Prior Knowledge

By Dr James T. Baker

Prior Knowledge*, what a great story, religion, sex, and murder all in one volume. Master story teller James Baker here follows the wild excursion of the aging Benedictine monk Father Columba as he is called out of retirement to reform a troubled priory and ends up becoming a sleuth. Upon arriving at his new post, a priory commissioned to train "belated vocations" for the priesthood, he learns that his predecessor has mysteriously disappeared; and before he can solve that puzzle he finds himself in the middle of a bloody murder. Someone has killed a seminarian! Getting to the bottom of this crime will require all his theological training, some trial and error good luck, and of course prior knowledge. As he probes the varied and sundry secrets of his monks and seminarians, he discovers for the first time the many facets of love and hate. At age 65 he himself finds the kind of love he long ago promised never to experience: sex with a young Chinese American newspaper woman. Join Father Columba in his quest for truth--religious, legal, sexual--which just could all be cut from the same holy cloth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grave Distractions Publications
• Release date: Apr 9, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452468068

Dr James T. Baker

James Baker developed his passion for history and religion while in high school, during his days as a Bulldog. He is a graduate of Baylor and Florida State Universities and has for many years taught at Western Kentucky University. Throughout his career he has been a prolific writer, authoring 22 books and over 60 articles. His articles have appeared in such places as Christian Century, Commonweal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The American Benedictine Review. His creative talents and his unique points of view and insights have also made him a highly sought after speaker. He has delivered addresses and papers in the United States, Italy, Korea, Taiwan, China, and other Asian countries. He often appears in a one person show-presentation of industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. In addition to his teaching duties, James directs the Canadian Parliamentary Internship Program.

Book preview

Part One: Fool's Gold

Labyrinth

Chapter I

At long last the story can be told, all of it, all of it that I can remember. The story about the Priory in Mississippi, the murder there, the justice that followed. My memory is not perfect, as the younger men here continue to remind me, for I am an old, old man now. But I am the only one who can tell the story because I am the only one involved in it who knew all the details, who is still alive, and who is free to talk. You might say I have Prior Knowledge.

I am now 82. Think of it, Father Columba is 82. My own father died at 40, when I was only 12, the age of Jesus among the elders. It’s an impressionable age, 12, and I came to believe that I would die young too. Like father, like son.

Some boys upon losing their fathers and assuming that they would did young as well might have given themselves up to lasciviousness: to eating, drinking, and making merry for tomorrow they would die. But I have always been perverse. I knew that was what God expected of me, so I decided to fool Him and do exactly the opposite. I was mad at Him for taking my dad away. So I went down to Lake Michigan, walked along where the big brown boulders border the shore on the south side of Chicago, and I said,

Hey there, God, I’ve decided to be a monk. How d’ya like them apples?

He said absolutely nothing. I think I stunned Him with my announcement. I have ever since that day loved surprising Him.

I say--I’m gonna be a monk.

Still He was silent. He was being coy. I have never, ever entertained the least doubt that there is a God. I know there is, I just know. That’s because He has always talked with me, just like a real person, back and forth. But not that day. That day I had surprised Him, and He doesn’t like to be surprised.

No objections, huh? I said, with a shrug. Then I’ll be a Benedictine.

I knew the Benedictines because they ran the school I attended on Ellis Avenue. Those were the days when Ellis was Catholic and a little bit Jewish, before it turned black and mostly Pentecostal. Then the Black Monks were the only thing black on the street. The Monday morning after I shocked God I went to see Brother Zack.

So you wants to be a monk? Brother Zack said, his lips smiling, his eyes glazed, his forehead wrinkled. But why, Bobby?

I want to get ready for heaven. And I want to do what God doesn’t expect of me.

Oh, he said. He was from Germany, and he always said he never understood the Irish.

You’re, what now, 13, Bobby?

Twelve, Brother Zack.

Ya got alota years aheada ya, Bobby?

I got 28 years.

I see, he said and scratched his stubbly chin. Alla 28 years, y’say? And ya ready to give up the world, is that it, Bobby? Ya willin’ t’forego a fine career, a good woman, cars, alla them things? He peered at me over his tiny round glasses. Because that’s what it means t’be a monk, doncha know, Bobby?

Well, Brother, I said, trying to be honest, I think the Benedictines have it pretty good. You brothers are all fat and happy. You drink Cokes and watch television. Yet you are still going to heaven, without all the sacrifices of the Trappists or all the schooling of the Jesuits. I want to save my soul the Benedictine way. . .and save my soul to boot.

