Ed Note: This is the fourth of what John Davis Collins now entitles a Christmas tetra-trilogy. John Davis Collins says, " In reading all of the -tetra-trilogy remember that I loathe Christmas because the stories are true."The Inditer Christmas Page
Holy Roman's
by John Davis Collins ©1999 by John F. Clennan, all rights reserved
adapted from the unpublished novel Thine Is The Kingdom
I was annoyed as I stood alone on the front row of the bleachers in the auditorium. Triply annoyed. I was left by myself in the front row. My younger brother made it to the back bench of baritone and bass ahead of me. The three or four other boys in my class in the choir would never let me forget that.
I was annoyed by the cackle of giggling girls whose high pitch squeal reached alto when I watched my brother gingerly climb up to my classmates.
And I was annoyed at the darkness spreading across the high windows on the other side of the auditorium: I would be in school late every night this week. But the choir was practicing hard this Christmas, not for Midnight Mass, but for the Bishops visit two days earlier to rededicate the stone and marble fortification of our Church.
"What else would you do?" I was told at home when I complained of all the late evenings at practice. "Peripatetic prate with that pathetic `philosopher' Mr. Bourke."
Looking into the ink blot darkness I wondered if Mr. Bourke was poking through the vacant lot next store again. There could be no comparison between the 50th anniversary of the re-building of St Martin, I was told, and aimless wanderings in the dusk.
I was so annoyed. I hadn't noticed the mimeographed from the practice hymns leak onto my white shirt. Couldn't the bishop just called the Monsignor with the good news we all expected on the telephone?
"Let's start it again..." The choir mistress commanded, "This beautiful hymn has many colors... the sopranos creep in after the tenor on 'A mighty fortress' and fade into bass on 'is our God' and come back with 'in whom we find...'"
Sister choir mistress raised her hands out of the sleeves of her flowing black robes to begin conducting and once again her waving stopped with a clenched fist, the signal to stop.
She was about ready to upbraid the choir again when she noticed the Monsignor seated with hands folded on the wooden folding chair next to her.
The choir relaxed as the choir mistress now stumbled over her words with the Good Father. The Monsignor did have a habit of popping up unexpectedly. Just yesterday, after the choir mistress released us into the ink blot of the pre-selective evenings, I had scurried out through the school yard most kids avoided toward the stairway to nowhere and found Mr. Burke, our town drunk and historian wandering around in the darkness with a paper bag in hand.
"The original site of St. Martins or Holy Roman's...," he spoke aloud to the air, "burnt to the ground in '22 by the Ku Klux Klan... Here we stand," Mr. Burke intoned as he kicked up the dirt, "in the center of the mosaic floor. There should be in an early Christian style the image of St. Michael the Archangel with a fiery sword and blue cape..."
I looked at the ground and saw only dried leaves and stubs of grass. Mr. Burke rolled as he leaned forward to brush aside a layer of debris. "As, there you have it... venerable St. Michael himself." Fumbling to bring himself upright on wobbly feet, Mr. Burke passed the paper bag between his hands as he search through his pockets. With eyes struggling to focus, he unfolded a paper from his pocket and started to explain; "Across the street in town square on the vacant pedestal should be a union soldier staring at the door of the Church." He shook his head. "After the riot, it disappeared," He threw his hands out, dropping his diagram to the ground, "Poof... two tons of cast iron, it was gone."
Nearby stood the Monsignor. "John Burke," the Monsignor approached, grabbed the paper bag, pulled out the bottle, held it aloft to inspect the label, before gently returning it to its owner. "If you read your scriptures, instead of pouring them, you'd know the Good Book says, to 'let the dead bury the dead.'" The Monsignor paused with hands on hips; the skirts of his black cassock moved in the breeze, "Leave the past alone, away from young minds..." The Monsignor disappeared into the darkness.
Mr. Burke put an unsteady hand on my shoulder and said, "There's a burden in bondage to learning...Ah..." Peering as sheepishly as an upbraided schoolboy toward the darkness, Mr. Burke continued with a laugh, "We can make some mischief when we want to make a point...Hmm,`let the dead bury the dead?'"
I'm not sure how long the monsignor let Sister choir mistress muddle in her stammering explanation before he commanded with a slight smile in a gentle tone, "`A Mighty Fortress is Our God' by Martin Luther," he raised his eyebrows, "the hymn of the reformation, a beautiful hymn. Let the choir continue."
Nervously, the sister held out her hands to begin conducting. her hands shook and occasionally she had me singing the deep parts to the chorus of muffled soprano giggles. When the choir concluded, she turned to the Monsignor with more composure.
