Acts of Faith (44 page)

There was only one problem. And it did not take long for Deborah to realize it. Her personal life was a catastrophe.

Almost by definition, a rabbi’s duties are performed at abnormal hours. This was doubly difficult for a young single mother like herself. Once they were ensconced in their new house and half-acre garden, Deborah was no longer able to provide her son with a Sabbath even remotely like those that had so formed her as a Jew. There had been much more to Rav Luria’s Sabbath dinners than mere blessings and singing of songs. They were a weekly affirmation of the values of the family.

But she, Eli, and Mrs. Lamont made an odd Sabbath trio. After hurriedly dressing to be ready for Temple, she would gather her son and housekeeper to light the candles and help Eli with the blessings on the wine and bread.

They would quickly eat and sing a bit of the Grace After Meals before she had to rush off to Temple, put on her “uniform”—as Eli called it—and conduct Sabbath evening services.

Deborah did her best to compensate for her Friday absences by rehearsing her sermons with him on Thursday evenings and accepting his criticisms—some of which were quite helpful. “You wave your hands too much, Mom,” he would say. “You look like you’re flagging a cab.”

Then there was Saturday morning. Once a month Beth Shalom had a children’s service. She would leave him in the small chapel while she ascended to the sanctuary to lead the grown-ups. How could she have suspected that while she was uplifting their parents’ souls, the children downstairs were teasing her son for being a rabbi’s child?

When, as they drove home, she finally pried out of him the reason for his melancholy, Deborah could not keep from thinking of her brother’s childhood agony as Rav Luria’s son, and the strain it had imposed on him.

Her rabbinical studies had touched on the “PKS” phenomenon, otherwise known as Preachers’ Kids Syndrome—the unusual pressure put on clergymen’s children. Now she had the dubious advantage of knowing about it without being able to deal with it.

On Saturdays when there was a
bar mitzvah
, Deborah could not depart until the Grace After Meals. This meant that she would arrive home long after Eli had eaten lunch, and he would by then be glumly watching a ball game on television.

That evening she would have to rush out again on a round of sickbed visits that sometimes brought her home at two or three in the morning.

They would drive together to the Temple for Sunday School. They would separate at the doorstep—Eli heading desultorily for his classroom, hoping fervently that his mother, in her capacity as principal, would not pay them a visit this week.

Perhaps the biggest lie that Deborah had told herself was that she could make things right in a single afternoon. The time after Sunday School was to have been sacrosanct for mother and child to spend together. But of course she had not reckoned on certain inexorable facts of life.

For one, Sunday is the time favored by most couples for weddings. Also, because there can be no burials after Friday morning and all day Saturday, there would be a disproportionate number of funerals scheduled for Sunday. So much for the “sacrosanctity” of her parental time.

Deborah was conscientious and compassionate. She was dedicated. And yet while these qualities were also necessary for the exercise of motherhood, she seemed invariably to fulfill the rabbi’s duties, not the parent’s.

Her intuition told her that children like Eli know instinctively
when they are being relegated to a back burner, responding with a direct protest to their elders. There would be only one problem. The communication would be in code. She would not receive a letter from her seven-year-old’s attorney stating, “My client objects to your inadequate parenting and reserves the right to sue for any permanent damage that may occur as a result of your negligence.”

Would that things were so simple. Instead, Eli’s resentment might be expressed by various disruptive behavior patterns. And by the time his messages were decoded, perhaps it would be far too late.

T
imothy found the fury of the New England snowstorms empathetic with his own anger.

And he was grateful to have so much work to do—curricula to revise, schools to visit, lectures to prepare. Not that he hoped for any real relief. But at least he craved—and was sometimes blessed with—exhausted, dreamless sleep.

He told Cardinal Mulroney all he had learned about his bastardy and offered both to relinquish his position and his collar.

His Eminence, touched by Tim’s candor, assured him that although a man born out of wedlock was technically ineligible for the priesthood, there was sufficient precedent in Canon Law to support his legitimacy as a cleric. “Yours is a classic case of
‘ecclesia supplet,’
 ” he reminded him. “In other words, the Church stands behind you.

