The Cosmic Ray Heresy
Frank A. Smith
Copyright 2011 Frank A. Smith
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you, then please purchase your own copy.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
With love for my wife Helen and our family.
Prologue
August: A Meeting in Rome
Satellite photos don’t show much more than the roof of the 400-year-old building on the Piazza del Uffizio. If the technology could have penetrated the roof on that late summer day in Rome it would have revealed a meeting in progress. Eleven men were seated around a long rectangular table. Seventy-one-year-old Cardinal Antonio Tossi, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sat at the head of the table. The rest of the men were bishops and monsignori of the Roman Catholic Church. A red file folder, a bottle of water, and a glass were on the table at each place. Cardinal Tossi was reading a letter from his file.
He took his glasses off, looked up, offered a short prayer in Italian to open the meeting, and held up the letter.
“Gentlemen, you all have a copy of this in your folder along with an Italian translation. It is a petition from an American priest for an exception to marry. Take a few minutes to read it, please.”
Bishop Andersen of Chicago was the first to speak. “Just say no, Your Eminence. Father Donnelly knows he can’t have it both ways.”
“That’s one of the problems, Carl. He has had it both ways. He’s one of John Paul’s Anglican converts. He was married when he was ordained.”
“He certainly must have been aware that if his wife died he could not remarry,” said Bishop LeMans of Brussels. “As a married man he was granted an exception to be ordained. Many others have been granted that same exception. Now, as an ordained priest, he wants an exception to remarry. That’s a different matter.”
“Father Donnelly claims that it is not. Let me call your attention to the middle paragraph on the second page of his letter,” said the Cardinal. “I quote, ‘One may interpret His Holiness John Paul’s pastoral dispensation allowing me to be ordained while married—the emphasis is Father Donnelly’s—‘to be qualitatively different from my request here to be allowed to marry while ordained. I believe, however, that my original exception should be interpreted as allowing the married state and the holy priesthood to coexist, in which case there would be no need for a new exception to remarry.’”
“Well, his interpretation is just wrong and self-serving. It is a different matter,” said Bishop LeMans.
“Are we so sure it’s a different matter?” asked Monsignor Marchesi of New York. “There was a joke I remember from my undergraduate days at Fordham. It seems the Pope was asked by a visitor ‘Holy Father, is it permissible for me to smoke while praying?’ The Holy Father was shocked at the question and replied, ‘Certainly not! It would be highly disrespectful to smoke while praying to God.’ The visitor thought for a moment and asked, ‘Would it be all right then to pray while smoking?’ The Holy Father looked pleased and said ‘My son, it is most worthy to pray while engaged in any activity.’ ”
When the laughter subsided Marchesi continued. “The fact that we find that joke humorous, gentleman, is because we realize that smoking while praying and praying while smoking are the same thing. Father Donnelly is suggesting that ordination while married and marriage while ordained are the same also.”
“But it is not the same,” said Bishop LeMans slamming his hand on the table. “We haven’t permitted an active priest to marry since the twelfth century.”
“Since 1139 to be exact,” said Marchesi. “Let us remember that a celibate clergy is a tradition, not a doctrine of the Church. It is not strictly required for the priesthood. Exceptions for individual priests have been made and will continue to be made.”
“Gentlemen, please,” said Cardinal Tossi. “Very clever anecdote, Monsignor, but we are not going to settle this with word play. There are some complications we must consider.”
He held up a pink sheet of paper and adjusted his glasses. “You have a copy of this fact sheet in your files. Father Donnelly also has a child, a four-year-old daughter. There’s a photograph of her in your package. Finally, Father Donnelly is a scientist, a physicist. He is a professor at a Philadelphia University. Both of these facts add a public relations aspect to this case.”
“I still say no,” said Bishop Andersen. “We don’t need a public opinion poll to inform us on how to run the Church.”
“Quite true, Bishop, but caution is called for. Consider that the Holy Father has recently extended the previous invitation of John Paul to priests and bishops of the Anglican community to convert to Catholicism and be ordained anew as Catholic priests. Most would be married. Many would have children. He is hoping that large numbers will accept his invitation. Potential converts would be very interested in how we treat one who has already made the jump. If it became public that a priest who had converted was denied permission to remarry when his wife was killed, a priest with a young daughter, it would have a chilling effect on Anglican priests who might convert, especially younger ones.”
“It doesn’t help that he’s a physicist,” said Monsignor Cullen of Dublin. “I seem to recall that our predecessors in this office had trouble with another one four hundred years ago. The Galileo debacle would be brought up if we have any public hassle with a scientist.”
“You see my concern,” said the Cardinal. “If we turn down this request it will almost certainly become public. Father Donnelly was all over the media in the United States when he was ordained. He and his wife were even interviewed on a popular television program.”
”Still, we have no choice,” said Monsignor Cullen. “Grant an exception in this case and we open the floodgates.”
“There may be another way, Monsignor. I have composed a letter to Father Donnelly hoping to sidestep a direct response to his petition. Last April he wrote a letter to the editor of a Philadelphia newspaper supporting the ordination of women. Both the letter and some damaging photographs were sent to us by, let me just say, an ‘interested’ party in the Philadelphia Archdiocese; someone who no doubt—how do you say it in English Carl—has a tool to sharpen?”
“An axe to grind, Your Eminence.”
“Ah, a Vendetta,” said the monsignor from Palermo, nodding his head with understanding.
Cardinal Tossi closed his file folder and stood. “Whatever the motive our cooperative friend has provided us with some information which may solve our problem.”
Part One
"It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure."
— Albert Einstein
Chapter 1— The Letter
The ghost writer offered by the publisher saw my story as something like “Rogue Priest Battles Big Bad Vatican.” No thanks, but I did need help; someone to offer suggestions, make constructive criticism, and to make sure I didn’t try to sneak in any graphs or math. I found the help in my own backyard. My literary mentor’s first contribution was to trash my attempt at a beginning.
