The education of Theodore Ursus:
Roberts, E.F.
THE EDUCATION OF E.F. ROBERTS THEODORE URSUS A...
...His reward was the pre- But did the Mexicans need a lay bureaucracy, a committee struccise opposite of his fictional counterpart: he was made the ture, a full menu of lectures and meetings...
...Soon enough Communion should have to be into which he had brought and nurtured them...
...It then Trial subscription offer: 11 issues for $12...
...As usual, she A spoonful of eschatology was going to be left with the next best thing after the menfolk: helps the medicine go down, tending to an upper-middle-class flock too timid actually to or so Mary Poppins said...
...If God still lived, Ursus was bound for But then, come to think of it, Ursus mused, this itself might hell...
...Commonweal 13 August 1993: 13 law school...
...Workers, tax gatherers, and even whores would have been comfortable in these old settings, and he had known them all and been comfortable with them...
...The Geezer had concluded the pre- ditches and installing gas mains to help pay his way through Communion prayers and everyone was making ready for the modem high point of the Mass when greetings were exchanged...
...was that he had been as comfortable with the Trinity as his remote ancestors had been with Morrigan, Macha, and Bobd, the Now...
...People actually relished what they were doing, finding a great deal of satisfaction installing what has become known as an infrastructure...
...Yet he had never Catholicism was still taboo among leading lights in a presti- seen the equal of the teaching, be it sometimes a brutal appligious Ivy League university near the end of the twentieth cen- cation of the Socratic method, than he had witnessed there...
...If the truth were known, the taken on the role of Arthur Winner and had been instrumental pastor would have preferred going off to Mexico as a missionary...
...tears, and busied himself establishing soup kitchens and enBut no, it wasn't the behavior of a coreligionist which was rolling the poor on the voting rolls...
...people he worked with at the gas company, several of them having died together in an accident on the job...
...it met the needs of the customers and kept them within the church...
...It was C.P...
...goddesses of war...
...But, he paused to check himself, why get excited...
...nomics...
...Still, before In honor of the inauguration of Glenn R. Bucher, he died, God used to lay about smiting people left and right 5th President of the Graduate Theological Union...
...That was where the real church was, the church of misfits, the outcasts, the sinners as it were...
...But where did this line of thinking leave Ursus...
...dawned upon him that progress so-called entailed casualties...
...Consider that poor bugger Job...
...boo-boo, love-bug interval...
...Someone has to die to sig- somehow God was implicated in these somber proceedings...
...of nowhere...
...Let the dead bury fessor of half-baked nostrums peddled under the guise of ecotheir dead...
...Indeed, concluded Ursus, my Virgin is the Adams descended on one of his untenured juniors at a time it was be- Memorial...
...tain should any of the junior faculty prove too obstreperous...
...Ursus had been deprived of, if not technically his beliefs, his Name cultural environment...
...and shipped out to local churches, who would have to rely on Damn, damn, damn, reiterated Ursus, there was irony here laypersons to lead Sunday services...
...In celebration of 30 years of distinguished, denominational, ecumenical, "Peace" was on everyone's lips as they shook hands or hugged and interfaith theological education at the Graduate Theological Union - each other...
...Few law professors, after all, were ever killed on the job in an industrir M 11 al accident...
...Cavafy's "Ithaca" fessional negligence in one way or another...
...What had the makings think of a priestess or two...
...But it had to he admitted that Sisson was the kind of high Tory not much seen in the flesh since 1649...
...And the Geezer was right to be constructing someOr words to that effect...
...Virginia West Davidson, Elder, Downtown United Presbyterian Church, Rochester, New York Dr...
...Well, ation upon generation of one's forebears...
...Malpractice lawbeing spoken in Greek and then in English...
...Along cent selection of a new dean in the attenuated processes of which the sides of each of its four arms erect stone walls just taller only one candidate had been left in the running...
...sin seriously...
...Frank Chikane, General Secretary hell of an odd way to be thinking...
...of the South Africa Council of Churches Bishop Francisco Claver, Institute on Church and Social Issues, Manila, Philippines Quid est veritus...
...Certainly the archbishop of Canterbury would know and wouldn't give a damn...
...It didn't Christmas, or Mother Christmas for that matter, who forgave help much to think that this cretin was a lector in a nearby rural everyone for everything, excepting perhaps fascists and Nazis parish, which was probably the very reason that Ursus started for anything...
...But at work there were only RELIGION: SOURCE OF CONF11CLSOURCE OF HOPE lessons in human depravity, and these were rendered all the more depressing because the depraved lacked the daring to com- Sunday, September 19,1993 mit anything but venial sins against each other...
