SURVEYING his Diocese, Bishop Fermoyle was obliged to acknowledge that a substantial vineyard had been entrusted to his keeping.
The see of Hartfield, southernmost diocese in New England, covers an area of fifty-five hundred square miles in one of the oldest and most prosperous sections of the United States. At the center of the Diocese lies the city of Hartfield, capital of the state, a traditional stronghold of mercantile and industrial wealth. The home offices of great insurance companies give an air of solid permanence to its business district; a huge railway terminal makes Hartfield a nexus between New England and the rest of the United States. North and east of the capital, populous manufacturing cities produce fine metal goods: locks, tools, clocks, watches, building hardware, firearms, and precision instruments. West of the Hartfield River lie rich agricultural counties whose chief crop is an excellent grade of shade-grown tobacco. In 1927—the year that Stephen took up his duties as Bishop—the population of the state was one million five hundred thousand; of this number approximately one third were Roman Catholics.
Stephen’s spiritual authority over his people was virtually unbounded. Canon law made him an ecclesiastic king, answerable solely to the Pope and limited only by the common law of the Church. He had the power to judge, teach, interpret, censor, ordain, and confirm. But if his powers were large, his obligations were heavy. Upon him fell the responsibility of preserving in his Diocese the purity of Catholic doctrine and the vigor of Catholic faith. He must maintain constant vigilance over the conduct and training of the clergy, oversee the education of youth, and protect the sick and destitute within his jurisdiction. At regular intervals he must make a personal visit to every parish in his Diocese, audit the parish accounts, inspect the physical property of the Church, and ascertain the moral condition of pastors and people. The office of bishop has always demanded enormous physical strength, rare executive ability, vast prudence, superhuman tact, and (in a diocese the size of Hartfield) the ability to collect and administer large sums of money. Dangers surround a bishop’s throne. He must resist the temptation of letting financial and administrative activities become ends in themselves. To remind him of his chief function, he is obliged to celebrate every Sunday and feast day the missa pro grege—the shepherd’s Mass for the flock given to his keeping.
And finally, like any other man, the bishop must somehow find time to cultivate and preserve his own soul.
Stephen spent the first few days familiarizing himself with the organization of his Diocese. Chancery maps and records told him that he had jurisdiction over some two hundred pastors, four hundred curates, fortyseven parochial schools, six hospitals, three orphanages, eleven convents, and a seminary. To acquaint himself all at once with these various institutions and their personnel was impossible. Stephen turned for further information to the quick intelligence of Monsignor Ambrose Cannell, administrator of St. Philip’s Cathedral.
Culturally, Ambrose Cannell was a type new to Stephen. Britishborn, and a convert from Anglicanism, Monsignor Cannell had inherited from his Dorsetshire forebears the country-squire ruddiness that one associates with tweeds and fox hunting. In addition to one of the best classical degrees that Oxford could confer, Ambrose Cannell possessed a marked interest in liturgy, church music, and architecture, as well as a most practical sense of how far the silk threads in a goldback could be stretched without breaking. Besides being the perfect administrator of a large Cathedral, Amby performed the still more difficult feat of remaining quite British and making his Celtic-American colleagues rather like it.
Stephen’s first interview with Monsignor Cannell (it was really an informal conversation) took place in the Bishop’s study on the second floor of the episcopal residence. Stephen was poring over a diocesan map when the administrator’s fresh-colored countenance emerged through a cumulus cloud of pipe smoke, which in turn rose from the handsomest meerschaum Stephen had ever seen. The sherry-colored bowl of Amby Cannell’s pipe was a counterpart of the man himself—nutty-flavored, aromatic, humorous, and reliable.
Stephen sniffed appreciatively at the smoke nimbus surrounding his colleague. “What’s the name of that Elysian blend you’re burning?”
Ambrose Cannell removed the curved amber bit from his mouth. “You may think I’m overplaying the part,” he said, “but it’s a mixture of Three Nuns and Parson’s Pleasure.”
“You give it a Trollope flavor,” said Stephen. Ambrose Cannell, who had heard all too few literary allusions since leaving Oxford, appreciated the donnish touch. Between great billows from his meerschaum, the administrator piled a hayrick of facts and figures onto the Bishop’s desk.
“St. Philip’s is not the richest cathedral parish in the United States, Your Excellency,” he began, “but its revenues are steady and substantial. During the last fiscal year, parish collections amounted to one hundred and ten thousand dollars; special gifts and contributions added another thirty thousand. These are boom-time figures, you understand. Ordinarily, I think you may safely count on an income somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”
One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars! Since, by canon law, cathedral revenues accrue to the bishop, this sum would be at Stephen’s personal disposal. After deductions, of course. “How do expenses run?” he inquired.