“It’s not your autobiography, Frank. No one is interested in your childhood. Mystery writers always start in the middle with some terrible event like the dead body in the conservatory, or a package in the mail containing a severed finger. Then you explain how this awful thing happened. Write down everything you can remember and put a date on it. We can arrange it logically later.”
I compromised: not the middle of the story but a point at which my life began to change rapidly. The package from the CDF had no severed finger but was bad enough. The dead bodies would have to wait.
The mail that October morning contained an invitation to the university’s Holiday Gala, a reminder that mid-term grades were due, a bunch of ads for scientific equipment and new text books, and a manila envelope bearing some very pretty postage stamps from Vatican City. It was the return address that really got my attention.
Congregation Per La Dottrina Della Fede
Piazza del Uffizio 11, 00193
Roma, Italia
“Can we go yet, Daddy?”
Olivia was sitting on the wooden office chair with one short leg, her pink sneakers planted on the front rung, and impatiently rocking back and forth.
“In a minute, sweetheart. Daddy has one more thing to do.” I slit the envelope and took a deep breath.
Reverend Francis X. Donnelly, Ph.D.
Department of Physics
Pennsylvania Commonwealth University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Dear Father Donnelly:
We enclose a copy of a letter published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and signed by you in which you advocated the ordination of women. In the encyclical Ordenatio Sacerdotalis His Holiness John Paul II wrote, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” This doctrine is to be understood as infallible and you do not have the option of questioning that position. We strongly urge you to write another letter to that newspaper correcting the original.
In another matter we believe you are guilty of violating article 277 of canon law. Supporting photographs are included. Such matters are the province of the local bishop and we have asked His Excellency Robert K. Reilly, Archbishop of Philadelphia, to investigate this charge and apply appropriate sanctions.
We trust that both matters can be resolved satisfactorily.
Sincerely Yours in Christ,
Antoni Cardinal Tossi, Prefect
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Not what I expected. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was originally known as the “The Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition” or more popularly as The Roman Inquisition to distinguish it from the more bloody Spanish Inquisition. Probably few of the one billion Catholics in the world are even aware of its continued existence. Founded in 1542 to combat heresy the Congregation is charged with safeguarding the faith and disciplining errant clergy and religious. The favorite targets of the CDF are theologians who stray too far from Church teachings.
I did not “advocate” the ordination of women. I had merely pointed out some flaws in a previous letter to the paper by Auxiliary Bishop Schmidt supporting the exclusion of women from the priesthood.
I could guess as to what article 277 of the Church’s legal code was about. To that I plead guilty. I had been seen in the company of two very pretty ladies. They had the photos to prove it. One was my sister. The other was Victoria Meyers. What I expected was a reply to my request to marry her.
Chapter 2—Munchkin House
“Daddeee?”
“Finish your orange juice, sweetheart, and throw the juice box in the waste basket.”
I put my laptop and some notes into my brief case along with the envelope from the CDF. Olivia was bent at the waist and twirling around in an attempt to hook her other arm in the strap of her Cinderella backpack. To my surprise the maneuver worked. Her sandwich, juice box, and apple would be traded later in the day for crayoned and finger-painted abstract art.
The October morning was sunny and crisp with occasional puffs of a breeze that hinted of later warmth. I walked and Olivia skipped across the University Quad. High winds over the weekend had swirled leaves against the low stone walls that crisscrossed campus. The smell of autumn was in the air. Someone in the surrounding neighborhood was defying a city ordinance and burning leaves. I kicked up a nice pile in a corner and held Olivia’s hands as she jumped from the wall.
“One more time, daddy. Jump with me.” I threw professorial dignity to the wind, and jumped.
Munchkin House is a day care center for faculty and staff children housed in a Victorian mansion on the edge of campus. It’s run as a demonstration school by the College of Education and is staffed by a few full time teachers and plenty of student interns from the pre-school certification program. This is Olivia’s second year and I’m running out of space on the refrigerator for her projects. My friend and colleague, Joe Amanti, claims she doesn’t look like an Olivia; not Mediterranean enough, too Scandinavian, he claims. I remind Joe that he called one of his daughters “Apple”. What is she supposed to look like?
I surrendered my misnamed blue-eyed blond to the volunteer on the porch. Seven-thirty to four-thirty is a long stretch for a four-year-old even with nap time in the afternoon. I promised to come back for her “tea party”. Parents are welcome to eat lunch with their children as long as they are willing to sit Yoga-style in tiny chairs.
I headed back across the Quad to my first class. A small group of students were jumping into my pile of leaves. I flashed on a memory of kicking through leaves while walking with my grandfather many years before.
During the week I am Associate Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania Commonwealth University in Philadelphia. On Saturday and Sunday I switch hats, or more accurately switch collars, and become Father Frank Donnelly, weekend assistant at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church in Philadelphia’s Fairmount section. I keep a small picture frame on the wall in my office. It holds postage stamps commemorating three scientists; Nicolaus Copernicus, who proposed the “revolutionary” idea that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun; Gregor Mendel, who discovered the laws of heredity; and Georges Lemaître, who formulated the Big Bang theory for the creation of the universe. The three were also Catholic priests. I point to the stamps whenever anyone suggests that my dual roles as priest and scientist are incompatible.
I’m not that unusual. Many priests are also scientists. Of course my daughter is unusual. Not many priests have one, at least none they will admit to. Until she was killed in an auto accident three years ago I also had a wife. Both my marriage and daughter require more of an explanation than waving my hand at a few postage stamps. When I was ordained a Catholic priest, and I do mean Roman Catholic priest, I was married and Connie was pregnant. Rare, but not impossible. Connie was asked to explain this situation so often that she made up some business cards on her computer. I still have a stack of them in my desk drawer and carry some in my wallet.
My Husband is a Catholic Priest
In 1980 Pope John Paul II granted an exception to the rule of mandatory celibacy for some Protestant ministers who converted to Catholicism. They could be ordained as Catholic priests even if married. In the U.S most of these priests were formally Episcopal priests or Lutheran pastors. My husband is one of them.
