John Byrne, a sound Catholic and a thoughtful healer, went on: “The day will come, Father, when doctors and priests may be obliged to regard alcoholism, sexual perversion, and certain chronic illnesses such as tuberculosis—not to mention insanity, suicide, and other less obvious forms of self-destruction—as self-inflicted wounds, wrought upon the body by the revengeful soul.”
“I can’t follow you that far, Doctor,” said Clarahan.
Long after Stephen went to bed that night he thought of John Byrne’s ominous suggestion that man might be a self-destroying animal. What lay at the bottom of the soul’s impulse to harm the body? And did the body in turn have power to stunt and deform the soul?
He fell asleep thinking of Mona.