Brother Zack’s mouth fell open slightly, and he started to speak, but then he stopped and just eyed me suspiciously, a bit of a smile on his face, the way a man looks when he thinks he might be the victim of a prank.

Tell me then, Bobby, he said slowly. Do you have a vocation to the monastic life?

A. . .vocation? I said. I wasn’t sure what he meant. To tell you the truth, I’m even less sure today than I was then.

A. . . a calling, he explained. The approval of our Heavenly Father?

Yes, I nodded.

Oh? And what makes you sure?

Because He didn’t say no.

That may well have been the best answer I have ever given to that question. I have tried for better ones, but I may have had beginner’s luck.

He didn’t say no? Did you ask him?

No, Brother Zack. I told him.

Told him? You. . .told. . .God?

Yes, Brother. Took Him by surprise. I told him I was gonna be a monk, and when He didn’t say no, I told him I was gonna be a Benedictine.

Brother Zack leaned toward me. And what did God say to that part? He seemed genuinely intrigued by what I was saying.

Nothing.

Nothing?

That’s right. That’s how I know it’s all right. See, with my dad, I would always tell him what I wanted to do, and if he didn’t want me to do it, he would say no. He almost never said yes, but if it was all right with him, if he didn’t care one way or another, he wouldn’t say anything. That’s the way with God too. I told Him, and He didn’t say anything, so it’s all right. Then I added, just to be honest, Of course, he may have been struck dumb by the shock.

Brother Zack sat back in his chair. It had a tall, straight back, and he brought his own back straight to match it. Oh but Bobby, he groped for words, your father, he was. . .but God, He’s. . .it’s not the same at all.

"Why not, Brother Zack?

Despite his ample frame and generous paunch, Brother Zach sank down in his chair and seemed to grow smaller. His forehead looked like a dried prune. I. . .well. . .it’s. . . He took a white handkerchief from his sleeve pocket and began polishing his glasses. Bobby, he said, stopping in mid-polish, does God, that is, has God. . . ever said anything to you?

Oh yes, Brother.

Really?

Yes, we talk all the time.

You do? About. . .what?

All kinds of things. Baseball. Algebra. Girls.

And. . .when you talk to Him, ya say God talks back to you?

Yes. Except today, He didn’t say a word.

Why d’ya think is that?

He’s pissed at me.

Brother Zack dropped his glasses into his lap, and they bounced out onto the floor. Fortunately they were lightweight and fell on the rug without breaking. I helped him retrieve them, and he put them back on.

He’s. . .angry, do you say? he was finally able to say. His lips were loose, his words mushy. His brow was even more furrowed.

Yes, Brother. Not Jesus, he’s kind and understanding, like my Uncle Ed. Not the Blessed Virgin, she always loves me whatever I do, like my Mom does. It’s the Old Man who gets pissed. He gets pissed at me a lot. I thought I had better tell the whole story. See, I like to get His goat. He likes to get mine too, so I don’t feel bad about it. He really got my goat when He let my dad die, so I don’t feel bad when I get revenge. Instead of crying and shouting at Him in anger this time, which is what I felt like doing and what He wanted me to do, instead of going out and sinning so I would have to come crawling to Him for forgiveness, I sprang this monk thing on him. He was shocked, and then He was pissed, so He tried to ignore me; but I got in the last laugh because since He didn’t say no, the answer is yes.

When Brother Zack had me repeat my story to the other monks, I came close to being expelled from school. I was finally allowed to stay, with the proviso that I would never, under any circumstances, talk with any of my classmates about God. So I stayed and kept quiet and obeyed my Mom and by the time I reached 18 the monks who were still alive had forgotten the business about God. By then I had read enough lives of saints to concoct a story about my vocation, something that wouldn’t offend anyone, and I was convincing enough to get myself accepted into the Order. Maturity is simply learning to hide the truth, especially about yourself.

They gave me the name Columba, because I’m Irish, because they wanted me to emulate the great monk who took Christianity from Ireland to Scotland and founded the great monastery on Iona. It was a heavy responsibility when I was so young to carry that name; but as I grew older, larger in the waist, when I was ordained, when I finished my Ph.D. in history at Notre Dame, it got easier to bear. Slowly I forgot that I had ever been Bobby McManus, and after my Mom and Uncle Ed died no one ever called me that again. Even my brother used Columba when he wrote to me, his last letter reaching me a day after his wife called to say he too had died.

