“Do you … assign him to this duty?” Foley found this difficult to comprehend.
“He seems to gravitate to this role quite independently of anyone’s commissioning him.”
“Well,” Foley said, “he certainly seems made to order for what I had in mind.”
“Shall we repair to the study?” With the meal ended Boyle thought Foley would be more comfortable in the well-upholstered study
Boyle rose from his straight-backed chair fairly spryly. Foley had a considerably more challenging time of it. But he managed. Boyle did not offer assistance. He knew Foley would prefer to be independent.
The study was exactly that. Just about every inch of wall space was lined with books that were read, consulted, treasured. Cardinal Boyle spent many a contented evening alone with his books, studying.
The two settled into comfortable chairs. Boyle offered a selection of liqueurs. Foley, claiming an advanced stage of fatigue, declined. They sat in silence for several minutes.
Foley was first to speak. “Have you given much thought to the future … to the future of our Church?”
“Certainly. It won’t be long.”
“No, it won’t. Pretty soon all the priests-even the Pope, in nomine Domini- will be too young to remember what the Church was before Vatican II.” Foley shook his head. “That is if there are still any more priests.”
“I’m not inclined to be that pessimistic, Larry.”
“God will provide?” Mockingly.
“Yes …” Boyle drew out the word, “but not magically.”
“A married clergy?”
“I think it inevitable. We already have the beginnings of it with the sizable number of married Protestant clergy that have converted and are now functioning.”
“The transition is going to be difficult.”
“No doubt. But it has to happen.”
“There are going to be some angry Catholics. Some very angry Catholics.
“There are already some very angry Catholics.” Cardinal Boyle had had firsthand experience.
“But it works.” Foley resettled himself in the chair as if fighting off tiredness. “We’ve known it all along. Martin Luther, among others, was right. It is not only possible but beneficial to have a married clergy. The Protestant clergy-just about every sort of clergy but Latin Rite Catholics-have proven the naturalness of a married clergy. And now the converts among ministers and Protestant priests, they’re doing all right. And I almost forgot that other phenomenon, our brother priests who marry and then become Protestant-even Orthodox-priests. Quite a display of proof there. It is as you yourself just said: inevitable. Yes, yes, yes: We are going to have optional celibacy-the day after I die.”
Boyle chuckled. “Thus saving some poor woman from becoming Mrs. Lawrence Foley.”
“‘Mrs. Foley ” Even the name sounds peculiar. In that context,” he clarified. “The first and almost the only Mrs. Foley that comes to mind is my mother.”
“Besides, Larry, it is not as smooth a picture as you paint.”
“Oh, I don’t know”
“There’s the problem of divorce among the clergy:”
“I suppose,” Foley admitted, “You don’t have divorce when you have an unmarried clergy. But then, divorce seems to be part of life-a tragic part of life. Something we would better understand if some of us had to go through it.”
“You’re mellowing, Larry.”
“I’ve mellowed, Mark.”
“Another problem you’ve skipped over: the convert clergy with their wives and families, many of them, are not being accepted by all parishioners, even though the parishes they are assigned to are carefully selected.”
“Transitional, Mark, transitional. Our people are so used to the unencumbered priest that it’s going to take a while for them to adjust.” Foley cocked his head toward the Cardinal. “What is it with you, Mark? Are you merely playing advocatus diaboli or do you have serious reservations about a married clergy? You did say it was inevitable.”
“Inevitable, true. But … somehow … I regret the loss of what we had. It was, I think, nobly unique.”
They sat in silence for several minutes.
“Admirably unique,” Foley agreed at length.
“The seminary training,” he continued, “so strict and unyielding, yet the system formed men-good men, responsible, leaders. But,” he sighed, “that’s pretty much gone already.”
Boyle nodded agreement. But then he amended Foley’s statement. “The mere change to optional celibacy may or may not have its effect on the training for priesthood. But, in any case, it will no longer be necessary to produce that challenge to human nature, the asexual macho man.”
“Yes, yes, yes. No more Going My Way, or Bells of St Mary’s, or Keys of the Kingdom, or Father Flanagan of Boys’ Town. It’s probably just as well that Bing didn’t live to see this.”
Boyle smiled.
“But, more seriously,” Foley said, “and more positively: It will do away with our caste system. To be truthful, that has been a problem for me for longer than I like to think. It was that universal and mandatory celibacy that created a separate class in Christian society. Priests were not ‘ordinary people.’ They were ‘above’ the laity, not just because of their function in the Christian community but in the nature of their membership in the Church. Because of celibacy, the clergy were in a more spiritual, and ergo a superior, form of Christian life.”
“You’re right,” Boyle agreed. “It is more neoplatonic than Christian.”
“Strange,” Foley picked up the theme, “how much of our life is structured by celibacy. It’s not just a single life. My god, single people are looked upon more often than not as ‘odd,’ somehow failures at the sexual game. But with the distinction of celibacy-dedicated virginity, consecrated singleness-we are looked upon as different kinds of creatures. Mark, when you were a child, did you ever wonder whether priests and nuns went to the bathroom?”
Boyle chuckled, “I think when we were children that would have qualified as an impure thought.”
“You know,” Foley said, “I’ll bet most of our people think that an unmarried clergy goes back to the beginning of Christianity. Whereas, you know that, despite some early attempts at celibacy, we had a married clergy for about the first half of our history.”
“The Second Lateran Council, A.D. 1139,” responded Boyle, thus proving that the books in this study were used. “It was almost a textbook of simplicity in legislation. The First Lateran Council prohibited the marriage of clerics in major orders. And that did not do the job. So the Second Lateran simply pronounced such marriages invalid. And that is pretty much how things stand to this date.”
“That was a sad period for the Church, if memory serves.”
“Indeed it was,” Boyle agreed. “The tenth and eleventh centuries were shot through with weak Popes and clandestine clerical marriages or, more often, a very common concubinage. The time was ripe for an uncompromising move in one direction or another. Either the Church would have to abandon its effort to form a universally celibate clergy or come up with the sort of legislation that, as it happened, was promulgated.”
“Went for broke. Isn’t that the way of it?” Foley’s question was rhetorical. “In almost every crisis, historically, there was always a minority who could be depended upon to react and save celibacy. If they’d followed the will of the majority, more than once celibacy would have been discarded.” He paused. “Just as it was nearly discarded as a result of the Second Vatican Council. But,” he added wryly, “I surely don’t have to tell you. You were among the shakers and movers of that council.”
Boyle nodded as he recalled the seemingly endless meetings, the maneuvering, the lobbying. “There’s no doubt about that. Although few beyond the council participants were aware of what was going on, imposed celibacy was a burning’ behind-the-doors’ topic at the council. But pressure-pressure from that dependable entrenched minority-kept the topic off the formal agenda.”