Most Catholics have welcomed married priests into their parishes. Of course there are some who are opposed to it. There are even some who are violently opposed.
Chapter 3 —Physics Class
When I got back to the science building students were quietly filling the small lecture hall for my eight o’clock Introductory Physics II class. I spent half the period going over homework problems before getting to something new.
“Time is money,” I said. “We save it, invest it, and budget it. Sometimes we spend too much time on frivolous things and we may all be living on borrowed time. Money is a metaphor for time. Time is also relative. This is not a metaphor. This is a fact.”
For a week we had been studying Einstein’s special theory of relativity. One of the simplest physical theories mathematically, it is one of the most difficult to understand. It says some very weird things about space and time. I clicked on my PowerPoint presentation and the equations for the Lorentz Transformation filled the large screen at the front of the room. In the next slide I directed my laser pointer at the relativistic equation for time variance.
“Let’s look at a possible consequence of the relativity of time.” Another click and we had a slide with two cartoon characters standing beside a spaceship ready for launch.
“Let me read the caption. The type’s a little small. The younger guy with the wild hair, let’s call him Albert, says to the older guy, ‘Goodbye, Dad. Have a good trip.’ The older guy says, ‘Thanks son. See you in about 10 years by my clocks.’ ”
Click. In the next slide the ship was pictured heading for a distant star, circling it, and heading back to earth. A speedometer visible through the ship’s porthole read 99% the speed of light.
“Ok, I want you to calculate the time as measured by clocks on the earth for this trip and compare it to the ten years recorded by the spaceship clock. I’ll give you five minutes.”
I heard a few groans and some mumbling. At eight o’clock in the morning I should be quietly entertaining them, not making them work. While the students got busy with their calculators I sat, took the CDF envelope from my briefcase, and fished out the photos. There was one of me and my sister, Colleen, on the beach last July; one of me, Olivia, Vicki, and her son Joey, at a playground in Fairmount Park; one of me and Vicki making hoagies at a parish picnic; lastly, all of us again sitting at a picnic table at the zoo. I had seen the parish picnic and beach photos before. My mother took the one at the beach and the school Principal took the parish picnic photo. Both were on my hard drive. I had no idea who took the playground and zoo pictures but I had seen an altered version of the zoo photo before.
I saw the first hand go up. “Doctor Donnelly?”
“Ok,” I said putting the photos back in my briefcase. “Hold on to your answer for a sec, Anna.”
I stood and clicked. The final slide showed the spaceship landed on earth and the occupant leaping out holding a tennis racket. He is greeted by a man with a long beard leaning on a cane. The caption under the old man read, “Welcome back, dad, long time no see.” About a third of the class grabbed their calculators to correct an error.
“Ok, the trip took ten years as measured by the clocks on the space ship. Now, Anna, what did you get for the time as measured by the clocks on earth?”
“I got seventy-one years. That would make the son older than the father. If the son was, say, twenty at takeoff and the father forty, the father would now be fifty and the son ninety-one. That’s weird. I know that’s what the math says but I don’t know if I should trust it.”
“Well, your answer is correct. As for trusting it, do you have a GPS navigation system in your car?”
“I don’t have a car.”
“OK. Does anyone here have a car with a GPS system?”
A few hands went up.
“Keep those hands up. OK, we have three people here, four including me, that fully believe in the theory of relativity. That little GPS receiver on the dashboard is communicating with satellites that are whizzing around the earth. Both the satellites and the receiver in your car have internal clocks and those clocks must run at the same rate for the system to accurately locate your car. Problem one.”
I clicked and the next slide was a drawing of satellites orbiting the earth.
“Because of their speed the clocks in the satellites are running slower than the clock in the receiver, just as the special theory of relativity predicts. Problem two.”
I clicked again. This slide showed the earth and two clocks; one far from the earth and the other on the earth’s surface.
“Here’s something we haven’t studied yet. Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that clocks closer to a large mass, like the earth, run slower than clocks farther away. Because of this effect the clock in the receiver on the dash runs slower than the ones in the satellites. (Click. A clock with legs is running to catch up with a faster clock. A few chuckles from my audience.) When you take both slow-downs into account the earth clocks lose 38 millionths of a second each day compared to the satellite clocks. That’s not much but if it’s not corrected the clocks get out of sync and the system would quickly lose the ability to pinpoint the location of your car. When the friendly voice tells you ‘Turn left into PACom Parking lot’ (Click. A car is shown headed the wrong way on a one-way street) you might find yourself headed East on the Schuylkill Expressway West. But the clocks are in sync (Click. The two clocks are holding hands and smiling.)
You can trust the accuracy of your GPS system because the engineers that designed it believed firmly in relativity and have adjusted the clocks so that they stay together. Time is not money. It’s not a thing. It can be different for different observers moving with respect to one another and if that violates common sense, then what?”
Anna smiled. “Chuck common sense.”
“Right. At least with our notions of time. Einstein said he had to abandon common sense to get anywhere with relativity theory. But…”
I paused and clicked on my last slide. It was a group photograph of physicists at a conference early in the last century. Einstein was sitting dressed in a suit and tie. I aimed my laser pointer at his shoes and his bare ankles. He had forgotten to wear socks.
“ But, you may not want to go as far as Einstein did.” I raised my voice above the laughter.
“I told you we were going to have fun this semester. Wait till we get to Quantum Mechanics.”
No need for a bell. The clatter of forty physics, chemistry, and math majors packing up to leave signaled the end of class and raising my voice even further I said, “I’ll see about half of you in lab at two o’clock. Lab reports are due. Save a tree. Drop a digital copy of it in my web site’s mailbox. Will somebody please wake up Mr. Ortaldo in the back row?”
I let Ortaldo sleep. He loads trucks all night at the UPS depot. Besides he got ‘A’s on the first two tests. I should encourage more sleeping.