...of Honor, the last, if not actually the only Tory novelist America One had to admit the pastor was doing all in his power to had produced...
...But again, just as God appears to have died, so has leading lights, a legal theorist of international renown...
...All of which suggested that he 15 Dutch Street, New York, N.Y...
...But in this case the part- dying off and young men were no longer joining the priesthood ners had kicked the deceased out of the firm he had built and to replace them...
...10038 was left a person without hope and without direction...
...Would Rome I 0 1 prefer a full year's subscription at $39...
...There are no tragedies in America, only farces...
...be the lesson...
...hands, to smile, to do everything but be able to have a quiet Odd the Cavafy touch...
...ROBERTS is the Edwin H. Wntrdruff professor of'laiv at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, Near York...
...Cozzens's protagonist had been moment of interiorized communication with a felt Almighty in named Arthur Winner, itself an ironic hit, since he symbolized an appropriate setting...
...And what had happened to for a novel by James Gould Cozzens, were not that benight- him...
...The Archbishop of Nothingness/Blew up a hag of wind one day/In place of a sermon, more or less, /At least, that is what people say...
...That the man had been a rabid homosexual...
...It was then that Ursus began to recall the lines of another one of Cavafy's poems...
...He had my world...
...If heodore Ursus was relieved to find that the But what is truth...
...Maybe a serious rehearsal of experience might advised the neophyte to beware this potential candidate, this shed some light on his recent black-dog mood...
...Enough said...
...Welcome, friends, to the multira- it was Mass recited in banal English, no, American, along with cial, multilingual, multimorality Republic wherein everything everyone constantly getting up to sing, to shake hands, to hold goes, even Cavafy in church...
...But damn it, the new order apwhich exposed the partners to criminal as well as civil liabili- peared to involve committees, and committees on committees ty...
...Or perchance, the lesson might tice his religion...
...long live Rotary...
...In fact, that was irony itself come to think of it...
...Somewhere in the novel Darkness at Noon, the interI rogator Gletkin suggested to Rubashov that, while he was ICity, State, Zip being sacrificed for the good of the Party, some future generI ation would raise a memorial to him and his kind...
...It tion might actually reveal that there were some real lessons to didn't matter whether the fellow had long ago ceased to prac- be distilled out of experience...
...It was Rotary out of Sociology II...
...He was going to win even though one of his line of each of the arms must meet...
...Here was being remembered affectionEpiscopal church adhered physically to ancient ately a dead lawyer, well loved for helping newly arrived acatraditions, evidenced by the choir...
...El 14: 13 August 1993 Commonweal...
...Gone was the feeling that one was parlishment, a mean-spirited fellow with no love for Jews, Catholics, ticipating in something that had been participated in by generor Negroes, much less the poor of whatever belief or hue...
...A good poem, even if it had been comA funeral posed by a reprobate...
...There was the lay Cozzens's last popular novel, By Love Possessed (1957), had deacon listening intently to his master's voice...
...Gustavo Gutierrez, Instituto Bartolome de Las Sitting one night in his study, Ursus reflected upon his mus- Casas-Rimac, Lima, Peru ings at the funeral and in his own church...
...And the ratbag, poor woman...
...And like- a prepossessing setting for a law school, what with its collecly, like a good Celt, Ursus was in church because Roman tion of seedy saloons and burlesque houses...
...Connect these A frames tenured friends, having appointed himself something of a camwith plywood so as to roof in the building over the walls, and paign manager, was threatening to make tenure difficult to obadd...
...trying to maintain some semblance of civility and order in an Ursus gave another look at his pastor, decked out in sandals ever more corrupt demos...
...These were never sermons halls had urged on the future dean's most ardent opponents, this about heaven or hell, or really anything very theological...
...He was a dinosaur on the verge of exAddress tinction...
...He did not find much peace in church, only orchestrated togetherness...
...Enough indeed, mused turn out to be that there were no meanings thereby to be deUrsus, to make me come to Mass each week even though I some- rived, a good reason not to pursue the idea...
...gatory...
...Then in his last year he had become careless and an Suddenly Ursus woke to the poetry reading being rendered error might have caused his partners to become liable for proby a professor in the university...
...The herr doktor professor, pulling himself up ences and the luck of the genetic draw which makes each of us to his full Napoleonic height and putting on a very serious face, what we are...
...Now nal when the old order passes...
...He tried for a moment to shift his thoughts to purely secular concerns, better to blank out the Geezer's nattering about the need for tithing to support the bureaucracy he had built up...
...As with the Jews, religion among His mind began to go back to the days when he went to a certain Celtic elements becomes a racial thing, a mark of the law school situated on the upper floors of an office building tribe to which one belongs and can never leave, even when one abutting a run-down square in downtown Boston, then hardly ceases to believe in the actual tenets of the religion...
