Free Three Cheers For The Paraclete by Thomas Keneally

holds up the walls of banks and puts the pillars in and the loveless furniture from Scandinavia. Just as surely, hands of influential men feign fatherly interest on the waists of artists’ molls who breakfast, come rain, hail, predestination or signs in the heavens, just as surely on methedrine and cornflakes.
    ‘How do I know what you might say from a cathedral pulpit?’ Nolan wondered.
    Maitland said, ‘If you wished, I could give you some sort of promise.’ He had lost interest in Nolan’s demands and in what the programme described as ‘one of the art events of the cultural year in this country’. It was apter than Nolan suspected that the president of a House of Studies for priests should be here on theoutskirts of the event. For the priests pursued their orthodoxy and the artists theirs, orthodoxies alien to each other, orthodoxies in conflict with society at large, orthodoxies prolific in closed minds. Of which his was one, but could not challenge Nolan’s.
    A woman of dark, gangling and slightly speckled beauty was speaking now to Egan. She had a long, very special neck rising from a cowled dress of the same colour as the monsignor’s stock, and she bent to Egan who was three inches shorter and whose lips were, at that moment, compressed toutishly as if he were giving the inside story on something.
    Orthodoxies prolific in closed minds.
    ‘You could ruin your career with a rash sermon. I’ll preach myself if there is any doubt about yours. His Grace and I both consider it necessary to know exactly what you intend to say. The main danger of our not knowing is to yourself, James, and it’s no small danger.’
    Now that drinks had been had and the crowd were familiar with the form and colour and even the texture of all the visions hung there, a general listlessness seemed to have come down on the occasion. This and Nolan’s speech were both broken in upon by some dutiful hand-clapping. Like a master-stroke of ennui, a vice-regal party made an entrance and speeches began. Under this cover, Maitland excused himself from Nolan and crept across the room. When he was obscured from the monsignor by thickets of art-lovers, he stood on his own, applauding the awards.
    As soon as the speeches ended, a very elegant young man assailed him from the side.
    ‘Father,’ he said, ‘you’ve seen that fierce-looking Christ over there?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’
    ‘Don’t you think it improper, honestly, that an interpretation like that should be actually hung in an exhibition of religious paintings?’
    The young man squinted at the painting and turned a geometrically barbered neck on Maitland. He seemed to be possessed by a strong sectarian anger.
    ‘It’s sad,’ Maitland was willing to say. ‘Christian mystics are overwhelmed by the very opposite of that.’ He nodded at the picture. ‘They’re impressed to gasping point by his – what? – elected defencelessness, you could say. That sort of thing over there hurts. On the other hand, it should make us wonder what we’ve done to earn him so much hate.’
    ‘What we’ve done?’ the boy echoed. ‘By we , do you mean priests, father?’
    ‘Priests among others, perhaps.’
    ‘You wouldn’t see that painting then as the work of the forces of darkness?’
    ‘Not altogether. We’ve done a lot to make Christ seem anti-human. And anything that’s anti-human ends up hated by people who can’t be said to be the utter dregs.’
    ‘There seems to be a strong element of hatred right through the exhibition,’ the young man ventured, and spent some minutes depressing Maitland with an interpretation of some of the dingiest paintings in the hanging area. At length Costello loomed and made signs with his eyes.
    ‘Excuse me,’ said Maitland. ‘It’s time for us to go, I think.’
    The haranguing boy said, ‘Certainly, father,’ and vanished.
    ‘Wanted to deliver you from that fellow,’ Costello explained. ‘Bloody old woman. What was he on about?’
    ‘Just