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population is increasing, while the supply of priests to serve them is bottoming out.”
    McNiff ran his hand over his facial stubble. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he repeated. “A lot of things have been tried. Nothing has worked. Oh, every once in a while there’s a slight gain. But nothing that could match what we had back then … back in the sixties.
    â€œOf course there’s constant demand for an optionally celibate clergy, and for women priests. But the institutional Church—mainly in the person of the Pope—keeps slamming the door.
    â€œWill it happen?” he mused after a moment. “It looks like there’s no alternative. If we’re going to field a team, we’ll have to fill it with women and men—married or not.”
    Their conversation had, to this point, been reflective and pessimistic. It continued in much the same mode. There seemed no escape from the autumnal state of today’s Catholic seminary.
    â€œHowever,” McNiff said, “at this point, I think we can consider one of your first questions.”
    â€œWhy they made you a bishop? “
    McNiff nodded. “Why, at my age, and with my fragile state of health, they made me a bishop.”
    Koesler could not help believing that this—the explanation of why McNiff had been ordained a bishop—was at the root of why they were meeting this evening.
    McNiff again shifted in his chair, still searching for that elusive comfortable position.
    â€œIt was a beautiful day in June a few years back,” he began. “I was more than aware that retirement was only a few years off. The Cardinal’s secretary phoned. The boss wanted to see me—that afternoon.”
    McNiff had reason to remember that meeting very clearly.

Five
    After the call summoning him to a command performance that afternoon, McNiff rummaged through his closet until he found a black suit just back from the cleaner’s. Then a new, never-worn clerical vest. Finally, a freshly laundered clerical collar. It was good to have clean new apparel for special occasions. A meeting with Detroit’s Cardinal archbishop more than qualified.
    McNiff, splendidly—for him—attired, early for his meeting, waited fifteen minutes in the Cardinal’s foyer.
    He was one of the relatively few local priests the Cardinal knew well. From time to time during his nearly forty years as archbishop of Detroit, Cardinal Mark Boyle had called on McNiff to handle some delicate matters—usually troublesome parochial flare-ups that needed a firm, decisive touch.
    Thinking about today’s meeting, which had consumed his attention since the secretary’s call, McNiff could not surmise what the Cardinal needed done. Particularly since the priest was so close to retirement age, whatever task Boyle might have in mind would have to be a short-term duty. But what could it be?
    Exactly at two, Boyle appeared in the foyer to escort McNiff into the inner office.
    That was out of the ordinary. Always previously he had been ushered in by the Cardinal’s secretary.
    The furniture in the rectangular office was configured for two distinctly different types of circumstances. At the far end, everything seemed “official,” with a high-back office chair behind an oversize but extremely organized desk, before which stood several straight-back chairs. The “business end” of the Cardinal’s office.
    The windows on the south wall overlooked a stretch of a once affluent, now nearly deserted, Washington Boulevard.
    At the near end of the office, closest to the door, comfortably upholstered chairs encircled a low, round coffee table. Boyle’s gesture invited McNiff to be seated in this more informal setting.
    There was no small talk. Boyle was not one to waste time, and it was not McNiff’s place to steer the conversation.
    Boyle was tall, ramrod-straight, distinguished-looking, with thinning