No Greater Love by William Kienzle

was small enough that the students got to know each other well.
    From the very beginning of their relationship, Cody had deferred to Page, in a dependent sort of way.
    Page didn’t mind. Cody’s dependence was not of an annoying nature. Besides, Page enjoyed Cody’s gradual metamorphosis into gofer, researcher, ghostwriter, surrogate son—in sum, a creature only a few steps up from a flunky.
    Cody was glad to perform small services. He had so much to learn. As the years rolled by and ordination neared, he grew more and more aware of his arrested adolescence. It seemed to him the seminary system was designed to slow his development.
    In only a few more months, I will be a priest, he thought.
    He compared himself with his mentor, Bill Page, who was old enough to be his father.
    When the two talked, as they frequently did, it was clear that Page was ready on all counts to assume the new clerical role. He was of an age that he could realistically be called “Father”—if parishioners wished to so address him. Sure, a lot of them would be older than he … old enough even to be his father. Still, the span of the mid-forties was, objectively, an age of maturity.
    Page also was ready for ordination theologically. Though he had no independent conviction about such matters, he had learned to rely on the theological bent of the majority of his seminary professors. Thus he was in complete conformity with the magisterium, i.e., the Pope.
    It was a safe, comfortable path. The magisterium instructed you what to believe and what laws to obey. Believe this and do that and heaven is guaranteed you.
    Page was ready.
    Cody was not.
    At his ordination, Cody would be all of twenty-five. Not a child by any means. Yet nowhere near as mature as contemporaries in the big, bad world. He had so little experience. Out there, men his age had begun a distinctively adult life. They had to hold down demanding jobs, into which they had to grow.
    They were starting families, undoubtedly their primary responsibility. They had to budget their incomes—and they knew how. They knew the rules and regulations that governed their lives in the workplace as well as in the home.
    Some belonged to Catholic parishes and attended Mass on Sunday. These—the Faithful—could be divided roughly into three groups: the main body of middle-of-the-roaders, the liberals, and the conservatives. Both of the latter were deeply—sometimes intensely—committed and involved in the Church structure on the diocesan and parochial levels.
    Meanwhile, Albert Cody was still a student. He attended school—much the same sort of school he had attended on the elementary, high school, and college levels. He and his fellow students seldom questioned what they were taught. They learned basically from the magisterium. There was enough of this to tide them over from year to year.
    Far from starting a family, Al Cody barely knew where babies came from. No matter how long he preached and taught, he would never completely grasp the responsibility of raising a family or holding down a job in order to provide that family stability and security.
    All in all, unlike his mentor, Albert Cody felt childlike in relating to his coming parishioners. To them he would be “Father”—the way things were going in parochial life, probably “Father Al.”
    He would, of course, have to deal with the right, the center, and the left. But how? He had no convictions of his own, nothing he could depend upon. He was pretty sure he would be conservative to the right, liberal to the left, and at relative ease with the uncommitted.
    He was confused. And he was afraid.
    His only hope, as he saw it, was to depend on and learn from Bill Page.
    They were an odd couple, in more than one respect. Page at approximately six feet was some inches taller than Cody. His oval face usually wore a bland expression. His seasoned eyes seemed older than the rest of him. They