The Renegade Priest

When Leonard Cohen arrived at the mental health clinic, Dr. McNulty took him aside. “Are you ready for tomorrow night?”

The pastor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel had approached the clinic director some months back, requesting a presentation on the benefits of mental health counseling and, when the issue came up at the weekly staff meeting, Leonard volunteered to speak before the parishioners. “Yes, of course.”

“Well, there’s been a slight change in format,” Dr. McNulty noted.

Leonard cringed. “What exactly?”

Father Flannigan wants you to put a religious spin on the psychological services we provide.

Leonard felt his brain go numb as the panic attack settled in. “I’m an orthodox Jew, who knows nothing about Catholic theology. How the hell do I put a ‘religious spin’ on a twenty-minute lecture?”

Dr. McNulty wandered over to the window. In the parking lot a middle aged woman with blond hair and a worrisome expression was getting out of a tan Subaru. The habitually fretful woman, who couldn’t seem to get along with coworkers, had been fired from several jobs after brief tenures. Dr. McNulty had prescribed an anti-anxiety medication coupled with group therapy with little demonstrative improvement.

“Here, take this.” He handed Leonard a small, ebony-covered booklet not much bigger than the palm of his hand. “It’s a copy of the New Testament. Find a few relevant passages that relate to what we do here at the clinic and include them in your presentation. That should suffice.”

“I’m an orthodox Jew, who knows nothing about Catholicism,” he repeated with a shrill insistence.

Dr. McNulty tapped him supportively on the shoulder. “And I’m already late for my first appointment,” he said and hurried distractedly out the door.

*****

Several days later the clinic director cornered Leonard in the staff room sipping a cup of tepid coffee. “So how did your lecture at Our Lady of Mount Carmel go?”

“Quite well!” Leonard replied. “I cited several passages from the Corinthians and Thessalonians and that did the trick.”

The director swept a pile of crumbs on the palm of his hand and deposited the waste in the trash container. “I hope you had the good sense to steer clear of the Book of Revelations.”

Leonard frowned and shook his head vigorously. “Excuse the vernacular but I couldn’t make much sense out of that metaphysical gobbledygook.”

Dr. McNulty, whose dogmatic mindset hovered midway between agnostic and full-blown atheist, cracked a sardonic grin. “Even hard-core theologians have a tough time understanding that impenetrable nonsense.”

“In passing, I even mentioned the ‘Kat Yam Ha’melech’.

The director gawked at Leonard in mild disbelief. “You lost me there.”

“Kat Yam Ha’melech,” he repeated, favoring the guttural Hebrew inflection. “The Dead Sea Sect was a Jewish community which lived during the Second Temple period; they adopted a strict and separatist way of life, living in caves near the Dead Sea from the beginning of the second century until its destruction by the Romans around seventy c.e.”

“Why mention such a thing to a bunch of provincial hicks?”

“Some Jewish scholars,” Leonard explained, “believe Jesus turned his back on the traditional Pharisees, developing his decidedly Christian beliefs while living among members of the Dead Sea sect.” “The Catholics have their Sermon on the Mount, while traditional Jews favor ‘mitzvahs’, unsolicited acts of kindness.” Leonard removed his bifocals and cleaned the lens with a cloth. “Whether devout Catholic or orthodox Jew, it all boils down to treating people with common decency, which is what we do here at the clinic.”

“Well your otherworldly rant didn’t do the mental health clinic any irreparable damage,” the director quipped. “We already got a half dozen members of the church calling to inquire about our range of services. Three already signed up for the Wednesday night group therapy.”

For each community member who couldn’t afford to formally pay for services the clinic received a generous, per capita allotment from the state. If they paid privately, all the better. In either case it was a win-win proposition! “The Dead Sea Sect,” the director said. “You didn’t go into graphic details about the renegade Jews’ connection with the Son of God?”

Leonard shook his head from side to side. “Only mentioned it in passing.”