"The chant's too monotonous. All the hymns sound alike... one written yesterday, one written 1000 years past... I have to use different material to train young voices to reach for high and low octaves... And I hear..." she hesitated, "in some of our Churches... these days..."
"For Sunday, the hymnal and the old Gregorian Chant," the Monsignor sighed. he turned to address the choir, "Much as I'm sure if St. Gregory were alive today he prefer to hear Elvis Presley..." When the giggling subsided, he returned to the choir mistress with raised eyebrows and a dreamy look, "Afterwards..." His voice trailed off. I don't know if he realized he was stroking the red fringe of his black cape.
With an anxious voice and a look of awe, the sister asked, "Do you really think ...?"
I shook my head., Of course he did and so did she... And everybody else around. That's why the choir practiced every day.
The Monsignor switched to an officious tone. "In time, we may have more discretion over our music sung in Church... As for the Bishop, The Bishop is coming ... to mark the anniversary of the rededication of the Church, nothing more."
"And," she queried, "Your anniversary in the Priesthood ?"
"And," the Monsignor replied cautiously, "it's not very important that he does."
Choir practice ended with the collection of the mimeographs which were carefully counted, as if they contained state secrets.
I ran out of the auditorium and looked over the playground that made children shudder. An ominous ground fog gave the grounds an eerie grave yard feeling. I couldn't see Mr. Burke plying his lonely twilight investigations on the empty lot, but across the street, a dark green shadow moved on the old village green, only visible in the twinkling of car head lights.
Crossing over to the traffic island, I found Mr. Burke taking his sighting from the empty pedestal dedicated to a forgotten war. "The union soldier would have faced... the stairway to nowhere perfectly aligned." Mr. Burke slurred as he tried to fumble with his crude diagram, "and... with the altar... 'Let the dead bury the dead'... hmm... Let the dead be buried with the dead ?"
He turned to me and almost stumbled when he tried to point a finger straight up. "The truth leaves many clues ... not only in what said, but what's left unspoken."
"Why was the statue of the soldier torn down ?" I asked. The square had monuments to other wars... some heard of, some forgotten.
"It was stolen before the Town could cart it away... The Town wanted to take away the Klan's rallying point... But they threatened a bigger riot on demolition day. Now if the Klan stole it... wouldn't it have turned up... in a garage or a basement.. somewhere when somebody died or moved away ?"
"Why would the Klan want a Union Soldier's Statue ?" I asked.
"Here in the North... Ignorant men, some Nazis maybe many couldn't speak English... They rallied in front of a Union statue and then destroyed a Church dedicated to the Union Army... or at least one of it's units... nick-named the Wholly Romans... wiped at..."
I chuckled at Mr. Burke's play on words when Mr. Burke spelled out W-H-O-L-L-Y. Mr. Burke took a swig from his paper bagged bottled as he lapsed into dissertation of a forgotten battle and a mysterious survivor's donation of a church in later life. "The Holy Romans first sacrificed to the false God of War and then to greed and ambition."
"But now I know where the statute went,..or," he swaggered on his feet as he thought aloud, "think I do." He belched, "But a disciple of true learning," He held his bottle aloft in salute, "must verify this assumptions... on a night when his head is clearer."
Like most children, my question was not germane. "Why is there hymns that we practice in choir but can't sing in church ?"
He laughed aloud so shard he doubled over and almost crashed his paper bag into the vacant pedestal. When he righted himself as best he could, he said, "A learned man's principal pain is the knowledge that fate impresses him in the cause of sinners against righteous men." Mr. Burke vanished into the ground fog creeping across Town Square.
"Riddles..." I kicked at the ground.
The Sunday afternoon service found me in the first row of the choir loft, by myself. The overhang gave me a view of the side door and the traffic along Town Square to day dream with during the expected long speeches. As I looked to the front of the Church three special red chairs were set up for the bishops retinue, every pew was filled. Even Mr. Burke leaning against the Church door with his paper sack discretely tucked in his pocket. Red ribbons dangled from chandeliers in hopeful anticipation of the red sash the Monsignor expected for his present.
The choir sang the Gregorian Chant from the hymnal which listed dates and authors of long ago. They need not gave listed either; one written yesterday sounded exactly like the one written a thousand years in the past. At the end of the service when the congregation told the officiating priest, in Latin, "Thank God it's over," the Bishop rose resplendent in his red skull cap and red sashed black robes and invited all to sit.
From the altar, the Bishop turned to the Monsignor and began the speech. Seated at the Bishop's right hand the Monsignor folded his hands in his lap like a school boy awaiting the bell. His smile was bright. I looked toward the door. Mr. Burke's right hand reached for his sack, until he caught it slapped it with his left.