A flawless smoke ring haloed up from Amby Cannell’s pipe. “Heat, light, upkeep, and repairs on the Cathedral—twenty thousand dollars. Salaries to clergy, choir, and organist come to an equal amount. Ecclesiastic supplies, new vestments, and so on—oh, I should say, seventyfive hundred. Then there’s the episcopal household. Bishop Quakers, a frugal man, spent somewhere between ten and twelve thousand a year on servants, food, and other domestic expenses.”
Sixty thousand dollars gone in a puff! “How about the parochial school?” asked Stephen.
“Never less than thirty-five thousand dollars, Your Excellency.”
“Is the seminary self-supporting?”
“Last year there was a deficit of ten thousand dollars.”
“And St. Andrew’s Hospital?”
“Depends on contributions. Bishop Qualters was always digging down for it.” In the glowing bowl of Amby Cannell’s meerschaum, the Bishop’s fine income was being consumed to a still finer ash.
“Why, we’ll be lucky to keep out of the red!” exclaimed Stephen.
“It will require some management,” agreed Monsignor Cannell. Blandly, he went on to explain certain capital outlays long put off by Stephen’s predecessor. The entire Cathedral needed sandblasting; its roof and buttresses could stand a structural overhauling. The new outpatient clinic of St. Andrew’s Hospital was only half financed. Amby Cannell waved his amber pipestem at the shabby furnishings of the Bishop’s study. “Naturally you’ll want to make some alterations in your own house … Mrs. Goodwin concurring, of course.”
Stephen smiled. “By stretching my canonical authority I may be able to get rid of the antimacassars.”
Humorous resignation was in Amby Cannell’s sigh. “That’s more than Bishop Qualters was ever able to do.”
Curiosity inflected Stephen’s voice. “I never knew him. What kind of man was he?”
“In his prime, he ran a splendid shop here in Hartfield. He was a methodical man, an able organizer, scrupulous in his accounting, both fiscal and moral.” Monsignor Cannell stuffed a palmful of ribbon cut into his meerschaum. “Towards the last, it was the old story of prolonged illness. Ex pede Herculem,” he concluded cheerfully.
Loyalty to his departed leader and present colleagues prevented Amby Cannell from saying more. Nor did Stephen press for details. He was content to let the facts, whatever they were, advertise themselves at the first meeting of the diocesan Curia.
THE OUTSTANDING FACT about the Hartfield Curia—the board of ecclesiastics that acted as Stephen’s aides and advisers—was the extreme age of its members. Every man at the council table was several years older than the Bishop. Vicar-General Mark Drury, an imposing oak of a man at seventy, had become intellectually blanched by standing for twenty-five years in the nobler shade of Bishop Qualters. Like that earlier cleric, Dean Swift, the Vicar-General was beginning to go from the top. A noticeable tremor agitated his head and voice as he greeted his superior and took the seat at his right hand. At Stephen’s left sat Chancellor Gregory Shane, currant-dry after too many years on the vine. He had hoped to succeed the “old Bishop” at the latter’s demise; obliged to step aside while a younger man grasped the crozier, Gregory Shane suffered the all-too-human pangs of those who serve well, wait patiently, and watch the prize go to another. Ranging down the table were other members of the council: Joseph Drumgoole, a dun-colored cleric, head of the charitable bureau; Edward Rickaby, chief of rural deans; and Thomas Kenney, of the marriage tribunal.
Never one to cut butter with a cleaver, Stephen knew well enough that butter did not cut itself. Assuming that everyone else knew it too, he moved without preliminaries into the business that had piled up since the last meeting. Decisions on many points had apparently been hanging fire for months. The docket of the marriage tribunal was badly clogged; the tempo of its hearings on annulments would have to be speeded up. Monsignor Drumgoole’s report on Catholic charities indicated a failure of grasp somewhere; expenditures were being made without proper investigation. He could not, for example, answer Stephen’s direct question: “Has the herd of Guernseys at St. Brendan’s Home for Boys proved to be a profitable venture?” Dean Kenney’s recommendation that Polish-speaking priests be obtained for the tobacco-growing parishes in the Hartfield River Valley was excellent, yet the Dean had no idea where such priests could be obtained.
Stephen’s decisions in these matters were tactful and conservative. Hundreds of similar meetings under Glennon’s chairmanship, followed by four years in Rome and two in Washington, had given the new Bishop a tremendous background of judgment and experience in the handling of ecclesiastic affairs. For fifteen years he had studied under able masters; now, his apprenticeship over, his journeyman service behind, Stephen’s touch was steady, his voice sure, as he disposed of the council’s business. Feeling his strong hand, the diocesan consultants, familiar with the mysterious rule which decrees that some men must lead while others follow, were content, for the most part, to fall into line behind their young Bishop.
The only clash occurred when Chancellor Shane finished reading his report on the financial position of the Hartfield see. The report itself was encouraging: there existed a working capital of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars—not a vast reserve when checked against annual expenditures. Half of this sum was in cash, and the remainder in Grade A common stocks. Both cash and securities were held, of course, in the Bishop’s name as a corporation sole.
