Redemption - Leon Uris [104]
Now the chill of Irish family acrimony was about to settle unless they could head it off.
“How long before you’re off to England to get your doctorate?”
“I’m not going to England,” Dary answered.
“But your African studies, now?”
“That’s all changed.”
“When did this come about?”
“When George Mooney was named Bishop of Derry. I didn’t need much convincing that there was enough misery in Bogside without going halfway around the world to find it.”
“Aye, that’s a fact. But, so sudden a turn?”
“Maybe it wasn’t all that sudden. We all come back to Ireland, don’t we, Conor? So why bother to go in the first place if I’m only coming back? Bishop Mooney needs me badly.”
“You told me once a long time ago you were sporting to become a Bogside priest.”
“Obviously I revere the man. Poor old dear is in wretched health. Anyhow, things have not been right in Derry for all those years since the fire. Some sort of eternal ugliness has fallen over the place.”
The news hit Conor like a sudden rumble of thunder on the horizon. He shook his head. “If you’re thinking of changing things,” Conor said carefully, “you might be in for a bitter experience. If Bishop Mooney fosters any such notions, he could have a short reign.”
“Bogside and Derry have bottomed out. They need a temporary liberal there now. They know Mooney’s not going to last very long in his state of health.”
“And you realize this, and you’re still willing to go?”
“Let’s talk, Conor,” Dary said suddenly, and it meant what it meant. Dary’s eyes were not those of an eager young novice ready and willing to be flailed and stuffed out there. Father Dary was a man, years ahead of his time.
“I was hoping to God we’d break our logjam, Dary.”
“My big problem was that I had a big brother whose eagerness to fill his mind drove him so that he became no man’s fool. I always wondered what you were reading, where you were hiding your books. But I also knew there was a fork in the road for us and I would not tempt myself.
“The first four years of seminary went diligently into the creation of the robot. But I came to Maynooth realizing that a huge void had formed in me as I became more and more disciplined. We make that transition from the child who can never be wrong about anything to the young man converted into blind obedience…and then…we come to a manhood of inquiry. This is a dangerous moment for the Church and the priest alike. We’ve a threshold, where a dweller lives and the dweller demands to know. Is the dweller a demon, a monster, or just a fine old fellow? And here we run into the mightiest of power, our teachers, who are watching each student’s dweller to see to it the dweller does not cross the threshold.”
“Why?”
“That something might have been lost in translation between God’s lips and the Pope’s ear. There are things that the Church knows but will not tell us. If our faith is so weak we cannot be trusted to know, then we will be weak priests. I believe I am strong enough to know any truth and become a better priest.”
“For God’s sake, Dary, you were just ordained today.”
“Aye, Conor, aye. I must follow unanswered questions to their resolution and that will only make me stronger.”
“Don’t you know you can’t beat the system?” Conor said.
“You’re a fine one to be telling me that,” Dary retorted. “I know the moral code God intended for man. I also know that things have been imposed to fit the human politics that have nothing to do with God’s morality.”
“Mooney taught you that?”
“What Mooney taught me was that when we go to Africa as missionaries we must give up the notion of being strangers imposing our civilization on theirs. Look what the British have tried to do—destroy our Celtic translation of Catholicism and superimpose their own version of it. Each Catholic society—black, yellow,