The Archdeacon Returns - Chapter Two

Chapter 2: A Meeting with the Bishop

Bishop Temperance Verity sat forward in her chair and fondled her vape-stick between her fingers.  The Archdeacon could tell that her previous meeting must have gone overtime and that she had missed her mid-afternoon vape.  He knew her well for they had been friends since their seminary days and had remained so after she was elected bishop.  In fact, while they were people of very different dispositions, the Archdeacon may have been her closest friend and confidant.  It was he, and he alone, whom she entrusted with the visitation to restructure the diocese, and at great personal cost, he had honoured the trust she placed in him.

It would be fair to say that either by disposition or by accomplishment, the Bishop was not universally loved. She was an assertive, demagogic leader, who spoke her mind without reserve, wore her authority without shame or regret, and had used those singular gifts that God had given her to do the work to which she believed she and been called without apology.  Some thought an axe or machete might have been a more appropriate symbol of her ministry than a shepherd’s crozier, the bishop’s staff. But it cannot be denied that her drastic measures had saved the diocese during a period of steep decline and financial struggle.  I doubt that there was anyone else that could have done what she had done.  Certainly, none of the other candidates who were on the ballot when she was elected would have had the fortitude or perseverance to see through to the end what she had accomplished.  Yes, it is true, she was not well-loved, but she did not care.  She had a high sense of her calling and a thoroughgoing self-confidence that she had done right by the Church and right by her Lord.  She had executed her vision with a single-minded focus, undeterred. 

As I have related, the Archdeacon was once a very popular man amongst his peers, but due to his association with Bishop Verity’s vision and program of restructuring, he found himself reaping what she had sown.  He did not resent her, though. Rather, his association with the Bishop had given him a sympathetic understanding and insight into the world she inhabited and the enormous burden she carried.  He knew that her clergy talked about her behind her back - she knew it, too - questioning and critiquing every decision she made and even impugning her Christian character.  It could not have been easy to be as hated as she was, and he marvelled at how she bore it. He now had a small taste of what it was to be despised by your colleagues, and it tore at him every day.  He could not imagine carrying the disapprobation that she carried.  She bore it with a touch of sarcasm and a measure of her own kind of grace. If he had a soft spot for her before he became an archdeacon, it was even softer now. He he had been a faithful friend before he was even more faithful now. In a strange way, he admired her, knowing he could never be like her, carrying the weight of her office without caring what anyone thought of her. She had a spine of steel, a strong sense of self, a single-mindedness of purpose, all wrapped in that sarcastic but faithful package. 

However, as the Archdeacon took his seat across from her that afternoon, and she continued fondling her vape-stick, he could tell something was wrong. She was shaken.  He had never seen her like this and it was clear that she was not simply missing her afternoon sidewalk vape.  Something was very wrong.  She was exuding an uncharacteristic anxiety, quite unfamiliar to him.

“Tom,” she began, “I’m f*cked.”

His eyes widened, not at the use of the expletive, for he was quite used to her colourful utterances; rather, he was shocked that she had admitted, in his presence, to being in any sort of trouble or to being vulnerable.

“What is it…can I help in some way?”

“You can pray. That’s what we priests are supposed to do, isn’t it?”  

The Archdeacon stared at her silently, waiting.

“It’s cancer.  That’s why I’ve called you in. I do need your help, and much more than your prayers.”  The Bishop explained to the Archdeacon what he had immediately begun to suspect, that the years of smoking had brought on lung cancer. A few years back, her doctor, in a desperate and last ditch effort to get her to give up cigarettes had suggested she take up vaping. Apparently, that had not really done her lungs any favours either. The long and the short of it was that the prognosis was not good.  Some chemo would be administered to try to slow the growth of her tumours, she would get some radiation, something to manage the pain, but things were quite advanced.  It was not a matte of “if” but “when”.

“I’m not just going to lie down and die, though,” she said, walking back somewhat from her previous expletive. “In spite of what the clergy of this diocese might think, I’m still a person of prayer and I’d like to think that God doesn’t want me just yet.” 

The Archdeacon wasn’t quite sure what to say. Words can sometimes fail even the most experienced and pastorally gifted priest.  He was hearing her words not as her Archdeacon, but as her friend, and that left him speechless.

“So Tom,” she said, trying to keep her focus on what she needed him to do, “I’m going to need your help. I’m going to keep working as long as I can, but I’ll need you to do much of my leg work, some of my parish visits, help those parishes going through selection processes for new clergy, deal with Diocesan Council, and generally hold things together when I’m feeling like shit during my treatments.  I expect I’ll have to make you my commissary at some point if I’m not able to function at all.”

The question of resigning or going on a formal sick-leave never crossed her mind.  She didn’t want to give her enemies the satisfaction of of seeing her step down.

“The vultures will be circling around my not-yet-dead carcass as soon as word gets out that I’m sick. They’ll be making their plans as to who will sit in this chair next. I know it.  I’m damned-well going to make them wait as long as possible.  I may even outlive a few of them.  But what I want them to see is what you can do, Tom.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Of course you don’t. That’s why I trust you, and that’s why they need to see how good you are.  I gave you a shit job and you handled it faithfully and professionally, but now they need to see how you can care for them, and lead them.”

The Archdeacon had at one time in his former life been a “purple-dreamer”. He used to imagine himself in a bishop’s mitre, but his days as archdeacon, his travails, let us say, had cured him of any such ambition.

“You’d make a damn good bishop, Tom. I want them to see it,” she paused for moment, “and in any event, you’re the only person in the world I really trust with the work while I’m still here.”

“I…I…I’ll help you out,” he said, “but I have no designs on episcopal…”

“Shhhh!” She hissed, “that’s for the Holy Ghost to decide, not you.”

Thus, our friend relented to the bishop’s request to help carry her workload. He spoke no further about her attempt to set him up as her successor. It would be of no use to argue with her.  He would help her through her illness, but having been the architect of a major diocesan downsizing, parish closures, and amalgamations, he was confident that he had enough enemies that he would never be nominated for that high office, much less elected.  He missed being liked.  Perhaps, if anything, he could use this time to rehabilitate his image, not for the purpose of being elected bishop, but for rekindling and restoring the lost relationships he missed so dearly.

...The Archdeacon Returns continues tomorrow...

To read the previous chapter, click here.