Fr. Z's Blog

Continued from Episode 5 – HERE

Episode 6: The Howl At The Moon

In the rearview, the neon sign for the Alibi Bar shrank into a smear of blue and red. The rain finally sputtered out about the time I hit the roundabout near St. Gert’s, leaving the streets as shiny and slick as a Jesuit’s pomade. I let the wipers drag one last arc and with a wet groan they froze mid-swipe like they’d given up caring. Pulling up near the chancery, I cracked the window to let the night in. It smelled of ozone, old brick, and the sour reek of a city that never learned how to tell the truth.

I lit a cigarette. The glow caught the cracked dashboard in sickly orange.

Part of me wondered if I should’ve dragged Tommy along, priestly ballast to keep my conscience from floating clean off. But he’d said his piece.

I thumbed the radio on. Some local Catholic station was playing a pre-recorded homily. The voice I recognized, Bishop F. Atticus McButterpants. “…in these uncertain times,” he droned, “we must remain open to accompaniment…to the creative spirit…”

“Ha!” That’s what he called it when he shifted parish funds around like shell games and anointed committees of facilitators to “reimagine” everything the Church used to be.

I clicked a different preset. A cliché saxophone mewled over a languid backbeat, trying so hard to sound sad it was practically begging to be a track in a bad noir flick. I let it wheeze another bar, then turned the knob so hard the dial nearly snapped. Silence felt cleaner. More honest.

The chancery hulked ahead, like a mausoleum where the living paid rent. A single window glowed on the top floor. The bishop’s office. A puddle glimmered in the street ahead, catching the wan glow of the chancery’s security lights. It looked like oil. Maybe it was. Nothing stayed pure in Libville. Not water, not money, not faith.

I rolled past, slow, watching for movement. That’s when I saw him: Fr. Gilbert in his raincoat holding up an umbrella, his other hand gripping a leash like it might jump up and throttle him.

At the other end was Chester, the bishop’s dog. If that label still applied. In the jaundiced sodium glow, he looked like a bull terrier with a rap sheet, the sort that’d give George Booth nightmares, spine bent like bad theology, ears warped like old chancery minutes.

They were halfway across the lot when the clouds split open, and the moon came crawling out, low and as yellow as a nicotine stain. Chester lifted his muzzle and let loose a howl that sounded like it had been saved up since All Hallows’ Eve.

Gilbert glanced around, as if the night might explain itself. It didn’t. It never did.

I eased the Charger back into gear and slipped past them, tires whispering over the wet asphalt.

My smoke was nipped to the finger burn, but I let it smolder anyway. Tomorrow would be a marathon of dirty files, dirtier questions, and lies stacked like poker chips.

A few blocks on, I slid up to a washed-out motor court and doused the headlights, leaving the night to finish the story.

For now, I needed rack time. Even a conscience like mine had to sleep once in a … yellow moon.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Continued from Episode 4 – HERE

Episode 5: The Booth at Alibi Bar

Rain polished the streets of Libville into a mirror that only reflected bad decisions, the kind that start with a smile and end with crime scene tape.

I lit a cigar with a match struck off the dash and eased the ’68 Charger into gear. The engine rumbled low, the sound of an old promise you know won’t be kept. The black paint was worn thin in places, like a conscience you’ve talked yourself out of listening to.

I rolled past the shell of what used to be St. Vibiana’s. Now it was something called a “Center for Spiritual Re-Imagining.” Soft lights glowed in the windows and wind chimes tinkled like they had something to say. They didn’t.

The Alibi Bar squatted just off Route 6, where Libville’s faux-rural charm gave way to cheap gas and cheaper theology. The booths were sticky, the coffee bitter, and the jukebox hadn’t worked since Bishop Fatty’s consecration Mass. Come to think of it, neither had he.

I slid into the back booth beneath the flickering bulb. Fr. Tommy was already there, mood darker than the back of an unused confessional. He was like a man who hadn’t slept since Laudato Si’ dropped.

“You look terrible,” I said.

“You should see the other guy.”

I signaled the waitress for two coffees. No sugar. No illusions.

The priest slid a lumpy envelope across to me. “USB drive. Parish council minutes. Staff emails. Internal drafts of memos that never made it past the bishop’s secretary. Meeks has been ghostwriting them for months. Somehow she got Mrs. Kennedy’s username and password and she’s been hijacking her for who know how long.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And he signs them?”

Fr. Tommy shrugged. “Sometimes.  He thinks he’s being judicious.”

“This is enough to make the CDF twitch,” I muttered. “How’d you get it?”

Tommy glanced out the rain-streaked window. “Let’s just say not all the chancery staff are on Team Synod.”

I leaned in. “You know where this ends.”

He nodded. “Chancery. Tonight. Listening Session.”

“Let me guess: sacred circle seating, no agenda, pre-written consensus already drafted.”

“And printed on recycled paper scented with lavender.”

I tapped my cigarette on the edge of the saucer. “Patsy Meeks will be there.”

“She’s facilitating.”