“Should we not,” the Chancellor was asking, “divert a larger portion of our cash into the purchase of common stocks?”
Stephen fingered the typewritten sheets of Monsignor Shane’s financial report, which included a portfolio of the securities owned by the Diocese. He scanned the list: Aluminum Corporation, Carbon and Carbide, Pennsylvania Railroad, International Nickel, Standard Oil, United States Steel. Blue chips all. “What is the history of these investments, Monsignor Shane?” asked Stephen. “When were they purchased, on whose advice, and at what cost?”
Chancellor Shane had the matter at his finger tips. “Bishop Qualters bought them in 1922, at the suggestion of his brokers, Demming, Condit, and Hughes. Steel was picked up at eighty-five, Aluminum at one hundred and fifty. In the past six years all the diocesan holdings have more than doubled in value. The best financial opinion is that they will go higher.” A litmus test of Monsignor Shane’s voice would have indicated the presence of acid. “Very much higher.”
Stephen pondered his reply. “One hundred per cent would seem a reasonable profit. Suppose we sold now?”
Drawstring muscles tightened the Chancellor’s lips. “Why sell, Your Excellency? These are boom times.”
Boom times! The expression was tripping off everyone’s tongue. Yet beneath the rising tide of Wall Street prosperity, one felt an ugly undertow. Last year the Florida bubble had burst; rumors of overproduction and layoffs were gaining currency. Now and then, even the stock market would stumble ominously. Stephen remembered his ten-thousand-mile trip through the starveling South. No boom times in Dixie! He recalled a caustic remark made by his brother George: “If yachts were selling for ten dollars apiece, most people couldn’t afford to buy a cake of Lifebuoy Soap.” Totaling the sum of all these parts, Stephen was reminded of the trick question in arithmetic. “Add six apples to five pears, and what do you get?” Answer: “Nothing.”
“I don’t pretend to any special knowledge of the stock market,” said Stephen. “Doubtless these shares will go higher. Yet I’d feel safer if we held onto our cash, and converted these common stocks”—he tapped the portfolio with his finger—“into less hazardous securities.”
The Bishop solicited opinions from his consultors. “Feel free to speak, gentlemen. Remember, it’s diocesan money that’s involved.”
Father Drumgoole led off. “I see in the Times this morning that Steel went up four points. If we ride along with the market another six months, we might get enough to finish the outpatient department of St. Andrew’s.”
Whether Vicar-General Drury’s head was nodding assent or merely shaking with age, Stephen couldn’t tell. Monsignor Drury said nothing. Tom Kenney volunteered, “A friend of mine in Wall Street tells me we haven’t seen anything yet.”
Chancellor Shane took the candid role. “Why not consult with Harry Condit down at Demming, Condit, and Hughes? He’d give us the professional slant.”
Briefly, Stephen considered the proposal. “We all know what that would be, Monsignor. ‘Load up.’ ‘Double your holdings.’ ‘Don’t sell America short.’ Maybe it’s smart professional advice.” The Bishop of Hartfield studiously kept the iron out of his voice. “But we’re not going to take it. Monsignor Shane, I want you to sell these stocks at the market opening tomorrow. Deposit the proceeds in the Hartfield Trust Company, and tell Hammond, their vice-president, that we want to put our money into the safest, solidest bonds he can buy for us.”
No one at the table made an audible murmur of dissent. The Bishop had spoken. Gregory Shane did exactly as Stephen bade him, and for a whole year had the unbearable satisfaction of seeing United States Steel and Aluminum Corporation climb steadily into the blue. The Chancellor’s cup of satisfaction overflowed when Steel touched two hundred and fifty and Aluminum five hundred dollars a share. As a matter of fact, Monsignor Shane was—until a certain unforgettable day in October, 1929—as smug and difficult a clergyman as one could find in the entire Western world.
AUTUMN’S SEPIA SCARF went down the wind; winter covered earth’s nakedness with an ermine stole. This was the season Stephen loved best; temperatures that made ice and snow were kindest to his blood, driving it in a full tide to heart and brain. In judgment and action he grew steadily surer; yet he made few actual changes in the diocesan picture, preferring to give his advisers and pastors the secure feeling that their tenure depended on ability and performance rather than on the Bishop’s whim. Human errors of judgment were overlooked. “It could happen to anyone” was Stephen’s favorite expression in letting a subordinate off the hook. The unspoken inference was “Don’t let it happen again.”
Only when a man was clearly incompetent, as in the case of Father Frank Ronan, did the Bishop intervene.