Chapter 4— The “Pig”
After class I stopped for coffee in the new Student Center. Unofficially it’s the “Pig”. The students named it for the huge painting of a pig inside the main entrance. We’re waiting for a rich alumnus to come up with a million or two to officially name it. I sat in one of the lounge chairs in front of windows overlooking the Quad and sipped my coffee. Not bad. Imagine Starbucks with a dash of cardboard. The building forms one side of a square surrounding a large grassy area. Some students were tossing a Frisbee around; others were tying red and white balloons to the roof of a kiosk over a sign that read “Say No too a Tuition Hike”. A future English teacher had used a red marker to cross out the second o in too. A classroom building, the library, and the science building, my digs, complete the square enclosing the open space. This is my fifth year at PaCom. When I interviewed for the opening in the physics department the Dean said,
“I see from your resume you are a former Catholic priest.”
“I still am.”
“But you’re married.”
I gave her an expanded version of Connie’s card. I think it helped boost my diversity quotient; made me a member of an underrepresented minority. How many public universities had a priest in the physics department let alone one with a pregnant wife? Of course the PhD from MIT and my publication record helped.
I capped the half cup of cooling coffee and headed back across the Quad to my office.
“Yo! A little help?”
A wayward Frisbee floated over my shoulder from behind. I stepped after it, snagged it with my right hand, pivoted, and tossed it back in one motion. Smooth. My downfield receiver gave me a thumbs-up thank you.
Chapter 5— Tom’s Call
Back in my office I put the cup of coffee in the small microwave on the windowsill, woke up my computer, and googled “ Code of Canon Law”. I came up with the Vatican web site and scrolled down to the section titled “The Obligations and Rights of Clerics”. Canon 277 concerned celibacy and the second paragraph read: “Clerics are to behave with due prudence towards persons whose company can endanger their obligation to observe continence or give rise to scandal among the faithful.”
Observe continence—they weren’t talking about bladder control— is a fancy way of saying, “stay away from women.” Stay away from half the human race. Stay away from Vicki.
I retrieved my coffee from the beeping microwave and tried to mark lab reports. “Graph axes reversed,” I wrote with a red pencil. On another, “Your conclusions are not supported by your data.” And, over and over, “Slope of line is inverse of correct slope. Please correct and resubmit.” The same mistakes appeared again and again. My colleague, Joe Amanti, wants to streamline the grading process. He claims that about ten stickers can cover the most common errors with the addition of a smiley face for “good job” and a frowning face for “Have you considered an alternative career?” Could save a lot of time.
My creative musings were interrupted by the first few notes of Take Five on my cell phone. Before going into the seminary Monsignor Tom Lacey was an Assistant DA in Philadelphia and was now legal counsel to Robert K. Reilly, Archbishop of Philadelphia. He’s also a canon lawyer, an expert on Church law. Commit a crime in Philadelphia and Tom can tell you both the maximum jail time if convicted and how long you can expect to spend in purgatory. At six-six “slam-dunk Lacey” is still a force on a basketball court.
“Tom. What’s up?”
“Get anything from corporate headquarters lately?”
“Just this morning. Not exactly what I expected.”
“I’ll bet. The Archbishop got a copy yesterday. I read the letter.”
“If that’s a response to my request for an exception to remarry it’s a peculiar way of telling me. They ignored the petition and then threw those silly charges at me. It seems so petty. A two hundred word letter to the editor? A few pictures of me with two women and some children? I mean I’m not a theologian denying the divinity of Christ or questioning the infallibility of the pope. What do you make of it, Tom?”
“My guess?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t like it.”
“Try me.”
“They did not ignore your petition. This is their way of saying no.”
“Then why don’t they just come out and say that?”
“Could be a number of reasons: bad publicity, a reluctance to air the question of priestly celibacy in public, fear of being portrayed as ogres for denying a mother to a four-year-old, fear of upsetting the Pope's invitation to Anglican priests and bishops to convert. No, you’re not a rogue theologian but I think your petition scared them.”
“How do the charges fit into that hypothesis?” I asked.
“If they can persuade you to voluntarily leave the priesthood by charging you with breaking the rules and generally harassing you then they would not need to deal with your petition directly.”
“Encourage me to quit before being fired. Knuckle under.”
“Exactly.”
“Ecclesiastical blackmail,” I added.
“What do you expect? You’re dealing with the Inquisition. Fight back. You could apply some leverage of your own.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, who interviewed you and Connie on that piece Sixty Minutes did on married Catholic priests?”
“Leslie Stahl.”
“Maybe the CDF would be interested to know that she is thinking about a follow-up, something like ‘Married Catholic Priests Five Years Later: How Do They Fare?”
“Tom Lacey, you have a very devious mind.”
“I didn’t get to be a successful prosecutor by being a pussy cat, Frank. Think it over. In the meantime Reilly wants to see you.”
“Damn.”
“That’s what Reilly said. Mary Cleary, his secretary, said that when he opened the letter he had five words for it. He said ‘Damn’. A little later he said ‘Damn’ again. For a finale he said ‘Damn, Damn, Damn.’ ”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said.
“He’s mad at them.”
“Or, he’s mad at me. I’ve never been sure whether he likes me or not.”
“He never had to deal with a married priest before, Frank. Bishops like to move us around like pawns on a chessboard every few years. You’re not portable. You have a job and income independent of the Church, a mortgage, a daughter and a—oh—let us say—different perspective on the priesthood. He’s feeling his way. At least he moved you to Saint Elizabeth’s from that parish in the boonies forty miles from your home.”
“He wasn’t too happy when I asked him about the possibility of remarrying, though. I argued that I didn’t make the usual promise of celibacy at my ordination since I was already married. It didn’t impress him.”
“Well, it impresses me. How could you make a promise never to marry if you were already married?”
