True Believers(22)

Harriet let herself into the church’s side door. She hated going through the basement. Deep in the body of the church, she could hear the homeless people moaning. Some of them were mentally ill. They sang to themselves all night long, and sometimes they screamed. There was this much she had to charge to the credit of the Sisters of Divine Grace. When it was necessary, they would sit for hours with these people, women as well as men, nonwhite as well as white, soothing them.

When she got to the big double doors that led into the church proper, she stopped and looked inside. None of the nuns were present this morning, but none of the homeless people were agitated, either. Some of the homeless people seemed to be asleep, sacked out on pews. She went to the church’s front doors and looked out. Across the street, St. Stephen’s was lit up like a stage, but nobody seemed to be going in or out.

“Ah,” Father Healy said. “Sister. Were you thinking of coming to Mass for a change this morning?”

Harriet took her mind off St. Stephen’s. Father Healy was young enough to be her son, but he was an unpleasant martinet just the same. It was as if the last fifty years of history had never happened.

“You’re not dressed,” Harriet said. “Doesn’t Mass start any minute now?”

“The first Mass of the morning is at seven. That makes it a little more than an hour away. Mary hasn’t even picked these people up to take them out to breakfast.”

Harriet went back to looking at St. Stephen’s. She did not go to Mass at St. Anselm’s unless she had to. She preferred to go two parishes away, where they had a Eucharistic minister who was a woman.

“What’s happening across the street?” she asked. “They’re never lit up like that at this hour of the morning. Especially on a weekday.”

“Vigil for a funeral service. That young man, the one who took cocaine. Scott Boardman.”

“Oh. Yes. Another victim of the patriarchal church.”

“I’ve talked to Father Burdock. He seems to think there’s some danger of a demonstration. By the Reverend Phipps and that sort of person. He’s very concerned.”

“Isn’t Roy Phipps very convenient?” Harriet said. “He’s so extreme, he makes you look like a moderate.”

“I’m not a moderate,” Father Healy said. “I’m a Catholic. I wish you were.”

“The people are the Church,” Harriet said, automatically.

“You may be the Church, but you’re not this Church. And I don’t understand why you bother. Why call yourself a Catholic at all? If you no longer believe what the Church teaches, why not just leave?”

“It’s my Church as much as it is yours.”

“It’s Christ’s Church. It belongs to neither one of us.”

“Then it’s really strange that you get to run it and keep me out. The Church has to change. You think it won’t, but you’re wrong.”

“The Church changes all the time, it just doesn’t change at the core. And you won’t change it. I want you to move into the convent with the other sisters. And I want you to wear something, some article of clothing, that will clearly identify you as a nun.”

“The sisters are not sisters of my order. I don’t belong in their convent.”

“You don’t belong in the rectory.”

“I do wear something to identify me as a nun. I wear this.” She tapped her Eucharistic pin. “I’ve been in this parish for fifteen years. I was here when you were still in the seminary. I’ve been doing it this way all that time.”

“I’m sure. But you’re going to stop doing it this way, Sister, or you are going to leave. I’ve been patient as a saint for the last three years. I’ve had enough. You have forty-eight hours to get into some kind of habit. I don’t care if it’s a sweat suit and a veil, as long as it is a veil, and as long as you’ve got some Christian symbol on you larger than a Kennedy half dollar, displayed where the public can see it.”

“You can’t give me orders like this. Only the archbishop can make these kinds of decisions, and he’s—”

“—willing to call you into his office and make it clear that he is supporting me in this in every way possible. I’ll arrange it for later this afternoon.”

“Sisters in my order—

“The sisters in your order,” Father Healy said, “amount to nine women, all of them older than you, and you must be—what?—sixty? Your order is dying. It has no new vocations. It has no young nuns. When you go, it will go with you. If it doesn’t go before. Go buy a veil, Sister. Because if you don’t, you’ll be out of that rectory apartment by the end of next week, and I’ll have an ordained deacon in the slot for parish coordinator before you’ve gotten off the train at your motherhouse.”