Frank Ronan, a middle-aged priest whose mercurial temperament quite outmatched his intellect, was the supervisor of St. Brendan’s Home for Boys. St. Brendan’s had started out as a run-of-the-mill orphanage, then, following a nice puff in a national magazine, had become for a time one of those “boy-town” schools that never fail to grasp the popular imagination. Father Ronan installed an honor system in the classroom; he let the boys police themselves while they hoed vegetables in the St. Brendan truck garden and turned out crude furniture in the model carpenter shop. During the early twenties, St. Brendan’s was a laboratory for social workers alert to the trend of the times; it received an enormous amount of publicity and a few medium-sized bequests. All of which became fatal wedges that opened up the flaw in Father Ronan’s character. He fell into the dangerous habit of spending a hundred dollars for every fifty he collected, and became so busy paying interest that he quite neglected his human charges.
Finding himself mired in a financial bog, he attempted to jack himself onto solid ground by purchasing a herd of Guernsey cows. The idea, as presented to Bishop Qualters six months prior to his death, had two brilliant features: primo, every orphan and invalid in Catholic institutions throughout the Diocese would grow fat on Guernsey milk; secundo, the St. Brendan herd would be paid for by monies formerly handed over to commercial dairies. Quid pro quo and quod erat demonstrandum—except that the plan didn’t work. The cows had been in operation for almost a year, and the flow of butter fat was disappointingly meager.
With the money he was getting and expected to get, Father Ronan had built a model dairy farm: silos, milking machines, cream separators, all very expensive. Then he brought his boys into contact with his cows. The carnage was ghastly. Being neither a farmer nor a disciplinarian, Frank Ronan didn’t know what to do. And while he scurried around for fresh funds, neither the cows nor the boys made any progress with each other.
Inklings that all was not well at St. Brendan’s reached Stephen through various channels. Twice he referred the matter to Father Drumgoole, hoping that the director of charities would straighten things out. Then shortly after Christmas a paragraph appeared in “Pickles and Chowder,” a peppery column conducted by Jake Mabbott in the Hartfield Item. The paragraph ran:
No one who values his job would dream of criticizing the conduct of affairs at a certain orphanage not a thousand miles from the state capital. Only kids and cows are involved, anyway. If worst comes to worst, the kids can always hit the road. But what can you do if you’re a cow?
Stephen called in Father Drumgoole, showed him the “Pickles and Chowder” paragraph. “What’s behind this, Father?”
The director of charities struck the newspaper with the back of his hand. “Just what you’d expect from a booze-fighting agnostic like Jake Mabbott. He hates the Church and everything it stands for.”
“I’m not interested in Jake Mabbott’s personal habits or theologic background,” said Stephen. “He isn’t discussing faith and morals here. He’s talking about orphans and cows. Stop beating the devil around the bush, Father. What’s going on at St. Brendan’s?”
The gist of Father Drumgoole’s answer was that Frank Ronan had been in squeezes before and had always worked himself out of them. It seemed that he had one of those sunshine-and-shower temperaments. Cloudy today, rosy tomorrow. If the Bishop would only have patience …
“I’ve got the patience of Bruce’s spider,” said Stephen. “But I don’t want to see any more digs at us in ‘Pickles and Chowder.’”
The next day Stephen had a phone call from Mayor Aloysius Noonan. “Sorry, Bishop,” said the Mayor apologetically, “but my health commissioner says he’ll have to tack a notice on Father Ronan’s barns. Things are that bad up there.”
“Can you hold your commissioner off for twenty-four hours, Mr. Mayor, till I take a look for myself?” “Sure thing, Bishop.”
Early next morning Stephen made an unannounced call at St. Brendan’s Home for Boys. He left his car at the gate and walked into an Augean mess. The dormitories were filthy; the kitchen worse. Little boys were underclothed, big boys were underfed. But the real shock came when Stephen entered the stables. Manure piles, bales of hay, bags of feed, and assorted dairy equipment were inextricably tangled. After much climbing and detouring, Stephen discovered Father Ronan surrounded by a group of shivering boys, trying to make an AC electric cream separator work on DC current—a miracle that would defy the full powers of a first-rate saint.
Stephen beckoned to Frank Ronan. “I wish to speak to you privately, Father.”
Through snowdrifts they trudged in silence to the office of St. Brendan’s, a curtainless clutter of broken furniture and disordered files. Stephen closed the door and faced the collarless, haggard priest. “You have exactly ten minutes to tell me what you’re trying to do here,” he said.
In ten years Father Ronan couldn’t have told. His unshaven face sank between dirty-nailed hands. Sobs of shame and relief shook him; shame at his failure, relief that the ordeal was over at last.
Sorry as Stephen felt for the man, he felt infinitely sorrier for the boys and the cows. His first act was to relieve Father Ronan of all responsibility and send him to a rest home. Next he summoned the frightened lay brother in charge of St. Brendan’s kitchen and dormitory. “Clean up your departments in twenty-four hours,” he ordered. “I’ll be back this time tomorrow for an inspection.” A phone call to a commercial dairy brought in a cattle expert to supervise the feeding and care of the Guernseys. None of these temporary measures, however, solved the deeper problem of setting St. Brendan’s Home in order.