“He read me the rules. Said I was aware when I was ordained that if anything happened to Connie I could not remarry. I was now bound by the same rule of celibacy as any other priest, etcetera, etcetera. The priesthood or marriage. Rome’s way or the highway.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tom said. “But that was before Olivia had a little talk with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“The picnic at the seminary last month. I was standing next to him and you had your back turned and were talking to Tim Boyle. Reilly bent down and said the usual adult-to-child things—‘You must be Olivia—where did you get those pretty sandals? — How old are you?’ and so on. Olivia said ‘I’m four but I’ll be five soon.’ Then Reilly said something like, ‘I’ll bet you’ll get a lot of nice presents for your birthday.’ He wasn’t prepared for her answer.”
“Geez, I hope she didn’t ask him for a present.”
“In a way she did. She said, ‘I don’t want a lot of presents, just one.’ And, Reilly said, ‘Well, if you close your eyes and wish real hard maybe you’ll get your wish.’ So, Olivia closed her eyes tight, straightened her arms by her side, closed her fists, and said, ‘I wish, I wish, I wish that Aunt Vicki will be my new mommy.’ Then she opened her eyes and said, ‘That will be the bestest present of all cause my real mommy went to heaven.’ ”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t say anything. I think he was a little choked up but Olivia quickly made him smile. She said she didn’t have a pop-pop either and her friend Joey did. Would he be her pop-pop? He knelt down and said he would be happy to be her pop-pop and she gave him a big hug.”
“I missed all of that. No wonder she’s been asking me when we can go see pop-pop again. I thought it was just her imagination, like the fairies under her bed.”
“I guess I can tell you this, too. At least Reilly didn’t tell me not to. Two weeks after the picnic he asked me to do some research, see what I could find out about married priests whose wives had died.”
“And?”
“So far I haven’t been able to find any; like you that is, thirty eight with a young child. Most of them are older men. If they had children, they were grown when the wife died. I can’t find any with children young enough to need a mother. Your case is unique.”
“Unique, but apparently subject to the same rules,” I said.
“Just don’t give up hope.”
“When does he want to see me?”
“Saturday at nine-thirty?”
“OK. I’m good with that.”
“Now, a wardrobe tip. Wear your collar and suit. No college professor grunge. Regular shoes too; not the black Reeboks you had on the last time. He likes uniforms—naval officer blue or clerical black.”
“He’ll be able to see his face in my shiny shoes.”
“That’s the spirit, Frank”
“OK. I’ll see you then on…”
“Don’t hang up yet, Frank. A question. Do you still get those peculiar emails, the ones with the ‘a priest should be a good priest’ line?”
“Nothing for about a month.”
Around the time I was ordained I had received some anonymous emails suggesting that I should not be a priest—I guess because I had a daughter and a wife. They eventually stopped but last month I had received another. This one came with an attached jpeg that scared me. The picture was of me, Olivia, Vicki Meyers and her son Joey. It was the picnic at the Philadelphia Zoo. We had gone there for Joey’s fifth birthday. Two creepy things. Number one, I don’t know who took the photo. A college professor and a sixth grade teacher hardly rate paparazzi. Number two was the cut-and-paste job. A paper plate with five cup cakes and candles that had been on the table was replaced by a round bomb with a burning fuse, the clip-art cartoon kind that Wile E. Coyote gets from ACME mail order. The text of the email was similar to what I had received before: “PRIESTS SHOULD BE TRUELY PRIESTS.”
“I reported the last one to the police, Tom. They said they’d get back to me but so far I haven’t heard anything. Why?”
“Well, last Friday I got a call from a friend of mine, Bernie Reed, in the police department. An elderly priest at St. Gabriel’s died from a bad fall last week. It seems there was an email on his laptop that could have been a threat. Bernie called me to see if I knew of anyone who might want to harm the priest. I don’t, but when he read me the text of the email it sounded similar to ones you had received. I gave him your name. So, you may hear from him. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, I don’t mind at all. Maybe we can clear up the mystery.”
“Ok, I’ll see you Saturday.”
“Anything else, Tom?”
“Just remember the basic rules. Don’t call him ‘Your Excellency’. Stick to ‘Archbishop’ or simply ‘sir’. And don’t try to kiss his ring. After 20 years as a naval officer and chaplain he might prefer you salute but don’t do that either. Sleep well and don’t let the CDF scare you. They’ve made great progress in recent years.”
“Oh really. What’s that?”
“They no longer use torture.”
“Very funny. How well do you know me, Tom?”
“Pretty good, I think. I’ve known you since we prepared for ordination together. I’ve played basketball with you for three years in our Saturday morning men’s league. I know you’re not a quitter.”
“And I don’t scare easily. See you Saturday.”
Chapter 6— Olivia’s Tea Party
After I hung up I vowed not to even look at the envelope from the CDF until Saturday. I marked lab reports for about an hour and then went to the lab to check out the equipment for my two o’clock class. Two of the six groups would use the the Millikan Oil Drop apparatus to measure the charge on electrons, two would use spectrometers to study the spectra of hydrogen and helium gases, and two would study cosmic rays. The oil drop apparatus checked out OK and was ready to go. I put a crown glass prism and hydrogen and helium discharge tubes on each of the tables with the spectrometers. I opened a storage cabinet and removed the small aquariums we use for the cosmic ray experiments and put them on the two empty tables. Beside each I placed a felt-covered board, a small bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a digital camera, a light source, and an electromagnet. I measured the length and width of the bottom of the aquariums and then called Charlie Hanson in the chemical supply room and ordered two eight- by twelve- inch slabs of dry ice that I would pick up later. I locked the cabinets, turned off the lights, and headed for the “Pig”.
At the salad bar I filled a Styrofoam container to take to Olivia’s “tea party”: quinoa with raw carrot, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, celery stick, and a generous scoop of hummus. Set a good example. At my first tea party I got a decidedly cool reception from the Organic Only/Whole Foods crowd when I showed up with a burger and fries. You would think I brought a jug of Thunderbird to an AA meeting. I tossed a bag of chips—baked not fried—onto my tray, paid, and put a plastic knife and fork and a couple of napkins in the pocket of my corduroy sport coat.
Olivia had set out napkins and paper cups on a small table. Her friends Jason and Michelle sat with us.
