Chapter 11

    Since my last chapter, the fall term has well begun, and I have had a kind note from Father Dulles, thanking me for informing him about the use I hope to make of his metaphysics text. In fact the text is already in full employ, and within a week, the class has doubled, from one to two students. My first pupil is in grade ten, the second in grade eight. With the second one joining us, as a result of her mother's growing discontent with the literature programme offered by the provincial department of education, I was reminded keenly of my first and last full metaphysics class, of some thirty students, grade eight thirteen-year-olds, back in the late winter and early spring of 1964, in the Catholic school in Terrace, B.C., in the diocese of Prince George. Teaching later in Nelson, where the school stopped at grade seven, I had taught philosophy not actually as a separate subject, but only as an adjunct to grammar. The extra element added to the normal list of subjects here was in fact the theology of Catholic meditation. This was the result of a different kind of inspiration, and let to startingly more significant results, although the effects of the Terrace experiment were in themselves remarkable and were to send me to the Kootenays with an insight and determination to look for even greater results in the souls of the young.
    Indeed, God was no liar, and I found the results, and I would be the most ungrateful man who ever put words to paper if I did not acknowledge that the Church that I came to was, increasingly, step by step, year by year and decade by decade, exposed as a nightmare, and I cannot fulfill my obligations to the grace and will of God without some reference to this disturbing fact. Nor, indeed, is the nightmare done with. For a few years, before he was promoted to archbishop, we had a fairly decent bishop, a man and priest with some sensibility to Rome, and a modicum of respect for the norms of the Faith. But on either side of his reign, our chief shepherds have been far too busy fulfilling Saint Augustine's prophetic warnings - found yearly in the September breviary - against leaders who have no mind for the true wisdom of Christ and the genuine care of their flocks. As a fictionalist, I could happily ignore their follies, and invent a good bishop of my own, with the help of the writings of the saints and examples from other dioceses, but as an autobiographer - a vocation laid upon me by the Lord about the same time as I began the first draught of my first novel - I have to deal with the sad truth. Literature, as we call it, is one thing, with its own Muse, and its own light; history is another thing. To have the whole truth, men must read both. We have in our lives that which was glorious, that which could have been glorious, that which was horrific. Christ had both a John and a Judas, a Peter and a Pilate. In the diocese of Nelson I have found the best of souls - and therefore much bettered my own spirit - and some of the worst. From the time I have been able to create something of what I think is, by the grace of God, as exalting a fiction as can be come upon; from the second I have notes that must, for the record, be included in a grimmer chronicling. The evil that I have encountered could also be used in fiction of course, one way or another, but the Muse has not been content with this employment only, and has always urged me to make mental notes as well for a strict history.
    Does it signify anything that I have now changed writing rooms? The long warm summer is over - today is the feast of the Guardian Angels - and a damp, cool, weather system has moved in for at least a few days, although the Kootenays inevitably knows a lovely Indian summer. I no longer gaze at the arm of the lake and the town below, but the eastern half of our back yard. I see the roof of the kitchen, some lawn, two venerable deciduous trees, a lilac and a cherry, and the concrete wall of the garden shed, affectionately know to as as "the bunker". The yard has such a slope up to the lane that these walls used to double as the foundation of a garage floor. Years ago I took out that structure - the side walls of the garage had previously collapsed - and also an adjoining trailer pad, and reclaimed the ground for a garden. Vegetables were the result for almost two decades, but now the earth has been reassigned again and herbs rule the day. Beautiful things, herbs, and there seems to be a growing culture of people returning them to their rightful place in medicine.
