A Favor For Saint Peter

This was the start of it all, when Saint Peter asked for a favor. I’ve been at it ever since and brought this one up here, because there were five encounters with First Christians. The other four follow this one here.

Zazen and Satori

Pine Point, Maine
February, 2005

I plumped up the cushions, sat forward on the zafu and folded my legs in a half-lotus on the zabuton, swayed left, then right a few times to set my seat, placed my hands in the mudra where thumbs touch but barely, and with eyes open a bit, fixed my gaze before me and began the count of my breaths, from one to ten.

I died awake and arrived at the Gates of Pearl in an instant. There stood Saint Peter and a group of his assistants.

Saint Peter, scowling, “Name?”

“Paul Kelly, Rocky”

“Wise guy?”

“Nope, just friendly.” I always liked that old fisherman, one of us.

“Diocese?”

”Portland.”

”Oregon? Maine?” shows he knew America pretty well.

“Maine.”

“Bishop?”

“Don’t know. You don’t know him either? My God!” I was astonished.

”You Catholic?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” getting a little testy now.

“I don’t have a bishop?”

“Go to church at all?”

“Oh! Yes.”

“Well?” as if that’s what being a Catholic is all about.

“Well, it’s not a church. It’s a . . . it’s a cluster.” I had to search for the new word.

”A what?” poor Saint Peter, obviously hit with a new one.

“A cluster, you see, we aren’t people anymore, not even parishioners, we’re just clustered.”

“Just a minute, I have to check with the OED man up here ……” and Saint Peter walked off.

I tried to yell, “What’s the OED,” but one of the assistants, a cute young thing, piped up, “He means the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s that word ‘cluster’ – a new one.”

After a long wait, Saint Peter came back, but more perplexed than when he left,

“Cluster is a word, but it’s not in the ‘official teachings of the Church’ anywhere. We even checked out the whole Magisterium, too. The OED says it means something like a group of similar objects, a ‘cluster of galaxies’, ‘a subgroup of people in statistics.’ Kind of a weird word.”

Emboldened, I asked, “My turn, Rocky, what do you mean now?”

“My OED expert checked out its lineage. It’s from Old English clyster, somehow related to clot, like blood clot. You sure you’re not talking about a disease?”

“No, it’s what our bishop called what was left, when he started out to cut our parishes down from 135 to 35 and abolish 44 missions. He wound up with 27 clusters.”

“He knocked out a hundred parishes! Just like that?” Saint Peter, who was crucified upside down to save the one in Rome back in 64, AD, was deeply confused. He went on, “Well clyster is an archaic term for enema. And clot isn’t a nice thing to have in your bloodstream, either. From German Klotz, meaning block. A holzklotz is a log.”

Saint Peter was showing off now, I thought. “Whatever you or that OED says, it’s no church. We don’t even have priests there anymore. Just some old people who lead us in the Rosary or the Stations.”

“Where are the priests?

”They died.”

“No new ones?

”Nope. Not for years now.”

“What the hell is that bishop doing then?”

”What bishop, Old Pope?”

“You’re being wise again. Better be careful. I, too, was, a Pope, the first one, but nobody knew it then.”

We all took a little break. There are Johns in heaven, but they call them Judases. And they serve coffee, tea, soft drinks, too.

When we got back together again, I picked up where I’d left a bad impression, “Look, Saint Peter, I don’t want to badmouth the guy, but the last I heard he was down in New Orleans giving a catechism lesson during Mardi Gras. Maybe the guy likes to party, I don’t know. We have no bishop. We have no priests. We do have enemas and blood clots and we say the Rosary a lot. What more do you want from us? Can I come in?”

Much more relaxed and looking more and more like the First Pope he used to be, he smiled, “No, not yet. I need a favor from you. We’d like for you to go back down there. Gather round some good and decent people. Tell them I sent you. Pick out some women and men and ordain them priests right away.”

“Huh?” I was flabbergasted.

“Don’t be so stupid and stop looking so humble. We did it. Why can’t you? Nothing’s impossible for the Lord and he left it up to us to handle. How many Catholics you got there?”

“Couple hundred thousand.”

“OK. Let's see. Well, ordain about 20,000 priests, women, men, married, single. The more clergy you get, the less chance there is for division between them that is and them that ain’t ordained. Call back all the guys that left to get married, too. Pick up a few ex-seminarians while you’re at it, because they got halfway through the course and will have a headstart. Set up, as quickly as you can, a whole bunch of home churches for now. That’s why you need 20,000 to start with. Remember what he said, 'Where two or more are gathered in my name . . . Start off real slow, then build it up.”

“What if the bishop shows up and wants the clusters?” I was getting real nervous by now.

“We’ll take care of him. He won’t show up. Trust me.” Peter shook off my concern.

“Aw, Saint Peter, be kind now. He just wasn’t around too much, that’s all.”

“Not to worry, son, we’ll be kind. We’re thinking of starting with one of those ancient clysters. That ought to clean him out a bit. Go off and pray over it.”

