PRODIGAL PARISH (2016)
Leo F. White
Book Baby, 302 pp.
★★
Mine is one of many New England towns in which Roman
Catholic churches are closing faster than standup comics with stage fright.
It's also among those in which there is a small band of ageing parishioners who
refuse to accept that they are too few in number and too shallow in the pocket
to maintain their once-grand but now–crumbling church. It has been closed and
desanctified, but quixotic lawsuits persist and the occasional guerilla
occupation occur. It is its own statement that more Catholics these days fret over
parish closings than the church's ongoing sexual abuse cover-ups.
All of this is to say that Leo F. White's murder mystery Prodigal Parish is no Spotlight. It's mostly a Catholic
fantasy novel, and a wooden, clichéd, recycled one at that. It is set in
Boston, where St. Theresa's–known as the "Poor People's Parish"–sits
on Everton Street* uncomfortably near the well-heeled St. Matthew's. The diocese has already decided to close St. Theresa's once its elderly priest, Father
Coniglio, dies. Forget the fact that few will trek to St. Matthew's, which is
far too rich for the blood of those in a area that has crossed the line from being
a down-market working class neighborhood to a social problems repository of drugs,
rough bars, motorcycle gangs, and organized crime. In White's book, men more
interested in pomp and money than in social uplift run the Boston Diocese. If
Father Moore had his way, St. Theresa's would already be on the auction block.
Alas, his otherwise hard-shelled superior, Cardinal Burke, has a soft spot for
Father Coniglio, a friend from seminary. Instead, Burke and Moore appoint
Father Wesley to be Coniglio's associate priest with the charge of being a combination
caregiver/spy. (Moore also wants him to run the old barn into the ground.)
Wesley doesn't want the job for the very reasons Moore
thinks he's perfect–it's the old 'hood he left in order to cleanse his long
list of failures and sins: heartbreak, an alcoholic family, a stalled boxing
career, a DUI fatality, prison….
Wesley is both street- and brain-smart; he realizes that Moore views him
as the perfect patsy: the unsavory local who will engineer the demise of a
beloved parish. Watch two old Bing Crosby films in which he portrays Father
Chuck O'Malley–1944's Going My Way
and its 1945 sequel, The Bells of St.
Mary's. Mash them, take out the comedy, interject a dose of Karl Malden
from On the Waterfront, a tiny bit of
Father Ralph de Bricassant from The Thorn
Birds, mix in some paste-up locals, and you've got Prodigal Parish. As readers easily surmise from chapter three on,
Father Wesley has other plans for his return of the prodigal son act:
interjecting new life to St. Theresa's and honoring her social mission. Let the
cheap hooks rain down from heaven: a big mutt named Shagtyme, a gang leader
with a heart of gold, inept hoodlums, wayward girls, parents with
turn-of-the-20th-century, values, an aborted abortion, wide-eyed
children…. And did you ever notice that young priests are always ex-boxers?
There's nary a lacrosse, tennis, or video game player among them. (Of course,
in today's world, there aren't many young ones either!)
This is a classic good-versus-evil tale pitting dreamers
against schemers. I give White credit for tossing in a few plot turns I didn't
see coming, but most of this book is as predictable as post-sunset darkness. To
return to my opening comments, it's a Catholic fantasy novel in which it is
possible to turn back the clock and reset the ethos that marked the church's
prelapsarian glory days. It's easy to imagine White himself as a sit-in parishioner seeking a reset.
White is better at plot than prose. He repeats words and
phrases, skirts histrionic borders, descends into sentimentalism, and
oversimplifies conflict resolution. Subplots involving violence and swindle are
engaging enough to make Prodigal Parish a
non-taxing summer read for Catholic lads and lasses. Alas, I'm not Catholic and
I read it in November.
Rob Weir
* Postscript:
There is an Everton Street in the Dorchester section of Boston and both a St.
Matthew's (Ashmont/Dorchester) and a St. Theresa-Avila (West Roxbury). They are
not close in distance (6.5 miles) and I have no idea whether White used these
as models, though sections of Dorchester fit the social profile he assigns for
St. Theresa's Parish.
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