Cecilian Vespers (3 page)

“Thanks for fetching him, Michael.”

That evening at the Midtown, the waiter had just placed our glasses of draft on the table, and Brennan had lit up his first cigarette, when Monsignor O’Flaherty appeared before us again.

“Brennan!” O’Flaherty was all out of puff. “Hello to you, Monty. Brennan, you’ll be hard put to believe me!”

“Evening, Michael. Have a seat, and let us treat you to a draft.”

“Thank you. I’ve an awful drouth on me, all the talking I’ve just been doing.”

“How did you ever know to find me here, Monsignor?”

“Amn’t I after following a star in the east? But no, all coddin’ aside. Wait till I tell you! Thank you. Ah. Goes down like liquid gold.” He smiled and put his glass on the table, then looked at each of us in turn. “You’ll never guess in a million years who our latest student is!”

“Stanley Drew,” Burke replied in a deadpan voice, “an American who’s been working overseas —”

“No! Drew is just a pseudonym for —” Monsignor O’Flaherty paused for dramatic effect, then blurted out his news “— Reinhold Schellenberg!”

“You’re having me on!” Brennan exclaimed.

It wasn’t often I saw a dumbstruck look on the face of Brennan Burke. They stared at each other in amazement.

“How could we not have known he was coming? Why the false name?” Brennan asked.

“Security reasons!”

“What do you mean?”

Here O’Flaherty looked uncertain. “I don’t know exactly. He wasn’t all that forthcoming on the subject. But he’s a lovely man.”

“So what did he say when you met him? Did he identify himself right away?”

“No. Not till we were alone in the car coming into town. But you know, there was something familiar about him. I just didn’t twig to it. He hasn’t been in the public eye for a long time. He used to sport a beard, but that’s gone now. He has only the slightest accent; his English is perfect. You wouldn’t know right off who he was. Did you ever meet him, Brennan, during your time in Rome?”

“I attended a couple of lectures he gave, and saw him at a conference or two, but I never had a conversation with him.”

“Gentlemen.”

“Yes, Monty?” O’Flaherty turned to me.

“Who is Reinhold Schellenberg?”

“Do I take it that theology was not among the subjects in which you excelled during your illustrious academic career, young Collins?”

“You wouldn’t be wrong in drawing that conclusion.” “Father Schellenberg is a noted theologian who became quite famous — infamous might be the better word — in the years immediately following the Second Vatican Council. He was a figure of some controversy in controversial times. It apparently got too much for him and he entered a monastic order. He hasn’t been heard from in public since — what would it be, Brennan? — the early 1980s, or thereabouts. Ten years or so.”

“What kind of controversy are we talking about?”

“His theological positions didn’t sit well with some in the church.”

“Didn’t sit well with whom? Liberals or conservatives?”

“It’s never that simple, Monty, but, em, he attracted criticism from both ends of the spectrum.”

“How did he manage that?”

“He started off as what we’ll call a liberal, at the time of the Council in the 1960s,” Brennan replied, “pissing off traditionalists and other conservatives. Then he did an apparent about-face, renounced his liberal positions of the past, and pissed off his former adherents. But his ability as a theologian has never been in doubt.”

“And now he’s here to learn at the feet of the Reverend Doctor Brennan Burke at the Schola Cantorum Sancta Bernadetta.”

“You find that surprising in some way, Collins?” Burke demanded.

“Not at all, Father.”

“I thought not. Well, we’ll have to make his visit a memorable one.”

IV
Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus
.
These are the latter times, not the better times.
Let us stand watch.
— Bernard of Cluny,
De Contemptu Mundi

Everything I had heard about the students of the schola and the controversies swirling around them made me keen to catch some of the show. So I popped in to the school two days later, on Thursday, when a client failed to show up for my last appointment of the afternoon. I headed down the hall and turned left, on my way to find Brennan or Michael, or perhaps the famous and now reclusive Schellenberg. Someone had set up a table and chessboard in a little alcove off the corridor, where two men were engaged in silent combat. They appeared to be in their late fifties. One had very pale blue eyes and greying blonde hair in a short military-looking cut. His opponent was a priest with fluffy white hair and rimless spectacles reflecting the light from the window at the end of the hall. The priest gave me a pleasant, if absent, nod as I stopped momentarily to observe the match. The man with the military appearance looked up, kept me in his gaze for a few seconds, then returned to the game without any change of expression. I felt I had been scanned, comprehended, and committed to memory.