Now I’m 82, 64 years a monk; and I can see now that I was the one tricked, not God. God let me believe I would die at 40, and I have doubled that. I have given a long lifetime to the Church, damn it. I have aged, but He hasn’t. He was always old, the gray bearded, leather faced old dictator Michelangelo painted. He and I still talk, as we have for seventy years, and we disagree most of the time, and He usually wins, but I still get his goat sometimes.

Actually I am writing this story to piss him off. When He finds out that I have told the world what went on at Saint Luke’s, He will have a fit. He prefers that the public, even the Catholic public, not know what really goes on in monasteries. He wants people to think monks are pure and holy. He’s too busy right now to know what I’m doing, and He probably thinks I’m too old to do any more harm; but when He finds out, there will be hell to pay. The element of risk is absolutely delicious. I’m not really worried. I’ve put in my years. I have my place in heaven. All He could do is set me back farther from the throne, and with my bladder condition that would only make it easier for me to get to the men’s room.

* * *

So on to my story. It began in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in August, 1961. The first Catholic President had just moved into the White House. At the monastery and the college it runs the summer was cool and quiet, and we were all optimistic about the future. It was before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy’s death, the War in Vietnam. It was sunny but mild, the grass grew lush and green and the gentle breezes rippled the leaves on the old trees. Latrobe is Arnold Palmer country, perfect for golf.

We had no summer school at the college then; and by August the place seemed almost medieval. Black-clad monks roamed the hillsides, the thick woods, the green lawns. Saint Vincent’s was the perfect place for my retirement. I was happy to be there rather than at some of the places I could have been sent. At 65 I had gone through enough eternal summers of the Bahamas, eternal snowstorms of northern Minnesota, eternal duststorms of west Texas. At Saint V’s there were four distinct seasons, all lovely, none strong enough to savage or bore me. I was assigned to teach just one small class, Freshman American History, a snap for me after years of full time teaching; and the rest of the time I could take short naps and long walks and carry on my dialogue with the Old Bastard Upstairs. I’m not talking about the Father Abbot. He’s actually a nice guy.

I was taking a pleasant after-dinner walk that cool August, when a young brother came running briskly across the lawn toward me. I knew he wanted me because when he got about 50 yards away he slowed to a reverent lope and at 20 began mincing, like a dog approaching a man he feared. I’m aware that frighten the younger monks. They cower and whine when they approach me. I suppose it’s partly my age, partly my white beard, partly that I stand 6'3" and weigh 245 pounds. I’m told that when I walk down a path I look like a ship sailing on a canal. I also like my solitude, and I tend to bark when I’m disturbed. I’m told that I can be sarcastic when I sense someone is being false with me. And then there’s the persistent story that I believe I talk directly with God, and not always in the friendliest of terms. I’m either a mystic or a heretic, both dangerous to the conventionally religious. One monk even told me that he was afraid to stand too near me in choir because he expected sooner or later that God would strike me down with lightning.

The young brother came up to me and stopped and hung his head. I looked down on his fresh tonsure. Yes? I said.

F-f-f-father C-c-c-columba, he stuttered. A m-m-m-message from Father S-s-s-superior. I could tell from his accent that he came from the West Coast. He sounded like Mickey Rooney.

What does Father Superior want? I tried to put him at ease, but I know I sounded gruff. He quailed before me.

In. . .in. . .his s-s-s-study, please. He swallowed. A-t-t-t-t once, p-p-p-p-lease.

I watched him turn tail and run from my presence. It was such a pleasant evening, much too nice to go inside. I should have told the boy to ask Father Abbot to come out and walk with me. But I was no longer a Master, I was in a sense a guest there, and I was indebted to Father Superior for giving me such a pleasant place to retire. So I turned and with a sigh headed toward his office.

What’s this all about, You Old Coot? I said.

YOU’LL SEE.

I know I’ll see. But I’d like to know now.

YOU’LL SEE.

I don’t like surprises.

THAT MAKES TWO OF US.

I cut through the chapel. Shaved heads floated over the pews. I stopped at the altar and said a short prayer to the Blessed Virgin. She was the one I called on when I felt insecure. She had become extremely important to me after my Mom died. I went out and down the hallway and knocked on the familiar door.

Come in, Columba, a voice from inside said. I entered with due reverence. Come, come, the tiny man behind the huge desk said, motioning me toward a chair near him. Sit, sit.

