William Kienzle - Chameleon

“So?”

“So, all those people who had kids every nine or so months or suffered with the guilt of serious sin if they used birth control could be extremely angry. Once again the rules of the game changed, and changed drastically, for their children and grand children.

“Then-holy cow, there are so many! Like all those people who became converts to Catholicism before the council! I gave instructions to a lot of them. They became members of a Church that changed like the ground moving beneath them. They accepted doctrines and moral directives-in some cases with a lot of reluctance-only to see them subsequently questioned, reexamined, and reinterpreted by responsible theologians. They could bevery angry.

“Many Catholics in the archdiocese of Detroit are angry specifically with the archdiocese of Detroit. Our archbishop lives in the eye of a hurricane, and his space is shrinking all the time. Some wish he would cut through all the red tape and allow inactive priests to function again. Or officially expand the permissible means of family planning. Or admit that there may be circumstances-rare but potential-for a licit abortion.

“Or, on the other side, they want the Cardinal to discipline outspoken priests and nuns. They want him to enforce the most restrictive interpretations of Church rules, laws, and dictates. They want everything returned to where everything was before the council and the sixties happened. And, as someone remarked, that’s about as possible as getting toothpaste back in the tube. But they want and demand it anyway. And they can get very angry when it doesn’t happen.”

Koesler paused. Tully could guess that the priest was struggling with some sort of difficult decision. He decided to help resolve the quandary, “Remember, Father, this is a homicide investigation. I need every bit of information I can get. Maybe even to save some lives that might be taken if we don’t get this perpetrator soon.”

Koesler decided. “You’re right, of course.” He then related what had happened at the staff meeting, leaving out no detail that Irene Casey had narrated, and including his own insights on the outspoken players in that scene.

“So,” Koesler concluded, “you can see that tension is running pretty high, even-I might say especially-at the top level of administration in the archdiocese. It is strange that the crisis in that meeting was triggered by what Larry Hoffer proposed. Now, I think it farfetched to suggest that Larry’s proposal to, in effect, end parochial education in the archdiocese was the cause of his being murdered. Unless it might have been the straw that did it.

“My reason for telling you of the meeting was only to fill you in on the level of tension and crisis going on in the Church. If you’re looking for reasons and suspects for the murder of Larry Hoffer and the apparently mistaken murder of Helen Donovan, there are lots of reasons and lots of potential suspects.”

“Amen,” Tully added uncharacteristically.

Tully now had many more leads, ideas, and questions than when he had walked into St. Joseph’s rectory just a short time ago. Expressing gratitude and reserving the option of more questions as they arose in the investigation, he left Koesler to his ringing of doorbells and-what was it? — evangelizing.

Father Koesler donned hat, coat, and boots. On the surface, it seemed odd that one would go out recruiting on a Saturday-particularly on New Year’s Eve. But it was St. Paul who said the, work of the Lord must be done “in season and out of season.”

Arnold Carson stood at his “window” behind the long counter. He was among the few not bleary-eyed this Tuesday morning after the New Year’s holiday. His postal uniform reflected the care he gave it-cleaned, pressed, even a touch of starch. Carson was inordinately proud of his employment: the United States Postal Service, the best of its kind in the world. If it were not for Cadioli-cism-die genuine, pre-Vatican II version-the postal service might qualify as his religion. At least the post office was faithful to its origins, unlike what had happened to his faith.

But that wasn’t the fault of Catholicism. An enemy had done diis. Everything had gone along swimmingly until that old sick Pope John XXIII got elected and convoked the council. Arnold Carson shrank from indicting any Pope-even John, who’d started this downhill slide. After all, Popes were infallible. Even when they weren’t using the extraordinary cushion, they had the ordinary magisterium, which meant they were right.

The rationalization that Carson found for Pope John was that he had not lived much beyond the opening of the council. Had he survived just a few years longer, he surely would have seen where all this was leading and he would have called a halt.

As it was, those rotten theologians and liturgists got hold of the reins during that confused period when a successor to John was being elected. Those wolves calling themselves “experts,” those thieves stole the council, led the bishops-even poor mixed-up Pope Paul VI-astray. As much as Carson disliked John XXIII, it wasn’t his fault.

This was Carson’s logic. He was comfortable with his rationalizing and conclusion.

It also gave him the impetus, courage, and mostly perseverance to do what he could to get the Church back on track. No easy job. He was only one person, one of the faithful. But by damn, he was part and parcel of the Church Militant-not to be confused with the Church Suffering (purgatory) or the Church Triumphant (heaven).

As he stood at his station (it was still called a “window” in memory of what it once had been), he could have served another customer. Instead, he busied himself by taking inventory of the stamps and cash in his drawer, for which he was accountable. Several times, the next-in-line made a move toward him, but on noticing it, he discouraged the person with a brisk shake of his head. It gave him a feeling of power. He liked that.

Three-and-a-half more years. Three-and-a-half years till retirement. He already had his thirty years of service in. And he would soon be fifty-five years of age. The magic formula.

He remembered well the late fifties, America’s last decade of innocence, as some put it, when he first became a postal employee. It was rugged at first, deliberately so. As a PTF (part-time flexible employee), he worked at the whim of his supervisor, who could call him in or not with no regard for him whatsoever. His task more often than not was coolie labor such as unloading trucks filled with heavy sacks of mail. Gradually he learned the scheme of sorting routes, to which there was a science. Then he joined the National Association of Letter Carriers, From that time it was mostly a matter of seniority. That and careful planning served to fit a shrewd man into just the position he desired.

One might become a clerk or a carrier; there was no difference in pay. In any case, one had to wait in the seniority line to be offered either position. If offered the unwanted job, one could refuse up to three times.

Most chose one or the other job, depending on whether one preferred outdoor or indoor work. Some avoided clerking for the sole reason of not wanting to be held accountable for the stock. If either stamps or cash were missing or unaccounted for, the deficit was taken out of the clerk’s pocket. Which was a considerable responsibility, especially for those weak in math or completely lost without a hand computer, into which one could inadvertently press the wrong number and end up with a financial headache.

Yet it was this very responsibility that attracted Arnold Carson into becoming a clerk. First, he was quite competent in math. Then, he enjoyed the absolute assurance of numbers that led to an inevitable and dependable answer. Finally, he gloried in the veneer of power the clerk could exercise over customers. At first blush, it appeared the clerk served the customer. But if one were as hungry for power as was Carson, little things could effect a slight reversal of roles. The customer wanted commemorative stamps? Carson had an assortment of five different issues, but offered the customer a choice of only three. The customer was uncertain which class to use in mailing books, say? Carson could mentally set a brief time limit for the customer to make that decision, without offering any help or recommendation. There were various opportunities for petty power to be plucked from service, and Carson was dedicated to finding as many as possible.