The Only English Mass

It happened during the 9 a.m. Mass, is my understanding. The 9 a.m. is the only English Mass left. Not many people in the pews. It’s women, it’s children, it’s a few guys and some the women told to be here or else. The people keep coats on inside because of the draft. Twenty years that draft has been whacking decent people. It’s snowing because it’s always snowing. Piles of the stuff in the streets. It comes down from the sky like it could not care less who suffers. But there they are early on a Sunday morning, these good people desperate enough to drag their asses to Saint Anne’s, people who deserve no trouble, God bless them, the poor sinners.

Saint Anne’s has no volunteers for the English Mass, I hear. No ushers. No altar boys. Not even a choir. It’s silence and incense. The big crucifix still hangs above the altar and there are some pots of artificial poinsettias but that sense of something missing remains. On their way down to communion, in a wicker basket, people leave envelopes, or more likely a few bills, or some cold coins. Who cares to fix that? Supposedly the other Mass is doing better in terms of bringing in the bacon. There’s no procession to open for English though. When the priest is ready, he just rings a little bell and then walks out from the curtain with the Bible above his head, the lone float in his sad parade.

That morning it’s Father Hank, who is not the priest you want in any language. This guy, he’s a drooler. He’s downcast and mumbles. He’s a meek feeble shuffler. He beats his meat in a holy drawer. Everyone sees it. But this is who they send to lead Saint Anne’s now. What the readings are, what Father Hank mumbles for a homily—that I can’t say, because it’s not long after the priest gets to the pulpit that this psycho wanders inside the church.

Now when I say psycho what I mean is an absolute fucking lunatic. This man, and from my understanding he’s a large man, he comes inside looking like a leper: he’s in rags, he’s got open sores all over him, he’s oozing and shouting nonsense and he stumbles down the aisle, aiming to bump and grind. There’s unreliable reports about his race. There’s no need to go into it because it’s not relevant. I have my doubts about the many who say Italian and the important thing is that in my day they’d take a guy like him no matter what his race and strap him to a gurney and leave him in a padded room, but now they let him party it up in Saint Anne’s.

The parishioners, these good poor people, they can’t stop the maniac. Nor should they have to! They’re here to worship, not to half nelson a psycho. They’re not oblivious, but they’re not trying to be heroes either, and I don’t blame them. So they sit there, understandably, while this sick puppy bleeds and screams.

This is Saint Anne’s, mind you. The church on the hill above the cemetery, the most beautiful church in this entire forsaken little fuck of a town. That gold dome! My grandparents’ church, my parents’ church. Ninety-four years ago, where I was baptized. I remember my baptism. Some people claim to remember their birth, which I do not, but I remember my baptism, which was not long after my birth and I would argue more significant given the Latin, which as a baby I was able to understand though I’ve since forgotten how to reproduce it word for word. My father stretched me above the copper bowl. The gift of the water that Father Pat poured. My first communion, oh I remember my initial taste. My wedding, to my dear Leila, rest her perfect soul. My Leila, her eyes, us married in the bells of my church back then, when the organ player ruled and everyone was rich and alive and I used to sit there in the stained glass staring at the angels painted on the walls and I’d pray that one day I too got to be an angel: up there, naked, with wings! That’s my church, Saint Anne’s. Not the place where some nutjob has a meltdown in the middle of the only English Mass.

Now Father Hank, as a priest, he wears robes. That’s all he wears: robes. Maybe he wears some other stuff, but, mostly, it’s robes. Okay: chasuble. What’s under there? I don’t want to know! He volunteered, and studied, and completed those studies, and for many decades has served as a representative for God, so to speak, in robes. Now, sure, Father Hank is elderly, and he has never been the brightest, but he’s still a priest, is he not? If the robe fits, and you put the robe on, then you have the responsibility of the robe, correct? Yet Father Hank stands there, at the pulpit, in these same robes, watching this psycho like it’s just another day at the office. Maybe in his office it is, I don’t know, but is that behavior consistent with the charge of the robe?

Meanwhile, the psycho makes it near the altar and has a lucid moment. It hits him, where he is. The house of God. He drops to his knees and puts his arms up and starts crying. He shouts, in English: “Please, God, help me.” Nothing happens, as it tends to happen. So then he shouts: “Or, if you can’t help me, then the Devil, please, you help me!” We’re still in the territory of nothing happening. As we often are. So he waits a bit and then goes: “Please, Father, someone, anyone, help!” And while he’s crying out, sly Father Hank creeps backwards to the curtain where he disappears, takes out his phone, and calls the cops. Oh yeah, he waits the whole thing out in the rectory. By the time the cops get there, everyone’s gone except the crazy guy, who’s still kneeling there crying.

Supposedly Father Hank has asked for forgiveness. Supposedly he was scared. Not for himself, but for the parishioners. He’s older, he’s unsteady on his feet, so he didn’t feel like he could protect them. Supposedly. He said he didn’t know what else to do, that in the moment he wanted to pray for this guy, that of course he wanted to help him, to do something, but he also wanted to be practical.

Practical?

You’re a fucking priest!

You shouldn’t even know how to use a phone, and your robes should have no pockets!

If my legs were functional, I would’ve walked straight down the aisle, right past the psycho, and I would’ve grabbed Father Hank by his robes, and I would’ve yelled right into his face: How do you not know how to help this man? How do you not know?