"When St. Martin's burnt to the ground in '22, the Church sent it's finest soldier, your Monsignor here to rebuild... A fighting Chaplain from the Great War... I won't talk of all the laws he broke... but what was a heap of ash is now ensconced in stone.. a mighty stone fortress... a citadel of faith..."
The Bishop took a long breath, a pause for applause, perhaps that never came. many congregants would have regarded applause as in appropriate in Church for any reason.
"Why we," the Bishop scanned the congregation, "we at the chancellory practically regard him as Venerable..."
There was a pause. Something was wrong. Saints were venerable people... I saw the glow fade from the Monsignor's face. People who were venerable were "past it."
I looked to the door at Mr. Burke. His head jerked back as if he had taken a punch. Staggering Mr. Burke knew too...
Yet there was no reaction either in the congregation or in the choir. Some of the girls were chatting amongst themselves; some were asleep. The good sister choir mistress, with her back to the choir, had her hands folded on her lap unknowingly. My brother was firing spit balls into the choir girls curly locks. My classmates pointed, served as artillery spotter. "They don't know," I thought to myself aloud as I looked around the church. "They don't."
"Ah yes, Father forgive them, the white hooded arsonists, they know not what they do," the sister agreed with a smile.
Up on the altar, the good Monsignor was gone. The Bishop's lackeys' stared at the vacant chairs as the Bishop continued to intone the Monsignors praises to an empty chair.
"And the way the Monsignor averted a second devastating riot is legend throughout the hierarchy of the Church," the Bishop laughed to himself, "although one best left untold."
Where was the Monsignor ?"
The Monsignor trudged up the step toward Mr. Burke and pointed to the paper sack. To the unvoiced question, "Before you were born.," he barked uncharacteristically, "Maybe at Chateau Tierrey, maybe, anyone, maybe that night in '22"
The Monsignor took a swig and then asked for a cigarette. Mr. Burke looked up to watch the white curl of smoke drift upwards.
By the conclusion of the Bishop's speech, the Monsignor bounced across the altar to his chair to resume his seat.
"So we conclude this celebration of the Monsignor's special day, his anniversary as a priest and the anniversary of the rededication of St. Martin's Church of the Holy Romans on a sad note and somber note. Three times I have offered him the crozier of a Bishop and three times he has declined me."
The Bishop resumed his seat and signaled to the altar boys to begins the procession which would end the service, but the spry Monsignor leaped to the center of the altar and bid the boys to resume their seats. The altar boys crashed into their folding chairs with a shuffling of annoyance.
"You don't mind, Excellency, I do have a few words for my beloved congregation on this my special day and of this beloved church... I'm known for my long sermons... but not tonight..." he smiled toward the impatient boys, "I have one request ... I passed the choir in practice and heard them singing a hymn that has always enchanted me... Sister," He called out to the choir loft, " 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God ?'"
The choir mistress leaned over the organist who shook her head aghast. "We will sing without accompaniment," the Sister declared aloud. "one...two...three" The sister's hands moved nervously. After the first bar of "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," she accidently clenched her fist, the signal to stop. She quickly restarted the first bar. I almost lost the introduction chuckling at the Bishop's ashen face, frozen and stunned on the altar as the Monsignor was dancing down the aisle in triumph, with his congregation falling into... the ranks of legion, I thought, behind him. We sang it a second time as we followed the congregation out the door to the street.
Looking through the doors, at the silent church, Mr. Burke muttered, "I hope that Bishop recovers before I turn out the light and shutter the door."
After the crowd dispersed toward the auditorium where the party for the Monsignor's elevation had been planned, I aimlessly wandered onto the darkened lot. Mr. Burke was already there in the center pointing towards imaginary boundaries... "In the center, St. Michael, between his blade and his elevated right arm the Holy Legion on a cloud, at the corner Moses handing over to Joshua, diagonally across from St. Martin slitting his cape, in that corner Constantine at Milan... across from the first Governor signing the Bill of Rights... The soldier looks in from outside..."
"But now," Mr. Burke wobbled as he staggered at an attempt at a straight line... "It's so simple... In all the confusion with... all the workman and all the tools and equipment hanging around... who'd ever suspect... that under a pile of smoldering ash..." he laughed to himself in triumph as he stood over where the altar might have been.
He shot me a piercing look, like one I never would have thought a drunk capable of. "You understood what happened ."
I nodded.
"Then," he snarled a command, "You keep it to yourself. What men of learning covet is not for people who take the newspaper with them into the sh-- toilet." He staggered a bit off balance. "Christ might have said something like that... though not in the same way."
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