Continued from Episode 3 – HERE
Episode 4: “Patchouli and Power Plays”
Swamp Castle wasn’t a castle. It was a beige concrete retreat center squatting like a theological toad on the edge of a man-made pond, surrounded by reeds, mosquitoes, and ambiguities. If you looked at it from a distance – say, in a fog of denial – it almost resembled a convent. Up close, it was more like a suburban DMV with candles.
Inside, the air was thick with fair-trade coffee and passive aggression. Posters lined the hallway: “Encountering the Spirit through Movement,” “Decolonize Your Doctrine,” and the real showstopper, “Toward a Post-Sacramental Parish: Beyond Rigid Rituals.”
I followed the smell of patchouli and beige theology down the hall to the “Sacred Collaboration Hall.” The door was cracked. I peered in.
There he was.
Fr. Blair McBreathy.
He stood in the middle of a circle of folding chairs, flanked by a giant flipchart and a woman in a rainbow stole who appeared to be “co-facilitating.” Blair wore a tie-dyed alb and Birkenstocks. He looked like someone who thought Leviticus was a suggestion and doctrine was a pollutant.
“And so,” he was saying, “we ask ourselves: how can the liturgy reflect our ever-expanding consciousness?”
Someone in the circle murmured “mmm” like it was a yoga class.
I slipped away before I lost IQ points just from listening.
Back in the hall, I ducked into a side room – maybe once a chapel before it was “repurposed.” I lit a cigarette under a faded mural of St. Francis breakdancing with wolves. That’s when I heard the voice.
“You’re in deeper than you think, Bullet.”
I turned.
Standing in the doorway was a woman in a gray pantsuit and sensible shoes. She had a name tag that read: Patricia Meeks – Director of Worship Facilitation and Listening Spaces.
My stomach lurched.
The “Facilitatrix”.
She didn’t blink. “We’re not trying to destroy the Church. We’re trying to free it. The old forms don’t work anymore.”
“You mean the ones that lasted two millennia?” I took a drag. “Forgive me if I’m nostalgic.”
“We’re reimagining community. Empowering presiders. Uplifting pluralities.”
She still hadn’t blinked.
“You’re gutting the liturgy and calling it dialogue.”
She stepped into the room, arms folded. “Your investigation ends here. Bishop McButterpants is already being guided. The transition is underway.”
I blew smoke toward the ceiling. “You should’ve shredded those emails.”
Her face tightened. “It’s not too late to be part of something new, Tracer.”
I dropped the cigarette and ground it out against the puke yellow terrazzo.
“It is for me, Patsy” I said. “I still genuflect before I enter a church. When I can find the tabernacle.”
She turned on her heel with an unblinking glare meant to maim and left.
This was bigger than I thought. Blair was just the liturgical sock puppet. Patsy Meeks was pulling strings from the chancery liturgy office. And the bishop? How far had he been led since Father Tommy took over a parish? He was the bulwark against total insanity when he was inside. Was Fatty already halfway to clown Masses?
I needed answers. And I needed Fr. Tommy.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Loading ...
FR.Z, You have expanded my vocabulary.
Liturgical Sock puppet.
Can’t wait to use it.
This is gloriously noir—incense-smoked satire at its finest. Didn’t Sacramental Synergy Circle open for Canned Heat back in ’72? I think their debut album was Gaudium et Jazz Hands.
The Liturgical Reform Mavens are the worst. Harpies one and all. Perhaps this series can include some divine justice and she gets smoke inhalation from an overloaded thurible?
“You should’ve shredded those emails.”
Or used a hammer to destroy the hard drive? There is precedent…
Let me guess:
Bullet sits behind the wheel of a dark green 68’ Fastback Mustang.
I am really enjoying this series. Well done Fr. Z!
“I slipped away before I lost IQ points just from listening.”
I like that
fwiw i’d be more than happy to be Tracer’s silent sidekick bearing a halberd (i am of some Swiss descent after all and >74″ tall) or at least a battle-axe.
Tracer Bullet stumbled right into the Lioness’s Den of Liturgical Iniquity. I think he needs a couple of slugs, of the liquid kind. I’m riveted.
Things were pretty bad liturgically in the Archdiocese of Boston in the early 90’s but even so I was shocked to encounter a “presider” who produced a pair of sock puppets from behind the post-Conciliar lectern and began a “dialog” between the two in lieu of a homily. My then-fiancée, who was not yet Catholic, was even more shocked than I was. For months, every time I tried to explain that V2 had changed nothing substantive, she’d throw “sock puppet man” in my face! I think we both still have scars…
I keep thinking I’m reading That Hideous Strength (which I read WAYYYYY back in high school) combined with the best of film noir. I also keep hearing Bullet in my mind with a Bogie dialect. Well done indeed.
THOROUGHLY enjoying this. I haven’t read books written like this, but I’ve heard about them. I think I need to widen my reading vocabulary pronto.
Loving it. I’m even imagining several covers for the paperback.
Pingback: Tracer Bullet and the Smoke of Libville. Episode 5: The Booth at Alibi Bar | Fr. Z's Blog