understood why Faith had made that suggestion to Chat.
“We might take you up on that.”
“What can you tell me about Ursula?”
Faith Grant removed the glasses from her head and placed them in the pocket of her shirt. “In a way, I feel responsible for what happened to her, for her death.”
“Why? What do you know about it?”
“Not anything at all, except what’s in this morning’s newspapers. It’s just that the fact that she was murdered likely has something to do with her role in the church. And I encouraged her to come teach at Union after the Vatican silenced her.” Faith was soft-spoken but direct. “I’m one of the people who urged her to carry on with the work that she so loved.”
The door opened and Mike came in, giving me a quick shake of his head to indicate he had come up empty.
“Did you go to the top of the tower?” Faith asked. “Did anyone see you?”
She was more interested in whether Mike had been noticed by her superiors than whether he had encountered a criminal.
“No.” He sat beside me on the bench while I continued to ask questions.
“Back to Ursula Hewitt,” I said. “How long have you known her?”
“I met her about a year and a half ago, not long after she had been excommunicated. I had the idea that she might be in need of a place to teach.”
“Why not a Catholic institution?” I asked.
“That’s the whole point of silencing, Coop,” Mike said, leaning forward to engage Faith Grant and me. “No can do. That message is from the top, from the Magisterium.”
I looked at Faith for confirmation.
“He’s right. A very formal letter comes from Rome. The Magisterium is the teaching office of the Vatican, and according to their rules, the task of interpreting the Word of God is entrusted solely to that body — the pope and his bishops. Ursula was forbidden to teach in her own church.”
“But allowed to do so here?”
Faith smiled. “Well, according to our vision, she is. We’ve done this before, Alex. We’ve had a silenced Jesuit theologian here, taken him in and made him a scholar-in-residence.”
“Did you face any opposition to inviting Ursula?”
She stopped to think. “Not really.”
“What did she teach?” I asked.
“Feminist theology, of course,” Faith answered without hesitation. “The history of women in the church fascinated her.”
“Before those who became priests, had women been silenced?”
“Certainly. There are loads of examples. In modern times, they’ve had to do with obvious issues. In 1979, a nun — a Sister of Mercy on the Yale faculty — signed a document along with twelve others supporting abortion, supporting a woman’s right to control her body. She was told by Rome that if she didn’t recant, she’d be excommunicated.”
“Was she?”
“Sister Margaret agreed not to publish the document, but she wouldn’t recant. So she was silenced. Many of the most progressive nuns have been punished by the church for speaking out on abortion or on homosexuality,” Faith said, shaking her head. “And despite the wonderful work they do in the most underserved communities — and in these times when Rome is having a very hard go attracting young people to service, women or men — they’re shunned.”
“And the formal position of the Vatican on silencing?” I asked. “What’s the reasoning?”
“The primary argument used to be — centuries ago — that it would prevent confusion among God’s people caused by contentious issues. Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, the index of forbidden books, the outlawing of scientific thinking by geniuses like Galileo — you know all the historic examples. It might have been a means to quash dissension in those days, but now all the issues involved are commented on by the mainstream media on the nightly news.
“Let me ask you this,” Mike said. “Ursula Hewitt knew that much of what she did was unpopular. Was she ever afraid?”
“She was fearless,” Faith said, biting her lip. “Principled and smart and totally fearless. There was nothing about her I didn’t admire and look up to.”
“Was she still teaching this week?”
“Only one course this semester. Sort of a new direction for her. She’d been involved in stage work with a community group. She’d been researching medieval dramatists.”
“Why’s that?” Mike asked.
“Because they wove so many scenes of torture into their work.”
“Religious themes?”
“Indeed. Around the time of the Inquisition, stagecraft often depicted sadistic acts and intense suffering. Ursula had developed a fascination for what was called the Theater of Cruelty. It was common in the Middle Ages for dramatists to stage violent acts — like the Passion of Christ. They did it to make accounts in the scripture more believable, and by doing so, they hoped to inspire more religious faith in the audience.”
I was familiar with some of these works from my study of French literature.
“You know it, Alex? That’s exactly right. ‘There must be blood.’ ”
“Sounds pretty gruesome,” Mike said.
He was correct about that. And I knew that he realized, as I did, that for at least one evening in the theater, the lives — and perhaps the deaths — of Naomi Gersh and Ursula Hewitt were linked in that milieu.
“What interested her about it?” I asked.
“Everything. Ursula questioned everything. When the word came from Rome that barring women from the priesthood wasn’t a human-rights issue, it was Ursula who stood up to the Magisterium. ‘Is it because we don’t have rights?’ she asked. ‘Or is it because we’re not human?’ ”
“That’s pretty direct,” Mike said.
“Ursula referred to the church as a place of hope — and a place of horror. ‘What does it say about Christianity’—she used to challenge her students—‘what does it say that at the center of Christianity, of all its writings and beliefs, is torture? Torture, and the murder of a man?’ ”
THIRTY
“WHAT is it that you wanted to tell me?” I was leaning forward, trying to get Faith’s eyes to meet mine.
“Mike just asked if Ursula expressed her fears,” Faith Grant said. Her voice dropped and her spirit seemed to flag. “As I said, she didn’t have any that I know of, but I do.”
“So do I, Faith. Want to tell us about yours?”
She took her glasses out of her pockets and played with them while she talked. “I’m afraid that Ursula’s murder had something to do with the fact that she was here, that I convinced her to come to Union.”
“Why would that put her in harm’s way?”
“There are things I said to her, ways that I prodded her that probably put her a bit more ‘out there’ than she needed to be.”
“Doesn’t seem like she needed any prodding,” Mike said. “Are you worried for your own safety?”
Faith Grant had tears in her eyes. “I hope that’s not what has my gut in an uproar. It’s much more self- centered than I like to think I am.”