“And besides,” he added with plain, unlatinate bluntness, “we couldn’t afford to lose a man like you. We need a dozen more with their spiritual shoulders to the wall to keep it from falling down.”

And so Tim attacked his new responsibilities with vigor.

Although Matt Ridgeway’s departure was sorely lamented, his achievements were soon dwarfed by those of
his charismatic successor. It seemed as if Father Timothy Hogan had been born to galvanize the young. Students hung on his every English word, and those who could not understand his dramatic allusions in Latin were inspired to learn the language, if only to appreciate them.

Nor were his superiors slow in rewarding him. Early in Tim’s second semester Cardinal Mulroney called him into his office.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull you off the road,” His Eminence said sternly.

“I don’t understand,” Tim remarked, off balance.

“Then I’ve finally found a fault in you.” The cardinal smiled. “You have no sense of your own worth. In any case, your many gifts have earned you the dubious honor of becoming my personal adviser.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re young and wise. I need your help, if only to be good enough to justify Rome’s faith in me. So I’m going to fix you up with an office and a secretary within shouting distance of mine. Is that all right with you, Tim?”

“Of course, Your Eminence,” he replied, adding nostalgically, “but to be honest I’m going to miss those long drives between schools. The New England landscape can be very soothing to the harried soul.”

“Don’t worry about that.” The Cardinal smiled. “In my chancery the staff is much too busy to be harried!”

He laughed heartily at his own joke.

It was not long before Mulroney began to employ Tim as an unofficial understudy at various fund-raising events. At first, Tim bridled at the task, knowing that his opening words, “His Eminence regrets …,” would elicit groans from the crowd who were expecting the man in the red hat. To his astonishment, there were no complaints. In fact, as time passed he was increasingly invited in his own right.

This at least gave him some “sins” to reveal at confession.
For he had to acknowledge his own vanity—the palpable pleasure of being the object of admiration.

One spring afternoon at tea, the Cardinal inquired casually, “Tell me, Tim, what do you know about balance sheets, debits, credits, and the like?”

“Nothing at all, I’m afraid,” he admitted.

“Good, I knew you were a kindred soul. I’ve been praying over this for a week now, and I’ve got the strong impression that our monetary dilemma needs an innocent—the lamb among the bulls, so to speak.”

“I don’t understand the reference, Your Eminence. Is it one of Aesop’s fables?”

Mulroney’s large pectoral cross fairly bounced from his chest as he shook with laughter. “Don’t expect erudition from me, my lad,” he replied. “It’s just another of my idiotic mixed metaphors. The ‘bull’ is, I take it, good news on Wall Street, and the lamb—in this case two of them—you and I.”

Thereupon, in unadorned language, Mulroney explained Boston’s predicament—which was typical of every diocese in the country: Attendance was dwindling and donations were growing scarcer still.

“Naturally, we’ve got a large endowment,” the Cardinal explained, “but that dates from the heyday of the Kennedys. Unfortunately, through the years our bankers have barely earned us enough to keep up with inflation. We’ll be lunching with them tomorrow. We must be firebrands, lest our schoolchildren freeze for lack of winter fuel.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever given a thought to money in my entire life.” Except to pay for a broken window, he added to himself.

“Good.” The Cardinal smiled. “Then you’ll be absolutely fresh!”

In a world of private banking dominated by the Protestant establishment, the Boston firm of McIntyre & Alleyn was a conspicuous exception. Indeed, their reputation—and their assets—had grown precisely because Catholic
money wanted to be placed in Catholic hands. Their clients had weathered the crash of ’29 because M & A knew how to do business only one way—conservatively. In the go-go ’70s, however, this very virtue proved their most egregious drawback. And many accounts—some third-generation clients—abandoned their Stone Age strategies, preferring the tactics of such intrepid adventurers as Michael Milken of Drexel.

By the late 1970s they had closed their branches in Philadelphia and Baltimore, keeping their New York operation open in a cubbyhole—mostly for the sake of their letterhead. The firm’s headquarters in Boston retained only the genteel mahogany-paneled suite in a venerable building downtown.

As the archbishop and his personal assistant stepped out of the elevator, they saw a workman kneeling before the glass doors of McIntyre & Alleyn, appending to the bank’s title the gilt-painted words
and Lurie.