“Of course she is. Anything said aloud gets transcribed. Anything inconvenient gets omitted.”

Tommy reached into his cassock. Pulled out a tiny mic the size of a rosary bead.

“I’ll be wired,” he said. “We get her to say it. Just once. The goal is suppression of the TLM.”

“That’ll be enough.”

I looked down at my coffee. It had gone cold and oily. Like most modern liturgy.

“You realize this could get ugly.”

Tommy looked me dead in the eye. “Tracer, for years in seminary I endured clown Masses in Crocs. I can handle ugly.”

We paid and left separately. Standard protocol. I took a side alley and circled back to the Charger. The rain had gone from drizzle to flagellation. The kind that made a man want to make a general confession and build an ark.

The headlights cut through the mist as I drove toward Libville’s cold concrete heart. In the passenger seat, the folder Tommy gave me opened under the blower – names poking at me in the alternating flashes and shadows.

Hugalot. Warmflannel. Wainwright. And now Patsy Meeks.

The Council for Inclusive Liturgy Innovation was about to have its final session.

And I planned to be there for the Dies Irae.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Continued from Episode 2 – HERE

Episode 3: St. Odilia and Lavender Liturgy

The drive to Point Blank was uneventful in the same way a minefield is calm if you don’t move. The road out of the city narrowed into cracked asphalt hemmed in by half-dead pines. The area around Libville had a way of changing scenery fast.  One minute solemn spires, the next, a brutalist parish worship space with more banners than congregants surrounded by tired clapboard houses sagging under years of bad choices.

St. Odilia’s stood like a warning. Round, faceless, concrete. The kind of place that looked like it had been designed by a disgruntled nun with a grudge against right angles. No bell tower, no crucifix. Just a wind turbine out back and a solar panel above the entrance proclaiming “Creation-Centered Worship Happens Here.”

I stepped through the automatic doors – yes, automatic – and was greeted by the smell of citrus oil, soy wax, and danger.

“Welcome!” mewed a woman in a woven alb who looked like she did her PT at Burger King.

“I’m here to see Fr. Warmflannel,” I said, handing her my card flashing the kind of smile that made ushers in polyester blazers nervous.

“Oh! Father’s leading the Guided Imagery Stations of the Nonviolent Cross, but he’s almost done.”  As went into the “worship space” the sound of an out of tune piano waxed and waned as the door drifted closed like the lid of a coffin.

Five minutes later, three people with walkers hobbled out and Warmflannel sashayed in from the nave, eyes fixed with the kind of pastoral concern that usually precedes liturgical abuse. He wore a stole embroidered with doves, sunflowers, and what I sincerely hoped wasn’t a chakra chart.

“Tracer Bullet?” he lisped, card in hand, as if he were announcing a bingo prize. “What a grace-filled …. surprise.” His speech was like a broken jukebox trying to play jazz, and his S’s slippery, sort of wet.

“Let’s call it providence and keep it moving.”

With a toss of his head, he ushered me into his office. It was an open-concept corner nook with a dreamcatcher over the desk and a plush model of the Cosmic Christ on the shelf next to an autographed photo of James Martin. I declined a kombucha and got to the point.

“Word is you’re part of something called C.I.L.I. I’m looking for whoever’s yanking the bishop’s leash.”

His smile flickered like guttering candle. “Ah… the Council for Inclusive Liturgy Innovation. That’s such an old name, really. We prefer ‘Sacramental Synergy Circle’ now.”

“Of course you do.”

He chuckled nervously. “It’s not about power, Trace.  Can I call you Trace? We’re just trying to create a liturgy that reflects today’s spiritual ecology. We’re not attacking the bishop.  We just… offering accompaniment.”

“Sure. Like the way a wolf accompanies the sheep.”

His expression cooled. “You’re stuck in an old paradigm. We’re Spirit-led.”

I leaned in, voice low. “The Spirit doesn’t use Comic Sans, Padre.”

He looked down. I had him. Not enough for a confession, but close.

“Who’s running this thing, really?” I asked. “You? Hugalot?”

Warmflannel’s eyes darted, like a man glancing at his watch during the sermon. Guilty. 

“I can’t say,” he muttered. “But not all of us agree with the… methods. Some of us just want to pray differently.”

“Differently doesn’t mean better.”

I stood. The kombucha still sat untouched on the side table like a disapproving aunt at a family wake, sour and silently judging.

“One last thing,” I said, fedora in hand. “Tell your ‘Circle’ I’m coming.”

I turned and left, stepping into the cold drizzle that always seemed to follow me these days.

Warmflannel knew something. Whether he had the guts to spill it or not was another matter. But my gut said I wasn’t chasing wind here.

Next stop: Bovina.

Fr. Wainwright.

If Warmflannel was the soft edge of the Circle, Wainwright could be the mushy inner edge, assuming he’d grown at least one since the Chrism Mass of ’14.

I lit a Montecristo and pulled my coat tight.

Libville was about to get drafty.

TO BE CONTINUED…