to my religious
instruction class with my students, humming ‘
Juxta crucem! Misericordiae!
’ quite absentmindedly, I have to admit, when I perceived at my feet a most extraordinary sight.
Initially, the opinion that I formed of this spectacle was that it was but random flecks of foam perhaps dislodged from the jaws of a hastily shaved, unfortunately tardy colleague, but I was forced
to revise this – an unjustifiably hasty assumption in any case – almost immediately when I realized that what my eyes were gazing upon were nothing other than the tiniest fragments of
printed paper. But not only that – for what lay beneath me, on those polished tiles, were pieces removed from the most holy missal! My perplexity deepened. Who could have done this thing? I
asked of myself again and again, turning the fragments – some of them actually compressed until they had become hard pellets – abstractedly in my hands. It was then I looked up to see
him standing there above me – Packie Cooley. Instinctively one is alert to the mysterious energies which often pass between human beings. An intense current which can be revelatory, combining
now with a grey nimbus of cloud which seemed to form itself like a mask before his eyes, veiling his normally fresh complexion as if to say: ‘The man you are looking upon is not Packie
Cooley! For he has ceased to be that man!’
By this point I was emotionally overwrought. I cast my eyes over the tattered remnants of what had once been a beautifully hand-stitched gold-embossed religious book and cried: ‘Who could
have done this? Who?’ Then – gloriously, in a way, weakening, I became aware at that very moment of his stifled yet unmistakable sobbing, and felt his comforting hand fall upon my
shoulder, as he said: ‘Now more than ever the Church needs us, Father. There is no knowing the extent to which our enemies and the enemies of the one true established Church will go.’
Flushed as I was, in my heady emotional state, I found myself clasping his hand – idiotically, as is now only all too evident – and, as if I had been personally and single-handedly
responsible for snatching a soul in danger from the trapdoor that led to the Pit itself, cried aloud: ‘Yes, Packie! It’s so true! What you say is so, so true!’
Instead – if only I had done it! – of slapping him across the face and crying: ‘Don’t lie, you hypocrite! You did this! You did it, Cooley! You! And for one reason and
one alone! Because you’re the Devil and it’s your job!’
But, whether or not through the gathering of so many anxieties within me like so many atomic gases, it was not to be, and I feel no pride, readers, none at all as I look back upon it, that
half-hour in an early morning sacristy where we stand together, collecting ill-fitting pieces of creased and irretrievably torn tissue paper, Sellotaping and aligning them, those forlorn fragments,
as best we could into an approximation of what that sad, blasphemed publication had once been.
Many times since have I reflected that had I acted on either of those two occasions – it is with tormented soul and guilt-drenched heart I have picked up Conrad’s tales of guilt and
cowardice in the face of adversity, I assure you! – perhaps the scorch-footed march of the fork-tongued soul-taker would have been halted. But it was not to be! My eyes were as blind as those
of a bat long since in thrall to the demon grape, the pail from the well of moral courage drawn up once more, hopelessly empty, as the career of ‘Fr Packie Cooley’ proceeded apace, nay
hurtled.
*
First there was the medal for Best Student. Then followed the Essay of 1963 award, and of course Exemplary Latin and Classics Scholar of the same year. Not to mention the
captaining of the team which sailed to victory in the 1965 Cardinal McGing All-Ireland Championships trophy. On a morning in 1967, I opened a copy of
Caritas
magazine to discover once more
his sleek,
instruction class with my students, humming ‘
Juxta crucem! Misericordiae!
’ quite absentmindedly, I have to admit, when I perceived at my feet a most extraordinary sight.
Initially, the opinion that I formed of this spectacle was that it was but random flecks of foam perhaps dislodged from the jaws of a hastily shaved, unfortunately tardy colleague, but I was forced
to revise this – an unjustifiably hasty assumption in any case – almost immediately when I realized that what my eyes were gazing upon were nothing other than the tiniest fragments of
printed paper. But not only that – for what lay beneath me, on those polished tiles, were pieces removed from the most holy missal! My perplexity deepened. Who could have done this thing? I
asked of myself again and again, turning the fragments – some of them actually compressed until they had become hard pellets – abstractedly in my hands. It was then I looked up to see
him standing there above me – Packie Cooley. Instinctively one is alert to the mysterious energies which often pass between human beings. An intense current which can be revelatory, combining
now with a grey nimbus of cloud which seemed to form itself like a mask before his eyes, veiling his normally fresh complexion as if to say: ‘The man you are looking upon is not Packie
Cooley! For he has ceased to be that man!’
By this point I was emotionally overwrought. I cast my eyes over the tattered remnants of what had once been a beautifully hand-stitched gold-embossed religious book and cried: ‘Who could
have done this? Who?’ Then – gloriously, in a way, weakening, I became aware at that very moment of his stifled yet unmistakable sobbing, and felt his comforting hand fall upon my
shoulder, as he said: ‘Now more than ever the Church needs us, Father. There is no knowing the extent to which our enemies and the enemies of the one true established Church will go.’
Flushed as I was, in my heady emotional state, I found myself clasping his hand – idiotically, as is now only all too evident – and, as if I had been personally and single-handedly
responsible for snatching a soul in danger from the trapdoor that led to the Pit itself, cried aloud: ‘Yes, Packie! It’s so true! What you say is so, so true!’
Instead – if only I had done it! – of slapping him across the face and crying: ‘Don’t lie, you hypocrite! You did this! You did it, Cooley! You! And for one reason and
one alone! Because you’re the Devil and it’s your job!’
But, whether or not through the gathering of so many anxieties within me like so many atomic gases, it was not to be, and I feel no pride, readers, none at all as I look back upon it, that
half-hour in an early morning sacristy where we stand together, collecting ill-fitting pieces of creased and irretrievably torn tissue paper, Sellotaping and aligning them, those forlorn fragments,
as best we could into an approximation of what that sad, blasphemed publication had once been.
Many times since have I reflected that had I acted on either of those two occasions – it is with tormented soul and guilt-drenched heart I have picked up Conrad’s tales of guilt and
cowardice in the face of adversity, I assure you! – perhaps the scorch-footed march of the fork-tongued soul-taker would have been halted. But it was not to be! My eyes were as blind as those
of a bat long since in thrall to the demon grape, the pail from the well of moral courage drawn up once more, hopelessly empty, as the career of ‘Fr Packie Cooley’ proceeded apace, nay
hurtled.
*
First there was the medal for Best Student. Then followed the Essay of 1963 award, and of course Exemplary Latin and Classics Scholar of the same year. Not to mention the
captaining of the team which sailed to victory in the 1965 Cardinal McGing All-Ireland Championships trophy. On a morning in 1967, I opened a copy of
Caritas
magazine to discover once more
his sleek,
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