“What’s that?”
“Pickle slices.”
“Can I have one?”
“Eew! It’s Sour.”
Mrs. “B”, one of the teachers, was circulating with a plastic pitcher.
“Would you like some more lemonade, Doctor Donnelly?”
“I didn’t know your daddy was a doctor.”
“He’s not a real doctor. He doesn’t help anybody. He’s a heretical fizz-sist.”
“She means theoretical physicist, Jason,” I said and wondered if the CDF would prefer my description or Olivia’s.
“Do you stick people with needles?”
“Never.”
“He just scribbles on paper. Don’t you daddy?”
“Sometimes, sweetheart.”
“My daddy caught a shark.”
“They can eat you up.”
“My daddy killed it before it could eat him. He hit it on the head.”
“I petted a shark at the Please Touch Museum.”
We sang the clean up song and marched our paper plates and cups over to the Trash Monster and tossed them into his open mouth. We could use a Trash Monster in the faculty dining room.
On the way back from Munchkin House I stopped in the Newman Center which housed the Catholic campus ministry and went in the chapel. Tim Boyle is the chaplain. Occasionally I help him out and say Mass on Catholic holy days. I could use a little help myself and this was a good place to ask for it.
John Newman was a nineteenth century Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism and eventually was elevated to Cardinal. I felt close to him. I had no desire to be a cardinal but I did wish to remain a priest.
I knelt at the altar and prayed. I asked God to bless my mother, Olivia, Joey and Vicki. I prayed for Connie. May her soul and all the souls of the faithful departed, through your mercy, rest in peace. I thanked God for bringing me Vicki in the midst of my sorrow. If it be your will Lord, show me the way.
On the way out of the chapel I nodded to a student sitting in the back and stopped in the small library off the chapel to do some work. The student followed me in.
“Dr. Donnelly?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. What can I do for you?”
“I’m in Dr. Amanti’s physics class and we’re having our mid-term tomorrow.”
“Dr. Amanti gives challenging tests,” I said. “Were you soliciting divine help?”
He laughed. “Something like that. I need it. I’m confused about kinetic energy, potential energy, work; all that stuff. I don’t think I really know what energy actually is.”
“I’ll tell you a little secret. Neither do physicists, but we know what it can do, and how to calculate it and keep track of it. What’s your name?”
“Kevin McCoy.”
“Sit down Kevin. Let’s see if we can get you ready for whatever Dr Amanti throws at you tomorrow.”
I took meeting up with Kevin just when he needed help as a sign that God was listening to people in that chapel. I hoped he listened to me.
Chapter 7— Martha’s Visit
On the way back from the Newman Center I picked up the Styrofoam cooler with the dry ice and put it in the lab. Martha Greenberg was waiting for me in my office.
“This is the agenda for the next Faculty Senate meeting,” she said plopping a folder onto my desk and her ample self into the chair in front of my desk.
“I hope you’re as opposed to this plan to grant credit for ‘life experiences’ as I am. Next thing you know we’ll be giving credit for breathing. The other item up for debate is the proposal to close Munchkin House. Do you know what private day care could run us?”
Martha was the resident atheist in the psychology department and despite our theological differences we were good friends. She was one of the few persons with whom I could seriously discuss religion. Like many atheists she was more knowledgeable about the faith than most believers. “Gotta know your opponents, Frank.”
After Connie died Martha was determined to fix me up with one of her graduate students, despite my collar.
“You can’t be in mourning forever. It’s unnatural for a handsome red-headed Irishman your age to be alone. Surely it can’t be against their silly rules to share a pizza or a movie. Celibacy is a commitment not to marry. It says nothing about being a little friendly.”
Rachel Townsend, a Clinical Psych grad student, was one of her projects that backfired. We did see a few movies and share pizzas but Rachel’s idea of ‘friendship’ differed from mine. It was a disaster.
“I like your taste in sweaters,” Martha said eying the windowsill behind me.
“Pink becomes you.”
“It’s Vicki’s. She forgot it.”
“Toss it to me. I can’t stand seeing it rolled up in a ball like that. By the way, how are things going with you two? Any word yet from the puppet masters in Rome?” she said nodding at the manila envelope with the Vatican City postage stamps on my desk.
“Nothing yet. It takes a while. We’re hoping for the best.”
“Uh huh. Why not a ‘fait accompli’ while they drag their feet? Get married and let them react.”
“I know how they’d react. I’d be excommunicated.”
“Black balled at the country club.”
“So to speak.”
“Join another club.”
“I like the one I’m in. I like the membership. I like the course I play on even with all its water hazards and sand traps. I just don’t like the club’s rules and regulations committee. Besides, Vicki doesn’t want us to do it that way. She doesn’t want to feel I had to trade the priesthood for her. I might eventually have to but I want to exhaust all other possibilities first.”
Martha stood up and gave me back the sweater neatly folded. “cashmere mist,” she said.
“What?”
“The perfume on the sweater. It’s Donna Karan: Cashmere Mist. Keep plugging, Frank, and you’ll eventually score a birdie.”
“I need a hole-in-one—left handed on a par five.”
“Gotta go. I have a two o’clock seminar on Freud.”
Chapter 8— Cosmic Rays
Ten minutes before the students arrived for lab I took the slabs of dry ice from the cooler and placed them in two shallow trays to keep them from sliding around. I saturated the felt covered boards with isopropyl alcohol and put the boards on the open tops of the tanks and sat each of the aquariums on a dry ice slab. Lastly, I positioned the light sources to direct bright beams through the aquariums. What I had were two cheap, but effective, diffusion cloud chambers.
The earth is constantly bombarded with subatomic particles from space; mainly protons which bump into air molecules and produce showers of other particles— electrons, pi-mesons, mu-mesons—a veritable zoo of particles. Collectively they are known as cosmic rays. The particles themselves can’t be seen but when they pass through cooled alcohol vapor they leave trails along their paths, similar to the vapor trails left by jet airplanes in the atmosphere. Some tracks are straight. Some are jagged. Some look like the letters V or Y. When a magnetic field is brought close to the chambers the tracks formed by electrically charged particles curve.