Stephen took the problem back to his office and talked it over with Amby Cannell. The administrator stuffed a half ounce of shag into his meerschaum, and said:
“I’ve never been in the milk business, but if I ever did go into it I’d call in the Xaverian Brothers to help me. They’re wonderful with boys and farm animals.”
“Unfortunately, we haven’t any Xaverian Brothers in this Diocese.”
“Your friend Bishop Speed might send down a flying detachment from Maine,” suggested Monsignor Cannell.
“Amby, you think of everything. Get Mike Speed on the phone, will you, please?”
Forty-eight hours later a squad of Xaverians were in full charge of St. Brendan’s. Within two weeks the Guernseys were streaming with milk. The little boys were clothed, the big boys were fed, and Catholic institutions throughout the Diocese of Hartfield began receiving regular shipments of milk, butter, and cream.
The stirabout at St. Brendan’s had several consequences: Father Joe Drumgoole lost his job as director of charities and was quietly transferred to the small parish of Denham; Amby Cannell received a pound canister of Parson’s Pleasure from his Bishop and took over Vicar-General Drury’s office when the latter succumbed to a stroke. As for Father Frank Ronan, he wandered out of the rest home and was last seen hitchhiking along the Boston Post Road toward New York.
Despite all of Stephen’s efforts to find him, no trace of Frank Ronan ever turned up. He became one of the ten thousand souls who each year slip their moorings and drift by rudderless courses into the port of missing men.
THE PART of his episcopal duty that Stephen enjoyed most—and labored hardest at—were the diocesan visitations.
Chauffered by Peter Tuohy, he would start off without breakfast (even a bishop must fast if he expects to say Mass) for an inspection of some parish in his domain. The purpose of these visits, as defined four hundred years ago by the Council of Trent, was “to maintain orthodox doctrine; to defend good, and correct bad manners; to incite the people to religion, peace, and innocence by sermons and warnings; and to arrange all things according to the prudence of the bishop for the good of the people.” Notified well in advance of the Bishop’s visit, rectors would have their books ready, their churches in order, and often enough their hearts in their mouths as Stephen, attired in rochet and mozzetta, alighted at their door.
A strictly observed ceremony then took place. The rector, accompanied by cross-bearer, thurifer, and acolyte, would extend a small crucifix for his Bishop to kiss. Removing his biretta, Stephen would kneel for a brief prayer in the doorway. Rising, he would receive the aspergil from the rector, sprinkle his own forehead with holy water, then sprinkle those around him. Preceded by a thurifer, altar boys, curates, and pastor, Stephen then would go up the aisle, blessing the congregation. Mass might now be celebrated, or the sacrament of confirmation administered. Stephen would address the people briefly, then, seated on his faldstool—a kind of movable throne—he would hear the pastor read, first in Latin, then in English, the indulgence granted by the visiting Bishop:
The Right Reverend Father and Lord in Christ, Stephen Fermoyle, by the grace of God and of the Apostolic See, Bishop, gives and grants to all persons here present fifty days of true indulgence, in the customary form of the Church. Pray to God for the good estate of His Holiness, Pius XI, by Divine Providence Pope, of his Lordship the Bishop, and of Holy Mother Church.
Afterwards (and this was the part that Stephen liked best), the Bishop stood at the main entrance of the church to receive the people. In theory, this was their opportunity to air grievances, if any; in practice they shook the Bishop’s hand or kissed his ring (either was considered good form), then went home and spent a good part of the next year telling their neighbors, families, and each other what a handsome, young, stern, holy, and democratic man the Bishop was. And with reason they might. For, at thirty-eight, Stephen Fermoyle’s lean figure, his dark hair, parted on the side and rising above his grave, ascetic face, his powderblue eyes, and vibrant low-pitched voice—all combined to make him an endearing human being and an inspiring leader of his people.
The physical inspection of the church property would now begin. Attended by the rector, Stephen walked about the interior of the church, examining the altar, confessionals, pulpit, fonts, and pews. In the sacristy he inspected the sacred vessels, vestments, and stock of holy oils. A bit of lunch might be taken at this point to give the rector strength for the financial audit and scrutiny of the parish register that followed. On the last used page of the account books and register, Stephen wrote the word visum, accompanied by his signature and the date. The Bishop now made whatever remarks, complimentary or otherwise, that the state of affairs called for. Then, after a final visit to the Blessed Sacrament, he was off.
Stephen’s manner during these visitations was a blend of personal cordiality and ecclesiastic reserve. Coming in as a steward-general to inspect morale, supplies, and fortifications, he discovered that he must repress much of his natural warmth. One simply couldn’t play the good-fellow role; undue geniality might lead to a fatal weakening of discipline. On the other hand, hard-working rectors mustn’t be chilled by a too-frosty demeanor. Stephen chose the middle path; he was liberal with praise, firm and constructive in criticism, and particularly alert to avoid being taken in by the deference that he encountered during his visits.