I continued on my way and found Father Burke leading a seminar billed simply as “The Great Latin Hymns.” I pushed the door open and took a seat in the back.

“The ‘Dies Irae,’ the Day of Wrath, is attributed to a Franciscan friar in the twelve hundreds. Walsh’s book on the thirteenth century contains a description of the ‘Dies Irae’ as ‘the greatest of all hymns, and one of the greatest of all poems … nearly or quite the most perfect wedding of sound to sense that they know.’ The author concludes
that perhaps no one with the exception of Dante or Shakespeare has ever equalled the ‘Dies Irae’ as poetry. Two verses will suffice to show he’s right:

Recordare, Jesu pie,
quod sum causa tuae viae:
ne me perdas illa die
.

Quaerens me, sedisti lassus:
redemisti crucem passus:
tantus labor non sit cassus
.

“As for melody, Walsh tells us the creators of the great Gothic cathedrals developed music worthy of those magnificent temples. He means of course Gregorian chant.

“Now let’s hear what is on offer in the hymn books of today:

The lowly ones, they come to sup.
The rich man, shamed, is drawing near.
The lame, the leper, all are here
To share His brimming, saving cup!

Burke gave a shudder, then turned a new page.

Share the courage of the songfest.
Join His dance around the table.
If the proud ones come among us,
Call them forth if you are able.

“Does that make any sense at all? Woe betide anyone I catch doing the shimmy around the altar in my church. This sort of goofiness is everywhere in the hymn books now. Along with all those songs in which the members of the congregation congratulate themselves endlessly about being the light of the world, and aren’t we grand? All this is yet another selective interpretation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, in this case
Lumen Gentium
, Light of Nations. Which in reality did not replace worship of God with worship of ourselves.

“Ah. Mr. Collins. Thank you for drawing near. Come forth if you
are able. May I present to you Mr. Collins,” he said to the class. “You may have seen him around. Not only is he the schola’s wise legal counsel; he is also a member of the St. Bernadette’s choir.” I nodded to the group.

After the lecture I saw Monsignor O’Flaherty standing alone by the chessboard, looking down at the pieces.

“Are you a chess player, Mike?”

“Alas no, Monty, I can’t even win at checkers.”

“Who are the two men I saw playing chess here?”

“You haven’t met Father Schellenberg yet, have you? That’s who you would have seen at the chessboard. And a fellow by the name of Bleier, who’s actually Colonel Bleier. He’s a German policeman,
‘Oberst der VP.’
The
Volkspolizei
! Retired now, apparently. They live in Berlin. She teaches there.”

“She?”

“Doctor Jadwiga Silkowski is Bleier’s wife. She’s a leading authority on moral theology.” He leaned forward, a mischievous look in his eyes “She told me she got in trouble on a couple of occasions. Ran afoul of the authorities.”

“Government authorities?” I asked.

“Well, now that you mention it, she may have got herself in the soup there as well, considering that it was East Berlin they were living in till the wall came down. But I meant the church authorities. Some of the positions she has taken from time to time have not gone down well in Rome.”

“I don’t suppose the colonel could help her there.”

“No.”

“I wonder why Colonel Bleier and Father Schellenberg weren’t in the seminar.”

“Who knows?”

V
Judex ergo cum sedebit
Quidquid latet apparebit,
Nil inultum remanebit
.
When therefore the Judge takes His seat
Whatever is hidden will reveal itself.
Nothing will remain unavenged.
— “Dies Irae,”
Requiem Mass

I called Brennan Friday morning to ask where the choir would be meeting for vespers that evening.

“We’ll all go directly to Stella Maris. That way we don’t have to arrange drives for all the little lads.”

“That’s what you have insurance for.”

“Spoken like a true lawyer. We have insurance but we don’t have the vehicles. So the parents will drop the boys off. We’ll meet outside and have a procession. Put on a little show for Saint Cecilia.”

“Right. She’s the patron saint of … music, is it?”

“Church musicians. This is her feast day, November 22. Oh, and wear your surplice. You got it from the choir loft?”