    Ah. There is indeed a significance to this new view. In my fourth year of enrolling in university, in my second year of law school, I quickly unrolled and embarked upon my own study programme, leaving legal questions entirely for the social sciences, initially, searching for the causes of mental health, in society as well as individuals. I was living in a fraternity house, although not as a member, and the view from my desk in this old building was also from the second floor, as here, and of a garden, although on the west side of the house, rough and not much attended, but still a garden, a patch of green: some lawn and a few shrubs. I was most content: I had the green of Nature without, the vernal, poetic, spiritual spring of new, good, self-chosen somewhat classical texts within. That autumn, of 1956, is a long time ago now, but the circumstances of this room bring it back infallibly. Memory, if we look after her, refreshed herself again and again from analogous occasions, especially for those possessing, whether they are terminologically conscious of it or not, the metaphysical turn of mind.
 
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    My initial movement into this room was modest. I brought only my typewriter and the simplest of tables that has stood upon, over the summer, on the glassed-in porch. I had in fact wondered about leaving my dart board on the porch, perhaps finding some other useful occupation that would fill in the moments when I wait for the correcting fluid to dry on top of my typing mistakes. But I found that there were no substitutes for the little exercise of darts - they seem also to have a quite profound effect on writer's grist and contemplative recollection - and so in intervals of whiteout, or when I was waiting for a thought to clear, I reassembled my dart course right in this room. A search for a suitable piece of plywood to protect the back of the door from my wandering aim, the application of a few screws, and the poor man's archery yard is back in business.
    I've yet to rise to the little pointed rascals today, however, as the correcting fluid moments are taken over for the time being by a further use of the little white-covered brush. On Saturday, while the two ladies of the house worked mightily among rooms, closets, clothes, books, paintings, and other objects, I strove with equal concentration at the piano keyboard, looking for, and finding, some solid methods for fingering studies. It was a very long time ago that I stopped trying to use the Frederick Harris Brown Scale Book for myself or students, but only on Saturday did I take my bottle of whiteout to the fingering numbers for the treble scale, in similar motion, for the key of C major. The time for printing out my own scales, exercises, and studies had not yet arrived, but I think it is appropriate now, with my various guinea pigs, to attempt some employment of the printed scales currently available. I must admit to enjoying using the correction fluid: my history with the Brown Scale Book has been more frustration and confusing than otherwise, and I suspect there are many keyboard enthusiasts who share at least some of my discontent. By now, thanks to the typing slips, I have made alteration up to the scale of B major.
    When I take up the minors, if I do, I shall have even more work to do, for this publication, somewhat endorsed, it seems, by the Toronto Conservatory, doesn't seem to think that the natural minor scale is a useful study. Thus exits folk music, not a few hymns, and the more arithmetically sound introduction which is always essential to the peace of mind, self-possession, and autonomy of genuine beginners. I should add, to be fair and accurate, that other fingerings, particularly of the triads, solid and broken, are not at fault, and are indeed, the proof of the pudding that does not seem so well recepied on the other side.
    But now I am back to darts, in the failing moments, and having a devil of a time with double thirteen. This state of affairs has been with me since Friday night - it is now Monday afternoon, late, not too long before dinner and my usual writing time, and perhaps it is symbolic of the length of time I've put in with more important frustrations or obligations laid on by the Christian need to practise patience.
    I was mentioning the process of initiation into the horrors of the Nelson diocese, over thirty years ago. in part because of the timing of a recent gathering. It was forty years ago, at the same time as I was concentrating on the studies and prayers that would bring me into the Catholic Church, that Wilfrid Emmett Doyle, then an official in the archdiocese of Edmonton, Alberta, was made bishop of this diocese in the Kootenays, in the south-east corner of British Columbia. Doyle was made a bishop - by Pius XII, his last - while I was finally into the spiritual life by the gift of the flight of the spirit, with special notes from the Blessed Virgin Mary. Doyle had not spiritual life whatsoever, as I was six years later to so painfully find out, while I had more of it than any man would dare ask for, even though I was neither priest nor religious, and I would continue to have even more blessings dumped upon me, in spite of, or perhaps because of, the horrific conditions I was advised to endure while remaining in Nelson. The poor man did, however, have a kind of public life, and canonical responsibilities, and these were recently "celebrated" in a mass and banquet organized by the present bishop of Nelson, also from Albert, and in his own way similarly foolish, on the occasion of Doyle's fortieth anniversary of consecration.
