Silent Mercy

I’ll get pounded when Scully finds out.”

“By Monday we’ll have a better sense of where this is going. I’ll poke my head out and test the waters.”

“Kind of like a groundhog, looking for his shadow,” Mike said. “But you’ll have to see Battaglia tomorrow morning. That won’t be pretty.”

“It’s Friday, and he’s got meetings in Washington all day. Probably took the last shuttle tonight,” I said. “To which I add a ‘hallelujah’ and let’s get to work.”

Nan had opened her laptop and begun her research on Ursula Hewitt. “What do you want to know?”

“I’m the wrong one to pass judgment on the idea of ordaining women. It seems smart to me.”

“Amen,” Mercer said. “Overdue by a millennium or two.”

“But then it’s not my church, so what I think doesn’t count for much.” I looked to Mike and then Nan, who were both practicing Catholics.

“Here’s the latest New York Times poll,” Nan said, Googling faster than we were talking. “For more than twenty years, a large majority of American Catholics favor allowing women to be ordained as priests, even though the church hierarchy is opposed. More than sixty-four percent think it’s a good idea. Another eighty-one percent support women as deacons.”

“Let me speak for my aunt Eunice,” Mike said, raising his glass in the air. “And my aunt Bridget and my sainted mother and the good ladies of St. Anselm’s of Bay Ridge. Not happening. Hellfire and damnation before they’d approve ordaining women. You want a poll? Poll my relatives.”

“Women are so often more judgmental about each other’s conduct than men,” I said.

“You can’t let Nan take the heat on this,” Mike said. “Don’t we have a kick-ass atheist on board who won’t care when crowds start picketing the courthouse?”

“I can deal,” Nan said.

“It’s like an ancient fraternity,” Mercer said. “Somebody needs to bring these guys in Rome into the modern world.”

“Men in dresses. That’s who’s in charge,” Mike said. “Men in dresses with more gold rings than even Coop’s got. Ought to be a signal right there. You want to make my mother crazy? Some days I tell her I think I was the only altar boy in town who wasn’t abused. I must have been homely as sin. Just ask her about that.”

“This is interesting,” Nan said. “There’s actually a formal organization with its own website. Roman Catholic Womenpriests. They claim that more than one hundred women have been given ordination ceremonies as priests or bishops or deacons.”

“There were women deacons till the ninth century, in case you girls didn’t know. St. Lydia, St. Phoebe, St. Tabitha.”

“It’s like celibacy, isn’t it?” Mercer asked. “I don’t believe priests were always celibate, were they? There were sure a bunch of popes who didn’t get that part right.”

“The first Lateran council required celibacy,” Mike said. “In 1123. It’s a discipline in the church, based on the way that Christ lived his life.”

“I’ve got quite a learning curve ahead,” I said. “I can spend the weekend doing an immersion course in religion.”

“About time.”

“What else do we know about Ursula Hewitt?” I asked.

“While Scully was dressing you down in the hallway,” Mercer said, “we were getting the rest of the facts, few as they are. Her uncle said she’d been staying with friends the last six months. All he had was her cell. He’ll get us the names and addresses by tomorrow.”

“Involved with any particular parish?”

“Certainly not officially. But still connected to the church, still hoping she and her sisters could effect change.” Mercer was reading from notes. “Deep and abiding faith. Believed that priests should look like the people they serve.”

“Can we talk to some of these other women?” I asked Nan.

“The site says that the movement started in Germany in 2002. The first women ordained were called the Danube Seven. The ceremony took place on a boat in the river. And it lists the names of all the women priests, including the seventy-five Americans.”

“So we split up those calls, starting tomorrow.”

“Hewitt was teaching too,” Mercer said. “According to her uncle. But he doesn’t know where.”

“Excommunication means she couldn’t teach in any Roman Catholic church or school. Even silencing her would have done that much,” Mike said.

The house phone rang and the doorman announced the food delivery.

“I’m up,” Mercer said, opening his wallet and going to the door. “Last thing I got was that she was working some other kind of job.”

“What?”

“He didn’t know.”

Nan was searching again. “There are an awful lot of Hewitts coming up.”

“Keep going. Ursula’s certainly not a common name.”

“All the hits are articles connected to her ordination and excommunication. The Boston Globe and the Irish Echo. Then a lot of women’s press outlets. I’m not getting much else.”

“Try this,” Mike said. “Plug her in again and add Naomi Gersh. Maybe their lives intersected at some point.”

“Peterson’s right, Mike,” Nan said as she typed. “You are totally outside the box today.”

She paused to grab the plate that I passed her with a slice of pepperoni pizza. “You’re going to faint if you don’t eat something.”

“A few things popping up on Gersh.” She had one hand on the keyboard and one held a slice of the pie. “Some articles on the protests with Naomi’s name. Then a Norman Gersh in real estate, a Norton Gersh hedge fund. Gersh and Hewitt — got it!”

“Pizza and cloth napkins? Too rich for my blood.” Mike was halfway through his first slice, circling the table to look over Nan’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“A short piece in a newsletter called On-and-Off-Broadway. January of this year. I’m skimming the article as quickly as I can.”

“Faster. And out loud.”

“‘… in a limited run of the controversial play entitled Double-Crossed, which was staged last month at the Chelsea Square Workshop, to coincide with the holiest time in the church calendar. The controversial piece about the Vatican’s attempts to punish American nuns for their social activism was staged by the feminist theologian Ursula Hewitt.’ ”

“There’s her day job,” Mercer said. “Directing an edgy play about the church.”

“What social activism?” I asked. “They’re after nuns now?”

“Talks about the playwright. ‘She was inspired to create the piece when Rome launched its investigation into the feminist work of communities of American nuns several years ago. In Washington State, for example, three groups were targeted. They include the Tacoma Dominicans, which consists of thirty women — average age, seventy — who have begun to shelter victims of human trafficking. Their untraditional ministries, such as social justice work, is viewed as inappropriate by the Vatican hierarchy. Even their refusal to wear robes is considered a form of rebellion.’ ”

“A seventy-year-old nun who’s willing to step out of her robe?” Mike said. “Give her a medal. If I could get my mother out of her housecoat once in a while, I’d say a few novenas.”

“What does it mention about Naomi Gersh?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“But that’s her in the photograph,” Mike said. “The image is grainy, but it sure looks like Naomi, doesn’t it?”

“Here’s the caption. ‘Director Ursula Hewitt, greeting several members of the audience — including an ordained minister and a nun — and Jewish activist Naomi Gersh.’ ”

“Nothing more in the article?”