The rectors fell into two groups: graying field veterans who, after long years of service, found themselves in charge of important city parishes; and younger men (around Stephen’s own age) enjoying their first taste of parochial command in smaller towns. Though few geniuses appeared among them, they were solid administrators, the steel vertebrae that supported the physical body of the Church. Their financial accounts and parish records were usually well kept, their churches tight, trim, and in good repair. It would be easier, Stephen sometimes thought, to wrest Hercules’ club from his hands than to criticize the pastoral labors of such men.
Still, they had their troubles. For some mysterious reason, collections weren’t what they should be. “People are buying hooch and gas with the money they used to put in the plate” was the explanation advanced by Dan O’Laughlin, rector of the biggest church in Fairhaven. Other pastors told similar stories of dwindling collections—of dimes and quarters taking the place of heavier silver and folding green. Then, too, pastors were finding it difficult to weld a mixed population of Yankee aborigines with second-generation Irish and first-generation Italians and Poles. “It gets harder every Sunday to give a sermon they can all carry away with them,” complained Father Matt Cornish, rector of the Sacred Heart in Bridgeton. Worst of all, the Catholic population seemed to be falling off slightly. “Five years ago we’d have fifty or sixty kids in a First Communion class. This year we had twenty-nine,” was the way Andrew Brick, Pastor of Waterville’s Star of the Sea, put it.
These waning rays of financial, moral, and procreative energy gathered themselves into a perfect focus, one cold February day in 1928, as Stephen was inspecting St. Anselm’s in Springford, a medium-sized manufacturing city on the eastern border of his Diocese. He was greeted at the door by Father Peter Mendum, a tense wiry man who gave the impression of running while standing still. After the usual ceremonies, Stephen went over Father Mendum’s accounts; revenues were checked against expenses, and both were diligently compared with those of preceding years. The audit showed that the parish income had fallen off by almost a thousand dollars. Stephen asked why.
“I don’t quite know, Bishop.” Father Mendum’s knees and elbows were tensed like a relay racer waiting for the baton. “Your Excellency realizes, of course, that people are losing their jobs every day. Take Eagle Hardware, for instance—they make locks and hinges, everything that builders use. I was talking to their sales manager, Ben Mackey, the other day—Ben’s one of my parishioners—and he told me that Eagle’s cutting down on production. Building hardware just isn’t moving.”
The man needed motor release. “Let’s take a walk around the church,” suggested Stephen. With Father Mendum well in front, the physical inspection of the church property began. First, the outside: yellow firebrick, granite trim, slate roof—a triumph of no-period design. Inside, St. Anselm’s was stucco-plastered and oak-timbered, like so many of the smaller suburban churches built since World War I. Its stainedglass windows were standard items purveyed by ecclesiastical-supply houses. Altar and stations of the cross, ditto. Neat enough and scrupulously clean, yet without a single touch of distinction.
Why do they make them look so much like bungalows, thought Stephen. “I’ll glance at your parish register,” he said aloud.
Scrutiny of the marriage and birth records brought out the interesting fact that marriages were up and christenings down. “How do you account for this, Father?”
“Birth control, Your Excellency,” said Peter Mendum, striding up and down the sacristy.
“Have you pointed out to your people that birth control is a mortal sin?”
For a moment Father Mendum stood still. “I might just as well talk to the east wind, Bishop. It’s not that people don’t want children. It seems that this birth-control business is all tied up with their jobs and way of life. I’ll illustrate: say a nice Catholic couple get married and make their down payment on a little home. They have two children—three seems to be the limit. Anything over that—well, what with the payments on the house, and a car, perhaps—they feel they can’t afford to risk having any more. Someone tells the wife she can buy a tube of jelly that’ll do such and such.” Father Mendum tapped the cover of his parish register. “No more christenings in that family.”
Riding back to Hartfield, Stephen concentrated upon the social and economic aspects of the birth-control problem. He knew well enough that the decline in the birth rate was most noticeable among the upper and middle classes; the very people who could afford to have children weren’t having them. Why? Did a genuine feeling of insecurity threaten these people, or were they merely using the economic argument as a false front for the murderous practice of contraception? Stephen decided that mere pulpit thundering wouldn’t solve the problem; it needed fresh and realistic examination from every point of view.
He began his investigation by looking up the state laws regarding the sale of contraceptives and the dissemination of birth-control literature. Rigid statutes existed against both; State as well as Church had set its official countenance against criminal tampering with the life stream. But the laws were weakly enforced; every drugstore sold contraceptive devices, and recently a new organization—the Planned Motherhood League—had begun passing out birth-control pamphlets at street corners. Stephen obtained and studied one of these pamphlets, entitled, with unconscious humor, What Every Free Woman Should Know. He was puzzled by the morbid, whining tone of the pamphlet:
American women! [it began] Your health is being destroyed, your happiness wantonly laid waste, by a conspiracy on the part of priestridden legislatures, a backward medical profession, and a gagged press. This cruel triumvirate keeps you in a condition of debased ignorance regarding your true nature and function. Not until birth-control literature and contraceptive devices can be placed in the hands of every woman who has suffered the wracking torments of childbirth, not until American women and mothers are armed with knowledge of the risk and dangers accompanying unwanted children, will they shake off the chains of this shameful bondage.