    I think it fair to say that the only true honours that could be given out associated with Bishop Doyle's tenure were to good souls who chose to endure him, and went on serving the whole truth of Christ's Church as best they could within his canonical domain. The present bishop, had he any discernment, would have know this, and left well enough alone. But he has odd concepts of community, truth, and faith, and fancies himself as a leader of missions and retreats. The first and probably last time I was moved to engage him in a conversation he recoiled, as if slapped violently, at my use of the term mortal sin. When clergy, especially episcopal clergy, are not comfortable with this phrase, and do not use it warningly in their sermons, can there be any other reason other than they are in it?
    None of our community, of course, had anything to do with this hypocritical celebration, but as always, as we began noticing many years ago, whenever the parish or the diocese threw some questionably oriented clambake with which we could not honestly have anything to do, the Holy Spirit infallibly bestowed some real, special, concomitant grace upon ourselves. Thus it was no mere coincidence that a long week after the Doyle affair two of the foremost angels in my flock, the dear souls of genuine spiritual perfection, should be spending an entire day to establish this most comfortable and comforting room on my behalf. Poor Emmett has had his banquet, but now he is gone back to Edmonton, to where he was banished in 1990 by his successor, the fourth bishop of Nelson, Peter Mallon, and I remain, still secure in the place of my purgation, as Saint John of the Cross calls it, to whence I was called from the time Emmett was ordained. Mallon had been advised, by the most stable priest in the diocese, once a missionary in Africa, and a Dutchman, that he, Mallon, would not be the real bishop as long as Doyle was allowed to function here in any capacity.
    Poor Emmett? Perhaps Evil Emmett would be a more accurate title, but he is an old man now, and the last time I saw him a dark little gnome in a corner of a gathering of parishes come together for the sacrament of confirmation, the present bishop having brought him back to help with reducing the number of such get togethers. One of my little students was receiving the sacrament; to her horror she got Doyle rather than the present bishop, but the Holy Spirit came with His infallible light and protected her from the darkness of a pervert and protector of perverts. Such is the way of God's power in His Church, that through the sacraments the faithful are strengthened and nourished in spite of the weakness and even total sinfulness of the ministers of those sacraments.
    Nonetheless, one can still wonder at the wisdom of the committee that nominates candidates from among the nation's clergy. If Doyle was the best man for the job in 1958 the country's priests must have been, at that time, a sorry lot. Or is the committee stocked with perverts? Here and there, serious allegations against our seminaries have been made, and of late all the young priests I have come across would profit from a regular series of floggings or the spiritual equivalent. Knowledge of the classics of the spiritual life is non-existent, and mortal sin, as I have mentioned, is no longer mentioned, and I pity the imbecile who thinks these are exaggerations.
    There are, of course, some good priests, and even a few genuinely pious and learned bishops, and I think not only in my fiction. God and his power are realities, and the world and the Church cannot be left entirely without some of the real thing. But the folly is too abundant to be ignored, and nowhere can it be worse than in my own country.
    Yet, at the moment, any solution seems to be in the hands of others. The Vatican exists for the sake of discipline, for correction and purification. The layman, especially the contemplative layman, can do little more than stick to the helm of his version of Noah's ark. And this room seems so much like just that sort of sanctuary. Good memories, good books, the chance and the fortune and the grace to ruminate over both, spiced and salted and illuminated by the events of the day and the opportunity to teach the innocent and the spiritual what more could a man ask? Let the dead give false comfort to the dead. Those who know the peace, joy, and light and strength, of a true cell, a true monastery, a true spiritual community, will ultimately see their concerns addressed, no matter how dark, cold, and full of lies some of their attendant circumstances seem to be.
    By the way, I did get that double thirteen, as I was pondering my thoughts on priests who refuse to mention mortal sin. And thirteen years ago. this morning, brought up some interesting points in my journal, having to do with Jesuits and bullies, among other things.