Father Superior was always moving, a tiny bundle of cosmic, monastic energy. He smoked one cigarette after another, from the time he awakened in the morning until he fell asleep, usually with one burning in his ash tray, at night. He even kept one burning beside his plate as he ate his meals. At that moment he had two going at once, one on the ash tray shaped like a grotto, one between his twitching fingers. His eyebrows constantly moved up and down; and he could hardly contain what he had to tell me long enough for me to make my way to the chair and sit down. I took my time just to torment the poor wretch.

Father Superior was a wonder. Born the son of a Polish father and a Hungarian mother, he learned to speak three languages as he grew up in Cleveland. In college he astounded his teachers by learning to speak Chinese fluently in one year. The Benedictines sent him to Chung-king in 1935, and there he served as interpreter to a string of ambassadors Roosevelt and Truman sent to save China. He was a guest at Chiang Kai-shek’s V.J. Day banquet in 1945. In 1949, when the old generalissimo knew he had to get out of mainland China, he put Father in charge of transporting every piece of Chinese art small enough to carry off to Formosa. There he supervised the building of a museum with a store room in a mountain to guard against Mao’s bombs. He settled down on Formosa to serve as Abbot of our mission house there, teaching Catechism at the seminary and Chemistry at the college, until he was called back in 1960 to run the Archabbey in Latrobe.

What was it you wanted, Father? I said to the man who was half my size and fifteen years younger than I was.

Columba. . . He had an awful habit of calling your name, fixing you with his piercing eyes, and then letting his voice trail away as he searched your face. I could see his mind working, a machine with rapidly whirring cogs. I nodded and waited him out. At last he took a long draw from his menthol cigarette and spoke hurriedly through the thick screen of smoke he emitted. "What do you think of when I say. . .Saint Luke’s?

I held my tongue, feeling a trap. Saint Luke’s was one of our mission priories, too young, not yet large and mature enough to be an abbey. It was somewhere down south, likely Mississippi. What did I think of? "Negro people on front porches singing. Hot summer days. Kudzu on telephone polls. William Faulkner.

It’s our smallest mission priory, Father said, turning his head in that queer way of his, looking at me through the corners of his eyes.

Yes, Father, I nodded. Yes, I know about Saint Luke’s.

You know its history.

This was beginning to sound like an oral examination.

It was founded. . .I don’t know the exact year. . .1936, I’m guessing. To demonstrate to the people in the south how racial integration could work there.

Right, Father said, puffing, filling the room with white smoke that smelled like the kind of tablet you would suck for a sore throat.

I went on. We sent ten black and ten white brothers down there to live together in Christian harmony, as an example. They settled into buildings once owned by a Quaker group that practiced celibacy.

Shaker actually, Father corrected me. The Shakers were a communist millenialist group that forbade sexual intercourse.

Like us.

He smiled indulgently. Yes, in a manner of speaking. Though they had both male and female members.

That must have made things hard, I quipped. He failed to respond to my pathetic stab at humor, so I cleared my throat and went on. I can imagine some archeologist, a thousand years from now, digging that place up. Catholic monks all mixed up with millenialist elders. He stared at me with his beady black eyes. I felt desperate to make his smile. Do the locals still call the black brothers Luke’s Spooks? I said lamely.

Probably, Father said, his eyebrows twitching. He had been in China too long. He had no sense of humor. He was a machine. "There actually aren’t many black brothers

left. Only three, I believe. The present Prior is black, but he’s leaving, coming here in fact."

I should have known right then. The way he said it, the way he stared at me. But I felt so secure, after all my years of service, having been permitted to settle down here for my retirement, that I didn’t suspect a thing. This was Eden, and I had earned it, and no one would dare take it away from me. He hit me right between the eyes.

You’re taking his place.

I sat stunned, speechless, immobilized. I couldn’t feel my legs. I gulped and gargled. "But. . .I. . . I. . .can’t. . .

You are to be the new Prior of Saint Luke’s, Father said slowly, pronouncing each word precisely, as if to press the idea into my brain.

I. . .I. . .

Remember your vows, Columba, he warned me, as if I could forget them. Poverty, Obedience, Chastity, Stability. I had repeated them every five years of my monastic life. I would never renounce them and go to hell so God could get his revenge on me, the Old Bastard. Father was watching me the way a hawk watches a crippled sparrow. I shrugged. I’m. . .retired, I murmured.

Columba, Father smiled indulgently. A monk. . .never retires.

But I’ve already been a Prior, for five years once, when they pulled me out of the classroom. I was even an acting abbot for part of a year.