“Yes, I did. I feel like an altar boy again.”

“Good. That means I’m doing my job.”

“When do I get an introduction to the great man?” I asked.

“We have a surfeit of great men here, Monty. To whom are you referring?”

“Not to you, you pompous arsehole.”

“Ah. Could it be Father Schellenberg then? If so, you’re in luck. Mike O’Flaherty charmed him into giving a lecture this afternoon. He had to be cajoled and he made it clear he does not want to speak on the subject of the Second Vatican Council. His topic will be the divine office of the Latin rite, the prayers sung at various hours of the
day. Matins, lauds, vespers, compline, and so on. Schellenberg is a Cistercian-Benedictine monk, so he knows whereof he speaks. And after his lecture you, too, will be qualified to speak on the matter. If ever you’re asked.”

“Good. Some new opening lines for my next visit to a pickup joint. Hey, baby, have you heard this one? A lawyer and a monk go into a bar. Only it’s time for compline, so the monk says —”

“It’s always worked for me.”

“I’m sure.”

“Anyway, O’Flaherty had lined up a bus trip for the group, to Peggy’s Cove; the tour will be postponed for an hour or two so people can hear Schellenberg first. Be here at two o’clock.”

I returned to my office on Barrington Street, dictated some letters on a medical malpractice case, and tried to line up my witnesses for an upcoming drug trafficking trial. Then, just before two, I headed over to the schola for the lecture by Reinhold Schellenberg. But I was out of luck. I would not be meeting the renowned theologian after all.

“Father Schellenberg came to see me,” Monsignor O’Flaherty explained. “He was most apologetic. But something came up, and he had to go out. Where he’d have to go, and him a stranger in town, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Anyway, he promised he’d give his talk next week. So I called the bus company and got the Peggy’s Cove trip back on schedule. I packed them all onto the bus, and they’re gone. But, Monty, you’ll meet Schellenberg this evening at vespers.”

“Yes, our choir’s first performance for the schola.”

“A beautiful ceremony, the peaceful closing of the day.”

Stella Maris Church had not been used, as a church at least, for fifteen years. It was the scene of occasional manoeuvres by the police, putting the run to squatters who used the place for their own purposes. The massive ironstone building, with its twin Gothic spires, sat high on the northwest tip of the Halifax peninsula, above what is now the Fairview Container Terminal. Overlooking the waters of the Bedford Basin, the church had been built in the late nineteenth century to assert the Catholic presence in the city; it was a landmark visible to
those approaching by boat or by train from the north. Now, commuters coming in on the Bedford Highway could see only the tips of the spires, behind the massive structures of the container terminal. Very few people lived in the area; it was strictly industrial.

The church’s day was nearly done. Stella Maris was scheduled for demolition the following week, and in fact a twentieth-century addition at the back had already been torn down, except for one jagged stone wall. The stained-glass windows would be saved, as would the pews, the font, and all the other fittings. Brennan had mentioned his desire to have the ornate old altar transferred to St. Bernadette’s, where it would be used for the weekly Tridentine Mass.

Now, in the dark of a moonless November night, robed figures gathered before the blackened wooden doors of the church. The scene was indistinguishable from one that might have taken place in the early Middle Ages. We were far away in time from modern-day Halifax. Priests in vestments, monks in cowls, nuns in habits, choir-boys in white surplices, we processed into the nave and down the aisle. A candle in red glass flickered on the altar; our golden candles were the only other light. The only warmth. Incense wafted back to us from the front of the procession. Two by two we genuflected before the Blessed Sacrament present on the altar and took our places in the sanctuary for the Office of Vespers, by which we would consecrate the end of the day to God. Father Burke chanted the opening prayer:

APERI, Domine, os meum ad benedicendum nomen sanctum tuum: munda quoque cor meum ab omnibus vanis, perversis et alienis cogitationibus.

OPEN my mouth, O Lord, to bless thy holy name: cleanse also my heart from all vain, evil and distracting thoughts.

In the company of friars who sang Gregorian chant as part of their everyday lives, choir and clergy made their voices one; the ancient psalms floated upwards like the incense. All vain, evil, and distracting thoughts melted away, and I felt myself at peace in a way I had never known.