And so, I went off, found a couple of old cushions, sat in zazen and started counting my breaths. Ever try to count from one to ten in eternity? Can’t be done. It’s all ones. Nothing binary, either. There just isn’t any time. Everything’s now, here, no then, or later, just now, now, now.. And it’s not even endless, for it never began.

Finished with the ones, I agreed, “Well, OK, I’ll go back, but then can I come back here without dying all over again?”

“Of course,” from a kinder St. Peter.”Now wait just a minute or so, while I get vested up to ordain you. Got to keep that old Apostolic Succession in tact, you know.”

“What do we do for a bishop?” I was old school, you know.

“Well, you’re a Kelly Temp one right now. When you get home, wait a while, see how the Presbyters shake out. That’s what you should call your priests. Fits both men and women more easily. just like it did when we got started back in the real old days. See which ones talk and which ones are gloomy and quiet. Move them around a bit, but for God’s sake, no secret or unannounced transfers. This has got to be open and transparent all the way all the time, and keep in mind that you will be back in time. So, go slow. Easy does it.”

“Gotcha,” said I, a bit wide-eyed and really excited.

Saint Peter was warming up now, “ In time, you can select some Elders, wiser, more mature men and women, natural leader types, you know and they can function as Overseers. The old Greek word for that was Epi-skopos, which means Over-Seer. In English that’s Bishop. But you can change that if you want to, just to get away from bad memories. Just make sure you keep the Apostolic Succession going, so you don’t have to change the words in the Creed. Let’s say it together now: I believe in ….”

I interrupted him, I had to, “Saint Peter, when we get to the part that says, ‘one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church’, I’m going to break down. I haven't been able to say that for years now. I think I'm going to cry.”

“We all do, my friend, when we remember how he died to leave us a church, no matter how many times we had denied him while he was here. Maybe we should remember that and be kinder to that bishop of yours, if he ever shows up and talks.”

And that was when he ordained me, first as Presbyter, then as Elder.

I thanked him, shook hands with his assistants, and turned to leave.

“Hold on a minute, please,” said Saint Peter, “one last thing. You should somehow let your people know that it could be a waste of ecclesial time trying to get some kind of communication or cooperation going with a chancery that won’t budge.”

“Oh! Saint Peter, we’re trying so hard, though,” I pleaded.

He went right on, “Some old timers from the Middle Ages are pretty set in their feudal ways of operating and have lost their sense of time. That was then, the 15th century. This is now, the 21st.

“We keep telling him that,” I was almost yelling now.

“Calm down, calm down. Be not afraid. You and your people should be ready to step out on your own, with or without a bishop. Take care of the Survivors yourselves. Those torn and wounded children come first. Our Lord is sick at heart over what happened to them. They were and are innocent. They need so much care."

“Yes, Saint Peter, but we have to have accountability and justice, too, don’t we?” I was angry now and confused, just like I was for so many years on earth at the USCCB and Rome.

“You’re still Catholics, you know,” he said. “Even under the laws of your country and state, justice moves slowly. If the priests and bishops cloak themselves in those laws -- take the 5th, ask for jury trial, resist discovery, play hardball --there’s not much you can do without taking the law into your own hands. If you’re looking to church law, forget it, because that law is what the bishop says it is, and so far Rome is pretending the sexual abuse crisis never even happened.”

“But that’s not fair. It’s not right.” I yelled.

“Neither were the Crusades. The Inquisition was no picnic.” Saint Peter was white with anger himself now.

“Listen up, my apostle friend, you and your people are the people of God. That’s from us. It doesn’t depend on any bishop. If he doesn’t want to be one of you, that’s his business. The longer you bang your heads on chancery walls, the sooner you’ll get headaches. Some of them are called, as I understand the term, cluster headaches.”

“Wow! Nice one, Pete. You're pretty sharp. Literary allusion? Or just a play on words like Rocky? Or was that nickname really for Stone?”

He was, at last, amused, “You won’t get me to bite on that one. Either name will do. Jesus wasn’t talking Pebbles, though, and that seems to be what a lot of those bishops down there have become.”

“Saint Peter, I will do my best, keep my cool, be patient, but I still want justice.” Calm was returning. I sensed it was time to go.

“That will come. There are no free rides into eternity, no matter who you are or who you may know. If not now, later. Hierarchs have a tough time getting in here.”

“Before I go, Saint Peter, your blessing, please,” and I started to kneel.

“No. No. Don’t kneel. That was only for inferiors. We’re all equals here. Stand tall and receive the Faith That Dares To Speak. There are only three virtues you must have. No bishop can bestow them by decree. They are: Faith, Hope, Love. They come from us as gifts to our people.” And he blessed me.

And so it came to pass that I went back, along with thousands and thousands of other men and women like me, hoping to help the church enter the 21st century. We were to continue a tradition as yet unbroken, the one begun in the First Last Supper. I didn’t realize then that I would be in Maine for just a short while and then in Colorado, and finally, today, back home in New Hampshire after eleven years away.

We found a great church in Longmont, Colorado, an Ecumenical Catholic Community called Light of Christ Church, but that’s another story. . .