“What kind of changes are you making?” the cardinal inquired, as he and Timothy sat in the boardroom with the two senior partners.

“New blood,” said McIntyre Senior, “although strictly speaking …” He paused for a moment and then said uneasily, “This Lurie fellow isn’t really joining us. We’re joining him. He’s bought the majority stake.”

The Cardinal of Boston grew restive. Tim expressed his superior’s annoyance. “How could you do this without consulting His Eminence?”

“With respect,” Mr. Alleyn countered gravely, “Mr. Lurie’s activities have no relation whatsoever to the archdiocese’s portfolio. His style is emphatically ‘aggressive,’ whereas we have standing orders from the chancery restricting us from being the slightest bit … adventurous.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Alleyn,” Tim interrupted. “I don’t think you can glorify your investment strategy by calling it ‘conservative.’ As I see it you were so used to letting us live on annual contributions and interest that you never paid any attention to our capital. Now that
they’ve both shrunk, administrators like myself are faced with the terrible prospect of having to close schools.”

The cardinal leaned over and whispered to Tim, “Well done, lad. Would you like to take it from here?”

“Myself?” Tim gasped.

“If you like, I can leave you my hat,” Mulroney joked, and then turned to the bankers. “Gentlemen, Father Hogan will handle matters from this point. You can assume that his opinions echo my own. I hope the Lord blesses you with the inspiration to get us out of this unholy mess.”

In an instant the prelate had vanished, and Tim was left in the hot seat.

“What would you like us to do, Father Hogan?” McIntyre asked deferentially.

“I’d be grateful if you’d pull out the records and have someone translate them for me.”

Mr. Alleyn realized this young priest needed to be placated. “We’ll both stay. We can order in some sandwiches and work through lunch.”

“Fine,” Tim replied, “but while we’re setting things up, why don’t we ask the aggressive Mr. Lurie to join us?”

“Oh, I really don’t think so,” Mr. Alleyn said apologetically. “He works out of the New York office.”

“Well,” Tim commented, “perhaps he’d bestir himself to serve the Church.”

“Uh, Lurie’s not Catholic,” said McIntyre. “I’m afraid he’s a Jew.”

“Mr. McIntyre, I find that remark unworthy of a Christian. Now why don’t we get him on the phone?”

An intercom button was pressed, orders were given, and before Tim could finish the cup of coffee in front of him there was another buzz to say the new senior partner was on the speaker phone.

“Uh, hello there, Dan,” Alleyn began politely. “Sorry to disturb you, but as you know, one of the firm’s oldest clients is the Archdiocese of Boston. I’ve got Cardinal
Mulroney’s assistant with me, and he’d like a few words with you.”

“Fine. Put him on.”

“Hello, Mr. Lurie. This is Father Hogan.”

“Did you say ‘Hogan?’ It couldn’t by any chance be
Timothy
Hogan?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. Why did—”

At that moment each realized whom he was addressing, and the legate of the Cardinal of Boston—renowned for the brilliance of his Latin—began to speak to Mr. Lurie in New York—in Yiddish.

“
Vos iz mit der nomen
‘Lurie’?” Tim asked. Why are you calling yourself Lurie?

“Ikh hob shoyn gebracht genug shanda oif die mishpocheh,”
the voice replied. I’ve already caused my family enough embarrassment.

A moment later, the call concluded, and Timothy addressed those present. “Danny’s agreed to take the next shuttle. Let’s be sure we get him a sandwich. A cheese sandwich.”

A
fter thriving in the perilous battlefield of commodities trading, I thought nothing could make me nervous anymore. Yet on the flight to Boston I was so unsettled I could barely read the newspaper.

It had been more than eight years since I had last seen my priestly “brother-in-law.” So much had happened in the interim, especially to the most important person in our lives, who I knew would be the dominant presence in our confrontation, although hundreds of miles away.

The air would be charged with contrasting passions—my pious Catholic partners no doubt bowing and scraping to their archdiocesan officer, myself an alien religiously as well as financially. Underneath all the civil exteriors, there would be plenty of veiled hostility.