The Pig Comes to Dinner by Joseph Caldwell Page B

easy.”
    â€œOh, don’t tell me! Not you and Kieran. Not trouble so soon!”
    â€œOh, no, Father. Not that. Or—no—not really—”
    â€œThen praise be! You gave me a fright I haven’t had since the reforms of Vatican Two.”
    The good priest had been horrified by the conciliar changes: the idea of the Pope acting in concert with the bishops instead of ruling by fiat from the Chair of Peter had unsettled him completely. Fortunately for the aging priest, succeeding Popes—men of insufficient faith to trust in the workings of the Holy Spirit, as Pope John XXIII had done— had, with the craven acquiescence of those same bishops the council had meant to empower, nullified the reform. In doing so, they safely placed the children of God back into the grip of a mortal man too uneasy to expand the bounds of the universal church to include the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.
    The reform they retained—the liturgy in the language of the congregants—was, however, much to Father Colavin’s liking. That he should celebrate the divine mysteries and expound the good news of salvation in Irish seemed to him the just reversion of an ancient wrong that had been inflicted long centuries ago—against all common sense—to retain Rome as the Seat of Peter rather than transfer it to the one place on earth untouched by the barbarian rampage that had imposed illiteracy on an entire continent. It was an article of faith for Father Colavin to believe that it had been an Irish monk, schooled in an Irish abbey, who had journeyed to the land of the Franks to teach Charlemagne how to read. It was only too apparent that Dublin should have been declared the heart and head of Christendom, surrounded as it was by saints and scholars obviously able to rekindle the civilization of an extinguished continent. The suppression of this inspiration had been a torment to the priest, but still, he did have the consolation that it was now Gaelic words that summoned into the sacrifice of the mass the very presence of God himself. Of course, that this bit of Irish speaking in the liturgy was confined to a small patch of the planet along the coastlands of the Western Sea did, at times, disquiet him, but then he would celebrate yet another mass in the Church’s rightful tongue—Irish—and feel the triumphant swell within his breast available only to those who had waited patiently for this remediation of history.
    Kitty looked down at the shawl covering the table. “It’s not about Kieran I’ve come.”
    â€œAh—answered prayers. I must remember to give thanks.”
    â€œYes. Please do.” Kitty then, like Father Colavin, folded her hands on the tabletop. She was ready to begin. Or, if she was not ready, she would begin anyway. “There are ghosts in the castle,” she blurted.
    â€œGhosts in the castle,” Father Colavin repeated, nodding his head in ready belief. “Ah, yes. I’m not surprised. Interesting.”
    â€œYou believe me?”
    â€œBrid and Taddy. Are they the ones?”
    â€œYou know their names?”
    â€œDoesn’t everyone? And anyway, one of the few disadvantages of a long life is that so much knowledge is heaped upon my head that I sometimes worry my poor skull is going to crack under the weight and my brain drip down onto the floor like puffin droppings.”
    So surprised was Kitty by this easy acceptance that she wasn’t prepared to move on to the next phase of her mission: the actual request for an exorcism or whatever might be required to rid her marriage of this impermissible threat, the ghost of Brid. She had expected a lengthy discourse complete with Father Colavin’s disbelief, followed by Kitty insistences, then his demands for common sense, then her reiterated assurance that the supernatural was at work in her castle, then his attempt to cajole her by offering counsel often needed by newlyweds that