What a blast! Maybe, thought Stephen, I’ve underestimated the pangs of labor and the ruinous effect of childbearing on a mother’s health and happiness. He compared the martyrish tone of the pamphlet with the tender cooing sounds he had heard Celia make while she nursed and bathed her babies. Against the neurotic statements of What Every Free Woman Should Know he placed the joyous testimony shining from the eyes of a thousand young mothers whose infants he had baptized. Someone was maltreating the truth. …
Stephen’s impulse was to ask the Honorable Aloysius Noonan, Mayor of Hartfield, why the statutes against the dissemination of birth-control literature weren’t being enforced. Testing the idea on Ambrose Cannell, he got thirty seconds of meditative pipesmoke and a well-considered “I wouldn’t do it, Bishop” from his Vicar-General.
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Ambrose Cannell, “your vestments would get all chewed up in the interlocking gears of Hartfield politics, industry, and finance. They do interlock, you know. And some of the most important levers are thrown by the delicately gloved hand of Mrs. F. Dennison Towle, president of the Planned Motherhood League.”
“Should I be impressed? Frightened? Tell me more.”
“I’ll tell you all I know.” Amby Cannell turned portraitist. “Mrs. F. Dennison Towle (born Imogene Barlow) is that not-unusual combination of wealth, blood, energy, and social position often encountered in American cities of the second magnitude. She’s a Mayflower descendant, a personage in the D.A.R., and a prominent alumna of Bryn Mawr. As you might suspect, she’s unhappily married—and childless. What you mightn’t suspect is that she’s not unattractive in a pince-nez sort of way.”
Amby Cannell selected a fine brush for the next detail. “Lady Imogene, as we call her, is full of gushing kindliness to insects and animals. With my own ears I’ve heard her call them ‘wee beasties.’”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“Two years ago she brought out, privately, a puce-colored volume of verse entitled Rustlings from a Quiet Garden. It was reviewed in Horticulture, Opera Lore, and, of course, the Hartfield Item—in which Lady Imogene owns considerable stock. With the editors of these periodicals she keeps up a spirited, chatty correspondence about the gay bright faces of her petunias, the haunting overmelodies of Parsifal, and the wretched condition of the childbearing American woman.” Amby Cannell concluded his sketch with an interesting bit of information. “Under the rose, Your Excellency, What Every Free Woman Should Know dripped from the pen of Imogene Barlow herself.”
“Has our well-placed Mrs. Towle a special dispensation to break the laws? A court test might cut her down to size.”
Tact, courage, and a British distaste for unedifying spectacles were in Amby CannelTs reply. “Legal action would be … messy. Why not fight her with moral weapons—a pastoral letter, perhaps—exposing the fallacies and roundly condemning the dangers of birth control?”
The Bishop of Hartfield was able to recognize a good idea even when it came from a subordinate. “Thanks for the suggestion, Amby. I’ll think it over.”
TO LAY BARE the moral and psychologic errors of birth control and to rebut them in a pastoral letter was no casual week-end task. Stephen’s first step was to familiarize himself with the best medical opinion on the subject. Much of it was contradictory, yet with curious unanimity doctors of all schools agreed that four, five, or even a half a dozen children would not jeopardize the health of a well-nourished, properly cared-for American woman of the middle or upper class.
Still, such women were in the minority. What about homes blighted by poverty and already overcrowded with children? What of wives whose ill-health made further childbearing dangerous? To cover these cases, the Church prescribed one of two courses: the admittedly difficult practice of continence or the newly discovered rhythm system based upon careful calculation of female periods of fertility.
Lastly, Stephen studied the papal utterances celebrating the sacramental nature of marriage and advocating economic measures that must be taken to protect the family. In Leo XIII’s Arcanum he followed the closely reasoned argument that the vigor and welfare of civil society depends upon the “domestic society” of the home. When the home is weakened by laxity, licentiousness, or economic want, said Leo, the State is in grievous danger. In the encyclical Casti connubi of Pius XI, the reigning Pope exalted children as the prime blessing of marriage, and a source of compensation for the sorrows of life. Pius XI restated Leo’s teaching that “the State should adopt economic measures enabling every head of a family to earn as much as is necessary for himself, his wife, and the rearing of his children. … To deny him this wage, or to pay him less than is equitable, is a grave injustice, placed by Holy Scripture among the very greatest of sins.”
