Read Online Vatican Waltz by Roland Merullo - Free Book Online Page B

less warm—I took his advice seriously. “Tell me,” I said, when he’d finished, “how do I pursue it? Where do I go? I feel like if I don’t do something, I’ll really lose my mind, or my faith, or both.”
    He sat there and looked at his hands for a few seconds. I can see now that it would have been very easy for him to have left it at “Well, let’s just go along as we’ve been going and wait to see where God leads you.” That would have gotten him off the hook with me and kept him out of trouble with his superiors. But Father Welch was braver than that. After a moment he said, “I was in seminary with our present archbishop, did I tell you? Seve Menendez. I think the next logical place to go would be to him. He’s the supreme liturgical authority in these parts, and I can’t think of anyone who’d be a better person to speak with at this point. You realize, I’m sure, that the chances of anything very satisfying coming out of it are practically zero.”
    “By now, I’ve figured that out, Father, yes.”
    “The Church, when it changes, changes at a glacial pace. Maybe in a hundred years, or three hundred years, we’ll see married priests or female Roman Catholic priests. Maybe. There is a group of women who’ve been ordained or who consider themselves ordained. I respect them, but they haven’t been acknowledged by the Vatican, of course, and it seems to me that what you’re after isn’t so much personal satisfaction as a change in the Church at large. Before we go any farther, I have to caution you that this could end up in a way you neither expect nor want.”
    I told him what I’d told Monsignor Ferraponte: that I really had no desire to stand up in front of a congregation, to visit the sick and have dinner at people’s homes. “I’m more private than that,” I said. “But over these past few months I’ve come to understand that if I just hear these messages and do nothing, I’ll get so twisted up inside that I’ll end up being a person I don’t want to be. At this point, I’ll try anything you recommend.”
    “I think I can arrange a meeting with Menendez,” he said. “I won’t tell him in much detail what it’s about. He’s a very…I don’t want to say
cagey
man, but he keeps his cards close to his vest, as the saying goes. It may be that Monsignor Ferraponte has alerted him to your situation and the two of them see it the same way and he won’t let you make an appointment, or he’ll use the meeting as an opportunity to give you a lecture of some sort. But let’s try it anyway. Let me contact his office. I’d offer to go with you, but that would make it seem like I’m sponsoring you or leading you, and I’m not. I’m happy to have you use my name, but I think the actual meeting with him, face-to-face, is something you should do on your own.”
    I thanked him, and as he was seeing me to the door he said, “You know where this could lead, don’t you?”
    “Probably to my getting in trouble.”
    “I mean geographically. Unless Menendez completely shoots down the idea, I think the next place you’ll be going is Rome.”
    I stood there and stared at him. We were almost exactly the same height, our eyes probably three feet apart.
    “You look shocked,” he said, smiling one of his rare smiles.
    “Father, I’ve never been to Canada. I’ve been to New York City once in my life, to Maine once. Going to Rome, for me, would be like going into space. How would I get there? What would I do there?”
    “I don’t know, frankly,” he said. “But my guess would be, if the archbishop senses, as I do, that there’s a legitimacy to your prayer life, and if he is, as I suspect him to be, the kind of man who doesn’t like to make difficult decisions, then I would think he’ll try to pass you up the ladder, to a cardinal in Rome, perhaps, or a cardinal’s assistant. He could just as easily tell you to go home and mind your own business. I mention the Rome option only so