The staff director turned to leave but only made it halfway to the door before abruptly pivoting on his heels. “The funniest thing,” Dr. McNulty was grinning foolishly. “Father Flannigan, called earlier today to say how much the congregation appreciated the way you interspersed Christian doctrine with the presentation. One woman even asked if you might have been a former priest who, for whatever reason, had left the ministry.”

“Dear God!” Leonard muttered. “Most priests leave the church because they did something unconscionable.”

Dr. McNulty began to giggle at the sheer inanity. “A defrocked Jewish priest masquerading as a clinical social worker!”

* * ** *

“What’d you think of that psychologist who spoke so eloquently last week?” Tillie Carmichael asked. An emaciated, string bean of a woman, Tillie was the choir organist. The third Tuesday of every month throughout the winter months a group of women who participated in the Our Lady of Mount Carmel church choir met at a parishioner’s house for a potluck dinner, pleasantries and social gossip. “Quite a handsome fellow don’t you think?”

Rhonda Fisk, who was heaping her plate with a healthy portion of American chop suey, looked up. “Father Ramsey’s gilded tongue and good looks got him in a ton of trouble.” Rhonda, a rotund redhead replied tersely.

Tillie blinked spastically a half dozen times. “Father Ramsey?"

“That parish priest in the western part of the state who the bishop removed and sent packing several years back.”

“You knew him?”

“Never actually laid eyes on the scoundrel,” Rhonda clarified testily. “I’m just going on hearsay.” She grabbed a roll plus a Danish pastry off a side tray before reaching for the pasta salad. “A close friend of mine, Mitzi Gaynor, was in a sewing circle with a woman who belonged to the church where Father Ramsey officiated.”

Tillie rubbed the side of her nose where a persistent roseola had evolved into a chronic itch. “And what exactly did she tell you?”

“Not much. Nobody knows diddley-squat about what crimes of passion he may have committed.”

“And your suggesting that the psychologist who came to speak the other week -”

“I ain’t suggesting nothing,” Rhonda shot back in a peremptory tone. They found their way to a seat at the dining room table where a half dozen other choir members were already hunkered down and enjoying the impromptu meal. “He said he’s Jewish, but we don’t know any more about Dr. Cohen than the glib gibberish he threw at us.”

“Who you talking about?” An nearsighted elderly woman with a bad set of dentures sitting across the table piped in.

“That smooth-talking charlatan they sent over from the community mental health center.” Rhonda teased a healthy mound of American chop suey onto her fork and positioned it just below her double chin. “Sometimes a person who commits a crime sneaks off… leaves the area and reinvents himself.”

“Assumes a new identity,’ Tillie blurted, anticipating her train of thought.”

Rhonda stared thoughtfully at the orangey pasta hovering inches from her plump lips. “Other times they could simply be hiding in plain sight, acting like a perfectly respectable member of the community that welcomes them with open arms.”

Tillie Carmichael gawked confusedly at the woman, trying to decipher her intent. “So what you’re saying is…”

“Now don’t go putting wayward words in my mouth,” ,” Rhonda brought the woman up short. Leaning over the table she continued talking but in hushed tones. “Betty Baxter,” she gestured at a blonde-haired woman several tables over near the water cooler, “told me she’s thinking of dragging her husband off to marriage counseling.”

A nervous tic over Tillie's left eye gravitated to her cheek. “And why’s that?”

“They haven’t been intimate since the Clintons were in the White House.” Her voice dropped several additional decibels. “Every night after supper Betty showers and climbs into bed with a Harlequin Romance, while her husband sneaks off to the den with his freakin’ girlie magazines.”

“Soft porn?”

“More like the triple X, hard-core smut!” Rhonda screwed her face up in disgust. “Slatternly Sluts and Bodacious Bimbos… that was one of the titles. A bevy of horny housewives who can’t keep their panties on.”

“Dear God!”

“If my husband pulled that crap, he’d find himself out on the sidewalk with neither a toothbrush or set of clean underwear.” Rhonda’s plate was empty. The only thing left was the cheese Danish. “I’ve got a ton more to say on the matter, but wait while I go fill my coffee mug, and then I’ll expand on my theory about the dubious and potentially devious Dr. Leonard Cohen."