asked little of him. Their expectations of the sacrament were largely ceremonial: a series of responses, a penance, a blessing. The problem was everyone in the middle, men and women in the jump of life, driven by human longings; crawling over each other like puppies in a dogpile, as Frank Lynch once said.
Art had spent his whole life in the company of men, and yet he found them hardest to counsel. Hard, even, to talk with. With priests he could hold his own in conversation, but laymen were a different matter entirely. In their company he felt irrelevant, tolerated out of politeness like a spinster aunt. The men of Holy Redeemer were OFD—Originally From Dorchester: hardworking guys who’d made it out to this middle-class suburb, but still rough at the core. On the church steps after Mass he saw them talking. What, exactly, did they talk about? In the spirit of preparation he studied the sports page, until Father Lynch caught him at it. “There will be a test later, Arthur,” he admonished in a simpering tone. The breakfast table erupted in laughter, and Art, mortified, abandoned his efforts. Who was he trying to fool?
With the parish women he had more success. About their concerns he understood even less, but their company was at least not adversarial. They mothered him. A cough or sniffle at the pulpit prompted a dozen worried inquiries. He was given hand-knitted scarves and sweaters, herbal teas and vitamins and once, an electric space heater. It must get drafty in the rectory, said the donor, one Mrs. Duddy, and in this she was not mistaken. The heater got him through a long Boston winter, until Frank Lynch discovered and confiscated it, grousing about the electric bills.
If all this feminine fussing was occasionally grating, Art never resisted. The parish women cared for him, and he was grateful for their affection. As human connection went, he was a beggar at the banquet, unable to refuse love of any kind.
Week after week they flocked to his confessional—Breen’s hen party, Frank Lynch called it, a sneer in his voice. Younger hens might have won his grudging respect, but these were past the age, women so long married that their husbands rarely figured in their confessions. They spoke of squabbles with other women, harsh words exchanged with sisters and daughters. It seemed that women, in the end, were concerned mainly with each other. Husbands became mere accessories, barely noticed, like the gold wedding bands they wore on swollen fingers and couldn’t take off if they’d tried.
It was a role that fit him comfortably: confessor to the matronly, the homely, the stout, the plain. Younger women confessed, too, though not as often; and with them Art was less easy. The prettier the woman, the more awkward he felt. This generation—his own generation—had a different understanding of the sacrament, whose name had been changed from Penance to Reconciliation. Some took the new name to heart, and pulled aside the grille for a face-to-face chat.
(Unless, of course, the revelations were of an intimate nature. Then the grille stayed closed.)
One such confessant he recalled distinctly. Cindy Clay was a Vietnam widow—Art’s age, slender and fair-haired. Her flowery perfume lingered in his confessional. For the rest of the afternoon he’d know she’d been there.
One Advent she made a memorable confession: she had used birth control. For no good reason Art felt himself sweating. As confessions went it was hardly incendiary: he had his own private doubts about Humanae Vitae, as did many priests he knew. The problem here was more basic: Cindy Clay had admitted contracepting, but not the act that necessitated it. In the eyes of the Church she was an unmarried woman, and the act in question was fornication. The facts of the matter were clear.
Had she been less attractive, he might have been able to say it. Instead he found himself dumbstruck. Hastily he assigned her a penance, falling back with relief on the familiar words. Go in peace and sin no more. He pronounced the last words with particular emphasis, as though they exonerated him. As though in speaking them, he had discharged his duty.
On the other side of the screen the kneeler creaked. Cindy Clay rose to go, a cloud of lilacs in her wake.
EVERY PARISH had a Cindy Clay, or several. He was assigned next to St. Rose of Lima, on the North Shore. It was a parish of young families, its elementary school thriving. As the new assistant pastor, Father Breen functioned as a kind of youth minister, a duty that suited him perfectly. He trained altar boys and spoke to Confirmation classes. He did sacrament preparation for the tiny First Communicants, and subbed for a religion teacher in the parish school. The young mothers were his own age, grateful for his involvement. More than once he heard the wistful compliment—You would have been a wonderful father, Father—in a tone that was nearly flirtatious. If there was a proper way, a priestly way, of responding, Art never found it. He blushed, stammered, mumbled. Thank you. You’re very kind.
Holy Redeemer, St. Rose, Our Mother of Sorrows: Art’s life as a priest divided into chapters. The newspaper accounts mention them only briefly. Father Breen served without incident.
In the spring of 1994 he was assigned to Sacred Heart.
Part 1
2002
Chapter 4
Holy Week, for a priest, is like the year’s first snowfall: he knows it’s coming, yet somehow it always catches him off guard. The crowded Masses, the hundreds of confessions, the sickbed visits; the extra hours of sermon preparation, in a vain attempt to avoid repeating what’s been said a thousand times before. The hectic pace is shocking to a man who feels marginally useful most of the time. Art understood that to most of his flock, his services were not essential. At their baptisms, marriages and funerals his presence was expected, but in the intervening years they scarcely gave him a thought.
He had grown up in the priesthood, and grown tired. In his early fifties he’d begun to grow old. He was a slight, nervous man, prone to stomach upset and a yearly bout of bronchitis—ailments he blamed on his two vices, coffee and cigarettes, dissipations even a priest was allowed. Over the years he’d lost hair and weight, energy and stamina. He felt, increasingly, that he’d lost his way. That Lenten season—the season of repentance—had shaken him profoundly. This year he had a great deal to repent. And yet, as he prepared to celebrate the Resurrection and Ascension, he felt a glimmer of his old sense of purpose, like a dream remembered. The sensation was short-lived but potent. It seemed, however briefly, that aggiornamento was still possible. That a new life lay ahead.
The rituals of the season still touched him. The Palm Sunday gospel—Jesus riding into Jerusalem to cheering crowds, the shining moment of triumph before the looming betrayal—could move him nearly to tears.
Behold, thy King cometh unto thee.
That Holy Week was Art’s ninth at Sacred Heart, and though he didn’t yet know it, the final week of his ministry. Had he known, he might have skipped the endless parish council meeting that, due to a scheduling glitch, took place on Spy Wednesday, just four days before Easter.
The meetings were a chronic source of frustration. The council had been appointed by the pastor, Father Aloysius, just before a stroke landed him at Regina Cleri, the archdiocesan home for aging priests. The old man clung stubbornly to his title even as Father Breen took over his duties. Because Art was still, nominally, a mere assistant pastor, any decision involving money—as in the end they all did—required approval from the Archdiocese. It was a slow, cumbersome process that demeaned him in the eyes of the council, seven men and two women, most old enough to be his parents. They were pious souls, fiercely loyal to the parish (all but one had been baptized there, a fact often mentioned) and hostile to any suggestion of change.
Old themselves, they seemed not to notice the congregation shrinking and stooping around them, the young families leaving, the Communion lines shorter each year. At daily Mass the pews were mostly empty, dotted with gray heads. Unconcerned, the council reminisced about the old days, the elaborate church festivals, the parish high school so overenrolled that an entrance exam was needed to keep classes a manageable size.
It had been, at one time, the largest suburban parish south of Boston; its parishioners came, in equal parts, from the towns of Dunster and Braintree. The church, school, rectory and parish hall occupied an entire block, thanks to a diocesan building boom that started in the 1950s, the era of packed masses and heavy collection baskets. The church itself was