So much the better. You have experience.

But I wasn’t good at it. I didn’t enjoy it.

Enjoy? Hah. We monks don’t enjoy things, Columba, you know that. God seems to think you’re good at it.

"God? What do you mean?

He gave you all the qualities for it. Look at yourself. You have the size, the bearing, the voice, the wisdom, all the things I wish He’d given me.

He did it to spite me.

What?

He gave me size, yes, but none of the others. And He didn’t give me your energy, Father. . .or your brains.

Father liked that remark. He was proud of his mind, his gift for languages, for theology, for chemistry. He smiled and sat back in his chair. His teeth were yellow and crooked, and they were about all I could see as he disappeared into the leather luxury of his seat. You’re just what they need, Columba. They are. . having troubles.

Oh, no, I sighed.

Financial mostly. They recently took on a new mission project, a seminary for belated vocations, for men a bit older, men without the education to go to a regular seminary, second career men, you know the kind. There were 10 or so the first two years. They have 12 of them returning next month.

Oh no.

Oh, yes. And there’s been constant grumbling about the Prior.

Oh no.

Yes. I don’t know if color has anything to do with it. Mississippi has been to hell and back for the past few years, all because of the integration order in ‘54. But something is wrong at Saint Luke’s, and with the seminarians coming in, well, we need a man of authority, a man of heft, a no-nonsense prior, at least for a while.

But Father, I said. People who know me say I’m more nonsense than no-nonsense.

He nodded. You’re humble, Columba, you have a healthy self disdain, and that’s good. He eyed me curiously, a smile playing around his mouth. I know your little tricks, the way you act old so that people will think you’re over the hill.

But Father. . .

He stood up suddenly. You leave in two weeks. He was through talking. He was now loading Chiang’s boats. I struggled to my feet. Prior James, the black man, has been given a Sabbatical leave. He will come here, you will go there. Take charge, Prior Columba. Sniff out the trouble, do a complete analysis, write me a report. His smile was gone. He fixed me with his eyes. Tell you what. You get things back to normal, reestablish some order, and this time next year I’ll do what I can to get you back here.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I didn’t know whether I wanted to hug him or strangle him. A year, a whole year. I was so confused that I just sat there and mumbled, Yes, Father, all right.

We have the highest confidence in you. We? That’s when I knew God was behind this. God bless, he said, confirming it.

I found myself out on the deep, damp, green lawn. It was dark. Lights blinked from the cloister. I desperately needed to pee. It was so pressing that I knew I wouldn’t make it back to my room. I looked around to make sure I was alone, turned toward the garden wall, raised my cassock, unzipped my Bermuda shorts, and let fly.

You did this, didn’t You? I said as I relieved myself.

ME?

Another one of Your plots to make me make a fool of myself.

THAT’S THE OTHER GUY. SATAN.

No, it’s You. Chills ran up my spine as I forced out the last few squirts. I shook the last drops away. Tell me why. Why me?

WHY NOT YOU?

I zipped up and let my robe fall. Good question, I admitted

GOOD ANSWER.

I walked toward the cloister. You play dirty tricks.

I ARRANGE THINGS.

But why?

ASK NOT WHAT YOUR ORDER CAN DO FOR YOU. ASK WHAT YOU. . .

Oh, please. Is that where Kennedy got that line? From You?

NO. THEODORE SORENSEN. I SENT IT TO HIM. I HELP PROTESTANTS OCCASIONALLY, IF THEY’RE WORKING FOR CATHOLICS.

I sighed. Saint Luke’s. Mississippi. Oh, Saint William Faulkner, pray for me.

There was a crash of thunder, and lightning played across the sky. Big raindrops began to fall. I bounced like a beach ball across the grass toward the cloister and my protective cell. As I ran, I heard Him laugh.

Chapter II

I left Saint Vincent’s for Dixie early on a September morning. I left early because I knew it was a long trip and I can’t drive as far now in one sitting as I once could. Then too, I hate goodbyes. Whether fake or genuine, I hate tears, so I tend to sneak away from places. Not that anyone at Saint V’s would truly miss me; I hadn’t been there long enough to make many real friends, and we monks are forbidden particular friendships. Which is probably why so many of us come unstrung and go half crazy at some point or other. Even in a Community, it’s a lonely life, purposely so, in order to spend a lot of time with God, heaven help us. Alone with God: another reason to go insane.

I had tried to reason with Father Superior a couple more times, persuade him to change his mind about sending me down there, but it had been a