By the time the students arrived the dry ice had cooled the alcohol vapor so that tracks were starting to form and the students got busy photographing them with the digital cameras. Despite hearing about subatomic particles since elementary school this was probably the first time they had ever seen direct evidence of their existence and they were fascinated. Much of what we know about the composition of matter has been obtained by the study of tracks in cloud chambers and bubble chambers. When I see the tracks I experience something like what a paleontologist must feel when looking at fossilized dinosaur tracks in an ancient river bed. The creatures that passed tens of millions of years ago are long gone but the evidence of their passage remains and estimates of their height, weight, the fact that they traveled in groups, and even that an individual animal might have walked with a limp can be inferred from their frozen-in-time footprints. The tracks in a cloud chamber represent evidence of “creatures” that passed only a fraction of a second before and we can make inferences about their energies, masses, and electric charges.
The cosmic rays were putting on quite a show, especially when I went near the cloud chambers. That was the problem.
“Dr. Donnelly, you must have a magic touch. Whenever you come near our cloud chamber we get more tracks. Look at all those suckers.”
Sudden bursts of cosmic rays are not unusual. They are random events. What was unusual was that the bursts always seemed to coincide with my presence. That was not random. I dragged Joe Amanti out of his office.
“I think you’re hot, buddy. Do you have any of those radioactive poker chips in your pockets?”
“Nothing,” I said, after a completely unnecessary check. Joe was referring to plastic disks that contain small radioactive sources that we use for experiments with radioactive shielding. They’re kept in a lead safe. I don’t carry them around in my pockets.
“Have any medical tests, nuclear stress test, or anything like that where a radioactive tracer may still be in your system?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then they’re right. You have the magic touch; a cosmic green thumb.”
“Thanks for the technical opinion.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll stop in Wednesday,” he said “when you have the other section of this lab and we’ll investigate this more closely. Wear the same jeans, flannel shirt, and hiking boots you have on now. We’ll treat it like a junior high science project. Warn your students. I may have to strip you naked.”
That left all day Tuesday for Joe to ride me. Was I sure I was a priest and not a witch doctor? Did I ever try rain dancing? He had a ball. Tuesday afternoon I put thoughts of cosmic rays, the CDF, anonymous emails, and a nasty differential equation I was having trouble solving behind me and left early to pick up Olivia. We were invited to a birthday party.
Chapter 9— Bounce Town
Late afternoon birthday parties are fine with me. The parents of the celebrant feel obliged to feed the adults and it saves me the trouble of fixing dinner. The pizza at Bounce Town is passable but for kids’ parties I prefer Chuck-E-Cheese’s. They have a salad bar. Vicki and I were sitting on a bench in a corner while Olivia and Joey oscillated between the giant air-filled slide and the Moon Bounce. The guest of honor was their five-year- old friend, Mark. Mark looked like he wanted to skip the festivities and get to his presents which filled a big plastic tub near the door, half of them wrapped with the free paper from Toys“R”Us. I hoped his mother had an SUV or a truck.
“What did we get him?” I said.
“A Power Ranger helmet. Looks like a motorcycle helmet but more sinister. When you wear it and talk it changes your voice so that you sound like Darth Vader. And a sword that flashes and makes all kind of noise. I taped a ten-pack of batteries to the box.”
“I hope Mark’s parents have a high decibel tolerance.”
“They asked for it. I called Betty last week and that was one of the suggestions.”
“Here’s my share,” I said.
“That’s too much.”
“No it’s not. You had gas and the trouble. Take it. How was your day?”
“Easy. My students were taking the diocesan achievement tests all day. I got some writing done. And, good news, a print publisher is interested in one of the mysteries I self-published on the internet; the one about the crime-solving gerbil.”
“Hey that’s great! I’m in love with a famous author. What are you working on now?”
“I call it The Purloined Parrot. It’s about a pet parrot that’s kidnapped by some bullies; a Norwegian Blue.”
“A what?”
“Monty Python? The dead parrot skit?”
“Parrots are tropical birds. They don’t live in Norway.”
“They did. Sixty million years ago. They found a fossil. Nicknamed it ‘Norwegian Blue’.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. I’m taking your advice and working some science into my stories. I want them to be educational as well as entertaining.”
I had read one of her stories about a hamster and suggested that she put in some “sciency” details about the animal; diet, native environment, mating habits, etcetera. “Mating habits, Frank? How hamsters do it?”
“So what’s the story about with the parrot?”
“A kidnapped parrot. One that knows how to use a cell phone. You see Priscilla…”
“Your sixth grade sleuth character?”
“Right. Priscilla trained her parrot to answer her cell phone. She would put the cell phone in his cage and when it would ring he could peck a key to answer and would say, ‘She’s not here. Awk. I’m her pet parrot. Awk. Can I help you?’ Her friends would call just to hear the parrot. Anyhow, when he was parrotnapped his abductors made the mistake of leaving him alone with a cell phone and he randomly speed-dial-pecked a bunch of numbers, always repeating his message. Well one of the persons he reached recognized his voice and…”
“Stop. This is ridiculous. Who would believe this?”
“My readers. Preteens love mysteries like this. They loved fairy tales when they were younger but they didn’t believe—she flicked air quotes above her head— ‘that pumpkins can turn into carriages or frogs into princes’. Did you ever read Dracula?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Did you like it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe in vampires?”
“I get the point. Speaking of stories, did you get a chance to look over what I wrote about our first meeting?”
“I’m working on it, Frank. It needs a little tweaking.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, for one thing, it sounds like the beginning of a bad private eye novel. Pink toenails peeking out of my sandals? A strap across my breasts? The gentle touch of my fingers in a handshake that gave you goose bumps?”
“That’s just a little poetic license. Make it interesting.”
“Why stop there?” she said as she reached into her bag and pulled out some papers. “I hope I brought it. Oh good, here it is. I think this is more what you mean. Ready?”
