“Such a pity,” Father Dowd told the class, “that it has to change.”
He launched, then, into a history lesson. Centuries ago, a voice like Arthur Breen’s would have been preserved by castration. The castrati were the superstars of their day, the primi uomi of early opera. They sang with otherworldly range and power, the darlings of popes, cardinals and kings.
Listening, Art had blushed scarlet. From that day onward he avoided Father Dowd’s confessional, a choice easily justified: Father Dowd’s line was always the longest, his favorite boys—Ray Cousins, Gary Moriconi—at the head of the line.
Of Art’s teachers, Father Fleury was the most inspiring. He spoke often of his travels to Rome. The splendors of Vatican City he called our patrimony. Every Catholic ought to visit as often as possible. To his pupils it was a stunning admonition; in their working-class neighborhoods, Rome might have been Neptune. Art listened in fascination. His Latin vocabulary doubled, then tripled, so desperate was he to please Father Fleury. It was a task that demanded considerable effort, the priest’s attention was so clearly elsewhere.
Adult indifference, its power to motivate children, is old news in Catholic circles. My own mother practiced a version of this approach—by natural inclination, I suspect, more than by design. Father Fleury’s disregard was, to Art, oddly reassuring. He was unused to flatterers like Father Dowd, confused by male attention of any kind. With his stepfather, indifference was the best you could hope for. If you did anything to attract his notice, there would be hell to pay. But unlike Ted McGann, Father Fleury wasn’t volatile or angry, just preoccupied with other matters. Art lived to impress him. Years later he would recall the time he scored a 99 on a quarterly exam and was rewarded with a rare smile.
He had made no errors, but Father Fleury did not award 100s. He subtracted one point, always, for original sin.
Art had never had a father. When Ma’s first marriage was annulled—literally made into nothing—Harry Breen was expunged from the record. Art was the awkward reminder of a union that had, officially, never been. Now, suddenly, he had more fathers than he knew what to do with: Father Fleury, Father Koval, Father Frontino, Father Dowd. They taught him more than Latin and history, algebra and music. By word and example they taught priestliness: ways of speaking and acting; of not speaking and not acting. Restraint and discipline, obedience and silence.
For a shy boy, these formulas were a help and a comfort. Art didn’t miss his old school, the rough-and-tumble Grantham Junior High. St. John’s was a haven from all that frightened him, the alarming interplay of male and female, that intricate and wild dance. Like many boys he feared the opposite sex. But even more intensely, he feared his own.
A certain kind of boy unnerved him, hale athletes, confident and aggressive. At seminary such specimens were blessedly few. From the first it was clear that a range existed: alpha males at the one end; at the other, the distinctly effete. Both extremes were, to Art, alarming. Like Latin nouns, the boys came in three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. He placed himself in the third category, undifferentiated. In the seminary at least, it seemed the safest place to be.
Matters of sex, of maleness and femaleness, were in this world peripheral. He felt protected by silence, grateful at all that was left unsaid. Once, at a Lenten retreat, Father Koval had delivered a steely sermon, exhorting the boys to keep their vessels clean. To Art, at fifteen, the words remained mysteriously figurative, vaguely connected to all that had distressed him in his old life: at home, the nighttime noises from Ma and Ted’s bedroom; at school, the fragrant and fleshy presence of girls.
The life of a celibate priest. Father Koval had compared it to climbing Mount Everest: the outer limits of man’s capacity, a daring test that few were brave enough to attempt. The rhetoric was aimed at the boys’ nascent machismo; to Art, who had none, it rang false. A better comparison, he felt, was a journey on a spaceship. A priest was isolated and weightless. He existed outside gravity—the force that attracted bodies to other bodies, that tethered them to God’s earth.
ART GREW up in this atmosphere, outside gravity. Troubling questions were answered for him, and he accepted these answers in gratitude and relief. So when he graduated from high school and entered the seminary proper, he was unprepared for the sudden change in the weather. That September a new rector was brought over from Rome, a strapping, ursine priest named James Duke.
The previous rector had been mild and scholarly, a soft-spoken man with a distracted air. But Il Duce was another sort entirely. He exuded, by priestly standards, an air of raw masculinity; and surrounded himself with others—Father Noel Bearer, Father Stephen Hurley—of the same type.
The new regime seemed, at first, comically harmless. Their demeanor struck Art as clownish, a self-conscious parody of manliness. Then came the warnings—repeated with ominous frequency—against particular friendships. This injunction was not new. Close friendships violated the spirit of community; they were contrary to the Rule. Under the old rector, particular friendships had seldom been mentioned; now, suddenly, they seemed a matter of great concern. No suggestion was made, ever, of illicit affections between the men; but everyone was aware of the subtext. Art found himself avoiding his best friend Larry Person, who shared his interest in music. They no longer rode the T into Boston to hear Sunday concerts downtown. Smoking in the courtyard between classes, Art took notice of who else was standing at the ashtray. Groups of three or four were acceptable. Twosomes were inherently suspect.
Among the men paranoia blossomed—fears inflamed at the end of the school year, when a few were told by their confessors that the faculty harbored concerns. Art’s old cellmate Ray Cousins was censured for his distinctive voice. The criticism was so vaguely worded that Ray didn’t understand, at first, why he was being scolded. True, he admitted to Art, he wasn’t much of a singer; still, many a parish priest had learned to fake his way through the Mass. But Ray’s deficiency was not musical. His voice was high-pitched, with a discernible lisp. Suddenly Art no longer felt safe in the epicene middle. In the era of Il Duce, nobody was safe.
And yet somehow he came through unscathed; his own masculinity, however stunted and friable, was never questioned. At the time, and for years afterward, this fact astonished him. That spring he was chosen, at Father Fleury’s recommendation, to spend his four years of theology study at the Gregorian University in Rome, a rare distinction. To Clement Fleury he owed his escape.
I was a little girl when Art left for the Greg, too young to understand much of his business there. I do recall impressing my fourth-grade class with the postcards he sent me: the Colosseum and Forum and Trevi Fountain; multiple views of St. Peter’s, each bearing a florid stamp. Poste Vaticane.
One of these cards is still in my possession, a nighttime shot of the basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, an exquisite jewel box of a church. It is a glittering repository of Catholic treasure—priceless sculptures by Bernini and Jacometti, every flat surface bedecked with frescoes and mosaics. The ceiling, legend has it, is gilded in Inca gold. In Art’s opinion—inherited from Father Fleury—Santa Maria is more beautiful than St. Peter’s. Judging from my postcards, I would have to agree.
MEANWHILE, BEYOND the seminary walls, the world was changing. Art had been baptized into one Church, confirmed into another. A bold new pope, the astonishing Roncalli, had proclaimed an aggiornamento; a new day had dawned. The liturgy went from Latin to English. The altars were literally turned around backward, and priests said Mass while facing the congregation. In choir lofts, organs were joined by acoustic guitars.
It seemed inevitable that the changes would continue. True, Roncalli’s successor, Cardinal Montini, was no reformer; but Montini was not young. The next pope,