These and many similar speculations had occupied Koesler in recent weeks.
Now, leaning on the wealth of his experience, Koesler was able to detect the turmoil churning deep in Tully. The younger priest had kept his inner conflict hidden. But as the time for a decision loomed, Tully was near to panicking.
Koesler wanted to help. And it was clear what form that help would be. From his experience, he could provide almost exactly what Tully wanted and needed: accurate information on what made Bishop Delvecchio tick.
“Okay …” Koesler settled more deeply into his chair. “I think I know what you want. And I think I can give it to you.
“The stories I just told accurately described two young men as they were when they were-one about twenty-four, the other about nineteen. They were different from each other then; they are different from each other now. Somewhere along the way, they passed each other on a bridge, so to speak.”
Koesler fell silent. Tully did not intrude.
“It’s funny,” Koesler at length continued, “in all these years I’ve met so many people. They weave a pattern in my life. Now that I look back on my relationship with Vince Delvecchio, I see our paths have crossed many times. But I’ve never considered him in any … distinct way. Now that I think of him, of our contacts in an unbroken story, I’m not sure exactly what I’ll find.”
Koesler took a deep breath. “To begin with, our ages were against our ever getting to know each other well. That he was five years younger argued against any kind of familiarity, let alone friendship per se.”
“Because,” Tully contributed, “you were in college when he was in high school. And you were in Theology when he was in college.”
“Right. But mostly the separation between college and Theology. High school and college were in one gigantic building complex-Sacred Heart Seminary. Whereas the final four years were at St. John’s Seminary in Plymouth. During my final four years, I wouldn’t even have seen Vince if it hadn’t been for camp.
“See, Zack, in the mid-fifties there were three Catholic boys’ camps that hired seminarians exclusively: Sancta Maria for wealthier campers; CYO for those who could afford to pay, but not on the level of Sancta Maria; and Ozanam, intended for kids from poorer families.
“Counselors around my age were rather fiercely committed to our individual camps. After all, counselors at any of these camps spent practically the entire year with each other: September to June in school and June through August at camp. Even Christmas and Easter vacations frequently were times to go to movies together or, one way or another, to be in each other’s company.
“That’s the way it was with Vince and me and the other counselors at Ozanam. There was this bond … not as strong as that between counselors who were also classmates, but a bond nonetheless-”
“It would be a good idea for me to pay attention to this camp thing, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, it would. But you should remember that in recent years, although the camps are still functioning, they’re no longer staffed by seminarians.”
“Because there aren’t that many seminarians anymore … right?”
“Exactly.” Koesler did not merely look at, he studied his watch. “Well, we’ve got a lot of territory to cover, but we should have enough time.
“What I want to do, I think, is to relate certain incidents that involved Vince and me … incidents that I hope will help you understand things that happened to Vince and helped shape him into what he is today.
“You want a background on Vince. I’m going to try to give you just that: I’m going to try to paint a picture as well as I can of how Bishop Delvecchio developed and changed over the years.”
5
“My last summer as a counselor was wonderful. My last year in the seminary was glorious. Mostly because I knew that the priesthood was within my grasp. And that was all I ever wanted to be …” Father Koesler leaned back in his chair, eyes half closed as he recalled his Golden Year.
“June fifth, nineteen fifty-four …” Koesler smiled in memory. “I was ordained. Then we had a short vacation before we got our first parochial assignments. About the time we were moving into our parishes, seminarians in high school, college, and Theology were going back to school.
“So I was sent to St. William’s on Detroit’s east side-on Outer Drive near Gratiot.
“Just an aside, Zack: That neighborhood was solid upper middleclass. If anybody had predicted that some day that parish would close and the buildings be sold, he’d have been committed to an asylum. But a few years ago it
“It was amazing: Here I was, twenty-five, and everybody calling me ‘Father.’ I had so much to learn. But what am I saying? You had the same experience-only somewhat later than mine.”
Father Tully was grinning. “I sure did. Except that my first assignment-we called them ‘missions’-was hundreds of miles from home.”
“That’s right: You were a missionary. Funny: I still tend to think of missionaries as ‘foreign’-like in Maryknoll.
“Anyway,” Koesler continued, “I-we-had to get out of our textbooks and deal with people. People who came to us for instruction, answers, forgiveness, help … food. And the odd thing about it was that in most cases we could deliver. Sometimes the answers weren’t right at my fingertips. But I could-and I did-rely on the books on the shelves behind me. If I didn’t know the answer to anything that anybody threw at me, I was certain I could find it in one or another of those books.
“Did you have that experience, Zack?”
Tully shook his head. “Bob, you said you started out in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. With the exception of my previous short stay at St. Joe’s, this will be the first upper-middle-class parish I’ve ever worked. By and large, Josephites live poor with the poor. We were a long, long way from splitting ecclesiastical hairs with prospective converts. But I suppose hardly anybody is doing that anymore … no matter what the parish’s financial standing is.”
“True enough,” Koesler agreed. “Just about everything has changed. I wonder if the guys today when they’re starting out in the priesthood make the same mistakes we did …”
“Mistakes?”
“Uh-huh. Books were our world in the seminary. But after ordination, when we started as priests, we were dealing with flesh-and-blood people. It was one thing to be taught the ‘evil’ of birth control … and to get the latest word on ‘rhythm’ that would solve the whole problem. And it was another thing to counsel and absolve good people for whom ‘rhythm’ meant nothing on a practical basis. They were avoiding artificial birth control because it was a ‘mortal sin.’ They depended on an undependable system. And they were hyperpopulating the parish every nine months or so. Their marriages were under incredible stress. And we had the cold answers in the books on our shelves.”
Koesler slipped into the meditative replay of those memories.
Faithful Catholics of that era had their faith tested by moral directives that had little to do with the reality of their lives.
In the silence, Father Tully reflected on how different had been his priestly experience. Family planning had meant something contrastingly different for his average parishioner: The poor had children or not, depending on the consensus of a married couple. And that decision had nothing to do with a calendar or theology. There were problems-lots of big problems. Generally, family planning was not one of them. Food, clothing, shelter, employment-these were crises constantly gnawing at Tully and his parishioners.
Father Koesler had not had to confront any of these challenges. Nor had Bishop Delvecchio. And it was the mind of Delvecchio that Tully wanted to investigate. Thus, what Koesler had to say was of major importance to Tully.
“At any rate,” Koesler broke the silence, “I was entering the real world-or what passed for us as the real world. I spent the first several months pretty much bewildered by a new routine-a new way of life. Only slowly getting accustomed to dealing with people-people with problems. People who looked to me for solutions, support.