“Shoot.”
“The first indicators of a change for the better that crummy afternoon were the wet pink toenails peeking out of a sandal in the half opened door of my office. She didn’t wait for an invitation to come in. ‘Vicki Meyers,’ she said as she held out her hand. The gentle touch of her fingers gave me goose bumps. ‘I need your help,’ she said as she sat and lit a cigarette. ‘Someone put a bullet between my husband’s eyes last night and the Philly coppers are trying to pin it on me. I could use a drink. You got any scotch in this dump you call an office?’ ”
Vicki squealed and clutched the paper to her breast dramatically as I reached for it.
“Well, I declare, Reverend Doctor, Herr Professor Francis X. Donnelly, I do believe you’re trying to take advantage of li’l ol me. A man of the cloth? And in front of all these in-cent li’l chilrun.”
“You almost had me for a minute,” I said laughing. “I thought you were serious.”
“Just tone it down a bit. We’re not Bogey and Bacall,” she said. “Remember we met on the church steps.”
“And I did get goose bumps.”
“That’s sweet, Frank.”
“It’s true.”
“You deserve a quick kiss. See anybody from the CIA around here?”
“It’s the CDF.”
“Whatever.”
As if to protest that show of public affection there was a scream from the Moon Bounce as two heads tried to occupy the same space at the same time. Across the room two boys on the slide were whacking each other.
“Meltdown time, Frank. Party’s over. Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 10— Frank Meets Vicki
That night after I put Olivia to bed I opened MS Word and clicked on the document titled “We Meet”, the one Vicki said needed tweaking. The writing business started with an innocent remark I made a few months ago. I implied, or maybe I came right out and said it, that writing stories about hamsters and turtles was a lot easier than writing scientific papers. Big mistake.
“Oh, you think so Donnelly? Show me something you wrote,” she had said.
I dug out an article I had written for the American Journal of Physics. She read a paragraph or two.
“Listen to this. You wrote, ‘When the function was integrated from zero to infinity the unexpected non-zero result of two pi was obtained’. The whole article is like that. All passive voice.”
“That’s common for scientific papers,” I said.
“Well I’d hardly call that ‘writing’. You did this thing, this integration, right?”
“Yes, an integration is a mathematical…”
“I know what it is. I had calculus in high school. Why not write, ‘I integrated the function from zero to infinity and, big surprise, instead of coming out zero it was two pi?’ Sounds better, doesn’t it? I mean you wouldn’t write, ‘The supermarket receipt was checked and the unexpected non-zero charge of five dollars for a box of cheerios was discovered.’ Don’t these journals have any editors?”
That led to our contest. I try to write things like she would, as a novelist that is. She tries to put information in her juvenile fiction that will teach her readers some science. So I worked on my rewrite and “tweaked”. The pink toenails and the strap across her breast were out. The goose bumps stayed. Bogey and Bacall were out. Frank and Vicki were in. The emails stayed. Vicki called them our love letters. Last Spring, shortly after I was assigned to St. Elizabeth’s, I had mentioned at Mass one Sunday that I would like to get involved with some activities in the parish school. A few days later I received an email.
>Hello Father Donnelly
>Next week is “Science Fun Week” in the parish school. The children will be doing projects and activities related to science. My sixth grade class has chosen the study of light as their project. We have limited equipment and I was wondering if it would be possible to borrow a laser or two and some lenses for about a week.
Victoria Myers < vmeyers@stElizabeth.edu>
I replied:
> Dear Ms. Meyers
>I’m sure PaCom can spare a few lasers and lenses for a week. I’ll pack a box with the lasers, lenses, and some other stuff you’ll need and bring them with me Sunday. I’m saying the 9:00 AM Mass. Can you meet me afterward?
F. Donnelly <fdonnelly@PacomU.edu>
And she replied:
>Dear Fr. Donnelly,
>That’s great! I really appreciate this and I’m sure my students will too. I’ll see you after Mass. I’ll stand near the statue of Our Lady on the lawn to the side of the church. I’ll be there with my little boy. Look forward to meeting you Sunday :)
Victoria Myers <vmeyers@stElizabeth.edu>
On Sunday Olivia and I stood on the Church steps after Mass.
”My, my, now aren’t you a pretty little girl?” the woman said.
“Yes, I am. My daddy said so.”
Regrettably I did not know her nephew, Father Martin in Abington, or her cousin, a nun at St. Barnabas in West Philadelphia.
“Being so new I’m afraid that I know very few people in this parish let alone the diocese. Maybe you can help me out, Mrs. Cahill. I’m supposed to meet Miss Meyers, the sixth grade teacher, to help her with a science lesson. Do you know if she is the woman standing with those children over by the grotto?”
“Oh, good heavens no Father. Mrs. Meyers would fit three times over in that woman. But there she is heading this way with her son. Her husband was killed in Iraq a couple years ago; one of those road bombs, I think. Poor little thing. Her students love her. Put a school uniform on her and she could pass for one of the eighth-graders. I’ll let you get on with your meeting.”
It had been almost four years since Connie was killed and I still had the irrational hope that every petite blond I saw at a distance would miraculously turn out to be her.
“Father Donnelly, I’m Vicki Meyers. It’s so nice to meet you. I feel I already know you from our emails,” she said offering her hand.
There was a strong resemblance but she was a few inches shorter than Connie and her blond hair a few shades darker but the eyes were the same deep blue and the wire-rimmed glasses gave her the same studious look.
“Yes, I feel the same. It’s nice to meet you too,” I said taking the outstretched hand bent at the wrist. Her touch gave me goose bumps. “This is, Olivia.”
She knelt and said, “Well hello Olivia. And, how old are you?”
“Almost five years old,” Olivia said while holding up five fingers. “When will I be five, daddy?”
“Not for quite a while, honey.”
“Well then you’re almost the same age as Joey. He’s almost five too. Joey, say hello to Olivia and to Father Frank.”