17
Lieutenant Tully was paging through reports turned in by various members of his squad at various times. All concerned the same case, the investigation into the presumed serial killing of Helen Donovan and Lawrence Hoffer.
After notifying and getting the approval of Inspector Walter Koznicki, Tully had assigned every member of his squad to interview the people who headed departments in the archdiocese of Detroit. Each resultant report contained a plethora of information. In scanning each one, Tully concentrated on the responses to such questions as, “Can you mink of any enemies you personally have?” Or, “Are there any persons you can think of who are opposed to the work of your department?” Or, “Can you think of anyone who is opposed to the policies of the archdiocese of Detroit?”
In the responses, a pattern was forming. Almost no one named anyone who might qualify as a personal enemy. In response to the other questions, quite a few were mentioned. Tully was jotting down names that kept recurring throughout the reports. There were quite a few.
His talk with Father Koesler had helped. Tully felt slightly more confident wandering through the hitherto totally unfamiliar territory of Church administration. Not completely at home by any means. But not in a totally foreign field either.
Seated across the desk was Sergeant Angie Moore. She had been the latest and last of his squad to turn in a report. Tully studied the result of her investigation, frequently cross-checking it with the other reports.
“Zoo, be honest,” Moore said. “I drew the meanest bastard in the lot, didn’t I?”
Tully smiled. “Seems like it. But how would we know beforehand? It wasn’t on purpose.”
“But he was, wasn’t he, Zoo? I mean the meanest?”
Tully maintained his relaxed and engaging grin. “Judging by the other reports, I’d have to say he ranks. No; give the devil his due: You got the meanest.”
“I thought people in public relations were supposed to be pleasant, nice.”
“So did I. But mere’s always the exception-”
“Well, he proved the rule okay,” Moore interrupted, “It’ll be a long time before I forget Father Cletus Bash.”
“I see he’s the only one interviewed who admits to having a personal enemy or two.”
“Is he the only one?” Moore had no access to the other reports; this was the first she knew that none of the others had acknowledged any enemies. “I guess I’d put him down as paranoid, except that after spending an hour with him I expect his enemies are probably not imaginary. They could be for real.”
Tully studied silently for a few moments. “It says here,” he referred to her report, “that among his own enemies and those he listed as opposed both to the Church and the Church in Detroit are guys named Stapleton and Carson. Those are two names that are pretty familiar. They show up repeatedly on the other reports.”
“Do they? That’s interesting. That’s why I looked into their background a little bit, because Bash mentioned them three times. No one else got that kind of billing.”
“You did? Good. What did you find?”
“A lot on Carson. Not all that much on Stapleton.
“I went over to the Free Press library and went through their records-through the automated, the semi-automated, and even back through the envelope files,” Moore continued. “Carson goes back to the early sixties. Whatever he did before that couldn’t have been very newsworthy; They didn’t have any prior clippings on them.”
The early sixties, thought Tully. What was it? Something Koesler had been talking about. Yeah, that council that changed everything. Tully concluded that whatever it was Carson had done to make the news probably had been a reaction-his reaction-to that council. “Wasn’t that the Vatican Council in the early sixties?”
Moore was surprised. “Gee, Zoo, I didn’t think you paid any attention to religion. But, yeah, that was when the council was going on-early sixties.”
“Go on.” Tully was all business.
“Okay.” Moore rummaged through her tote bag. “I got some readouts and made some notes. Here we go. The early reports on Carson aren’t all that inflammatory. I think they were included in his file based on hindsight I think that after he got to be a newsmaker, they went back to find some sort of things, no matter how innocuous, that he was involved in earlier. But it notes that he was among the earliest members of a group called Catholics United for the Faith. It seems to be a pretty popular movement. Most people know it by its initials, CUF. Then he went on to a more extreme group called the Tridentines. That’s when he begins to get some individual attention in the media.”
Tully remembered Koesler’s explanation of the right-wing reaction to the council. Without that briefing, this would not have made a lot of sense.
Moore looked up from her notes inquiringly as if asking whether she need go into detail about these groups. Tully caught the subtle query. “Go ahead.”
Moore shrugged. If he thought he understood all this, it was all right with her. But she was at a loss to know how he did it.
She resumed. “It was just a little while after he joined the Tridentines that he became the group’s leader.”
Moore, a lifelong Catholic, well remembered the aftereffects of the council and the turmoil that had ensued, particularly in this archdiocese. Cardinal-then Archbishop-Boyle was elected the first president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. He had been extremely active and influential in that Vatican Council. And he saw to it that the changes and developments ordered by the council were implemented in his archdiocese.
That was by no means the reaction of other bishops and archbishops. One of those changes involved encouraging the laity to get more deeply involved in everything from parish life to policymaking on an archdiocesan level. People reflecting the spirit as well as the letter of the council took this bit and ran with it.
Meanwhile, CUF, not to mention the far more militant Tridentines, were generally opposed to the letter of the council. The less easily defined “spirit” of the council was, in the eyes of the right wing, an abomination.
Thus, in those early days there were many public meetings and gatherings sponsored by and starring, for want of a better designation, Church liberals. At most of these meetings, the right wing was conspicuously present, frequently and vociferously led by Arnold Carson.
Without the presence of Carson, along with his faithful few followers, these meetings would have been peaceable and calm on the whole. With Carson and crew present, they frequenyly degenerated into angry confrontations and occasionally even some measure of violence and reaction.
Moore attempted to explain all this briefly to Tully. He accepted her explanation, knowledgeable about part but by no means all of the history.
“See,” Moore continued, “once Carson got to be the leader of the Tridentines, he was bound to make news. From the very nature of the organization and the fact that it existed just when it did-when all the changes were taking place. So”-she glanced again through the notes and readouts-”there were some arrests, lots of charges of ‘police brutality,’ and plenty of media coverage for Arnold Carson.
“In the seventies”-Moore continued to finger through her notes-”diere was a Catholic ‘Call to Action’ meeting. It was a national meeting hosted by Detroit. Sort of a put-into-practice-what-we-learned-from-the-council. Carson and some of his friends showed up, carrying a banner hailing Boyle as the ‘red’ Cardinal-in effect calling him a commie. Which in Tridentine terms is about the bottom of the barrel.
“Then there’s a note about the time he pushed a priest down the steps of a church-”
“Wait,” Tully cut in, “some violence? An arrest?”
“The priest didn’t press charges. But here’s the funny thing: The priest was Father Fred Stapleton!”