Collating his material in the light of Catholic morality, medical science, and human happiness, Stephen wrote his pastoral letter on the subject of birth control. He made several drafts, trying always for greater clarity of thought and simplicity of language. On the second Sunday in Lent the following letter was read from every pulpit in the Hartfield Diocese:
Beloved Brethren:
The special grace conferred by God on the sacrament of matrimony perfects human love and makes both husband and wife holy. In the excellent mystery of wedlock the married partners joyously yield themselves to each other for mutual solace and the propagation of mankind. To tamper with these mysteries is an offense against God, an affront to nature, and a defeat to conjugal love. Yet the partisans of birth control criminally propose such tampering. In defiance of moral and natural law, they disseminate theories of marriage contrary to Catholic teaching, hurtful to the individual, and ruinous to die State.
It is my duty, as Bishop, to counsel you against the errors set in motion by the advocates of birth control. They will approach you with arguments unfounded in medical science or economic truth. You will be urged to thwart, by means of drugs and devices, the deepest instincts of parental love. In exchange for the jubilant promise of the Catholic nuptial Mass, “Thy children shall be as olive plants about thy table,” you will be offered the barren husks of a Planned Motherhood pamphlet.
By stressing the physical risks of childbearing, birth-control literature conveys a false and morbid picture of maternal fruition. Labor is indeed a heavy ordeal, yet as our Saviour Himself has said: “A woman when she has brought forth a child remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man-child is born into the world” Physicians will tell you that women who refuse to accept children as the crowning fulfillment of life pay a penalty more prolonged and infinitely heavier than the temporary pangs of childbirth. No frustration is deadlier than that of the woman who deliberately evades the responsibility of motherhood.
Exponents of birth control often ask: “Why should more children be brought into a world plagued by economic insecurity?” To these the Catholic Church sternly replies: “Our duty is not to prevent life from entering the world, but to make the world a better place for life to enter!” Squalor, disease, and undernourishment are caused not by large families, but by social inequities condemned long ago by Leo XIII. Pinching off the life stream is not the cure for poverty and unemployment. These are evils that must be remedied by economic, not criminal, measures.
It is not the mission of the Church to frame social legislation. It is, however, the duty of the Church to warn society that unless these problems are solved, fearful dangers will engulf our people and destroy our State.
I remind Catholics in particular that the practice of birth control is a crime not only against the body and the State, but, more importantly, against the immortal soul. As Pius XI has said in his encyclical on Catholic marriage: “Since the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.”
Let no one tell you that the Catholic Church exhorts her people to rear families beyond their economic means or the strength of the mother. Illness and want may make it inadvisable for a married couple to have more children. But the only lawful method of avoiding parenthood is abstinence, either total or periodic. It is the particular glory of Catholic marriage that many husbands and wives practice self-restraint rather than indulge in practices contrary to moral and natural law.
I urge you to remember that matrimony is a sacrament instituted by Christ. It is administered not by a priest, but by the husband and the wife, each of whom confers the sacrament on the other. By the purity and strength of your mutual love, shown in lifelong acts of tenderness, devotion, and forbearance, you will confound those who would threaten the happiness of your marriage, the vigor of your country, and the salvation of your immortal soul.
Devotedly in Christ,
Stephen Fermoyle, Bp. Hartfield
Stephen’s pastoral letter touched off a nation-wide controversy. The Associated Press picked it up, and the battle was on. In an article entitled “Miter over Mind,” The Statesman led the attack with a typical blast: “The Catholic Bishop of Hartfield refurbishes some moldy and discredited arguments against birth control in a pastoral letter to his gaping flock. How any contemporary mind can believe such nonsense passes comprehension. Isn’t it high time that the Catholic Church took off the blinkers of ignorance and caught up with the march of social science?”
An editorial in the New York World viewed the matter from quite another angle: “To Bishop Fermoyle’s timely and sensible letter we would add the following facts. (1) Seventy-one per cent of divorces in the United States occur between childless couples. (2) Today there are a million fewer children under ten years of age in this country than there were five years ago. Regardless of what the Planned Motherhood crowd says, marital discord and race suicide seem to be the prime products of birth control.”
Crank letters poured in: “Your recent utterance clearly reveals the contempt and hatred of womankind that is festering in your heart. I pity you.” “What does a celibate (?) know about childbearing? Stick to your incense and flummery.” “It’s your kind that keeps Mexican women ignorant and priest-ridden. As an American clubwoman and mother of two, I despise the sexual peonage you would foist upon us.”
Other letters came in, too. One from the Governor of New York, himself the father of a family: “Thanks for sending that beam of light up the alleyway where economics and morals grapple in the dark.” Quarenghi wrote: “Sounds of cannonading reach here. Your pastoral grapeshot is cutting the enemy to pieces.” But the best letter of all came from a woman who said: “I take my pencil in hand to thank you for the fine things you said about big families and the joy they bring. You must of come from one yourself, no one else would know. Sometimes my friends tell me I ought to stop having children but I can’t, I love them so. If God sent me a hundred, I’d still pray for more.”
The letter was signed, “Mother of Thirteen.”