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The i to note here is that I was considered a real coraduate I was expected to be another jewel in the crown—but by the time postdoctoral studies rolled around, I’d been spotted as a rhinestone—plenty of flash but pure paste I was a big disappointment to everybody, most of all to me, of course My superiors were as nice about it as they could be I was never going to be invited to join the faculty at St Jerome’s or any other of the order’s universities, but they did offer to find a place for me at one of their prep schools Or if I didn’t care to be humiliated quite that much, I could be loaned out to the diocese for work in the parochial trenches I chose the latter, which is how I ended up at St Ed’s

I say I’ood priest I suppose this is a bit like a cart horse saying it’s not a very good horse, because it expected to be raced but couldn’t rade The blunt truth is that you don’t have to be a very good priest to rade at the parish level This observation is not as cynical as it sounds—the priest is only a race, after all Sure, you’ve got to be even-tes (which says a lot), but nobody expects to you be a St Paul or a St Francis, and a sacrament that comes to you from the hands of an utter swine is every bit as efficacious as one that cooing nowadays, you’ll be considered a bloody treasure if you don’t turn out to be a child molester or a public drunk

Enter Fr Lulfre

Six days ago I got a nice little note fro if I would be so kind as to present myself next Wednesday (day before yesterday) at the office of Fr Bernard Lulfre at three o’clock in the afternoon Well, now, that was interesting

Dear Diary, I can tell right off the bat that you don’t knoho this Bernard Lulfre is, so I’ll have to enlighten you In a word, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was the Jesuits’ superstar, and Bernard Lulfre is ours Teilhard de Chardin was a geologist and a paleontologist, and Bernard Lulfre is an archaeologist and a psychiatrist The difference, typically, is that Teilhard de Chardin is world famous, while Bernard Lulfre is known to about ten people (with names like Karl Popper, Marshall McLuhan, Roland Barthes, Noam Chomsky, and Jacques Derrida) Never mind To those who breathe the rarefied air of the scholarly Alps, Bernard Lulfre is a heavyweight

While an undergraduate at St Jeroh belief in an afterlifethe dead with their possessions, it’s just as plausible to suppose that the practice of burying the dead with their possessions gave rise to a belief in an afterlife The course instructor passed it on to Bernard Lulfre, thinking it ht be publishable in one of the journals he was associated with Of course it wasn’t, but it brought reat man’s attention, and for a season I was shown round as a proster at faculty teas When I entered the novitiate a year later, it was ié, a e Fr Lulfre ress in the years that followed, but if so, he did it at a very great distance, and when an to be interpreted (with equal iinativeness) as a withdrawal

In the five years since my ordination, until that nice invitation arrived from the dean’s office, I hadn’t heard from him once (and hadn’t expected to) Naturally I was curious, but I wasn’t exactly holdingto offer to sendto ask for a small favor of some kind Maybe so about somebody at St Ed’s, and they said, “Why don’t we have Fr Lulfre contact that young Fr Osborne orks there?” No one would hesitate to askwas needed We’ve had our own private espionage network for centuries and think of it as being not one whit less honorable than that of MI 16 or the CIA (We’re quite proud of our intrigues—in a quiet way, of course During the last decades of Elizabeth’s reign, for exae” at Rheims infiltrated scores of priest spies into Britain to keep the spirit of insurrection alive areatest coup was achieved in 1773, when Pope Cle his old friends the Jesuits; it was one of our oho showed hiet the job done) The order is our horanted that, even in exile, I would never allow some paltry diocesan or parochial concern to supersedeas simple as this, then a phone call would have been sufficient The ued I became

At Fr Lulfre’s office

Nothing had changed at Fr Lulfre’s office since I’d last visited it some ten years before: It was in the sa Fr Lulfre hadn’t changed either: Still six and a half feet tall, as broad as a door, with ato a stevedore or a trucker Men like hie like seventy or eighty, when they fall apart overnight and are whisked away

I’ve been around enough brilliant men to know that they’re seldoreetedheartiness, made some aard small talk, and seemed ready to beat around the bush for hours Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the mood to collaborate with him on that, and after five minutes a dreadful silence overtook us

With the distinct air of so the bullet, he said: “I want you to know, Jared, that there aremore than you’ve been asked to do”

Well, shucks, I wanted to say, but didn’t I ratified to hear this, but I doubt if I ed to keep every trace of irony out of my voice