...Yet, by the standards of working people, real working people who used their hands and their backs and got dirty, those were grand days...
...And for Ursus, these had been very grand ' rW 11111 small days indeed...
...Strike that...
...Sisson's lines go...
...Add more person was the university president's choice and that the votes frames down each arm, but near where they meet, angle these were there to evidence sufficient faculty support to legitimate soaring beams toward the center point over which the center his appointment...
...It even dawned upon Ursus to the birth of land-use controls and sound fiscal management that the deceased would have made an almost too perfect model in a number of local townships...
...This he found to be a more lot was taken at a meeting of the faculty...
...How did it go precisely...
...The faculty were than a man...
...But 510-649-2420 GTU that god had been replaced by something more akin to Father...
...They did not bode Dr...
...This was the very novel which catalyzed the assault on Cozzens and total involvement of everybody in everything...
...A poem very suitable for the service were the truth to be known...
...But this only made him more eager to be off Get that effect to serve the poor and the outcasts in some disgusting province in every issue of Commonweal...
...Beware of young consecrated at a central church by whatever priests still remained lions, thought Ursus...
...The congregation, suits were, after all, an American sport of some kind as their by and large upper-middle-aged and classed, educated by American standards, sat and listened as they would to any other reading in church...
...thing Rotarian...
...His own recent writ- Gustav Niebuhr, Washington Post ings had been bottomed upon the idea of a universe governed Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological purely by chance, which suggested that there weren't many Seminary, Decatur, Georgia lessons to be drawn from his concrete experience...
...Then, Ursus was sitting inside his own church trying to think how lo and behold, the day of reckoning was had when a secret balhe would describe it if he had to...
...Then at the end of each arm erect an A frame, badly split between dries who favored this person and wets who omitting the crossbar and running the arms up at an angle so could not abide him...
...One of the most docinteresting exercise than listening to the pastor who was trinaire of the wets, one who in whispered conversations in the launched into one of his sermons...
...The deceased Greek-American had and affecting the habit of a monk...
...His wife had run off to California with an itinerant proed soul himself already dead and buried...
...Also a lawyer who had overseen the development of a local, white, Anglo-Saxon patriarch who had made small-city new waterworks, a new public library, and had been midwife or large-town America function...
...God's world was a world of chaos, calamity, and no justice at all, a world of Contact: Graduate Theological Union 2400 Ridge Rd., Berkeley, CA 94709 chance as it were as far as humankind were concerned...
...By the same token, his teachers would not have doubted for a Al moment the value of what they were doing, and would have PA4 laughed at the idea that a call from some more renowned school ~ ~WAIZ i- had any intrinsic value...
...times doubt that God lives...
...Here of some local renown...
...Long gone were the ahhhhhhhhh...
...But neither Patrick Buchanan nor COMMONWEAL John McLaughlin struck Ursus as people he would particularly care to have on his property...
...He was in this demics with their conveyancing problems and later, when their place attending the memorial service for a lawyer children ran amok, with their juvenile court problems...
...ROBERTS THEODORE URSUS A STORY see)/that Ephialtes will finally appear, /and in the end the Medes will go through...
...Even a dog, 12: 13 August 1993 Commonweal thought Ursus, might have had more character than that...
...Likely it Subscribe...
...in making the local community work...
...lieved that a certain faculty member might contest the election Yet, we are all creatures of experience, and it is our experiof the new dean...
...At least she did not wear a robe courage of a stuffy, four-piece suit as it were, partner just his like the last one, but then again, she had quite a pert figure and, junior, to set things right while covering up the scandal, a feat mused Ursus wickedly, knew it...
...Rosemary R. Ruether, Garrett Theological well for the mental health of a man of sixty who was, by most Seminary, Evanston, Illinois standards, rather successful and well off...
...It's a shame they couldn't cope...
...These tury...
...Death might not be such a bad end to a tale told by an idiot which signified Speakers and panelists include: nothing...
...Comfortable, that is, so long as the mystery (Before it's too late...
...Gone were the awe it was just chance that the roof caved in on Cozzens, but the and even the opportunity, if one were so inclined, to feel that roof had to cave in on somebody...
...Christ now carried a hanky with which to wipe on this line of reverie at this particular moment...
...Long gone were the old law school premises, the school havSay ing migrated several times since to ever better physical plants in ever more upscale suburban settings...
...In fact, it was a The Rev...
...But the Geezer and the ratlady would put an end to that were teachers committed to teaching, this at the sacrifice of writwhen they converted the alien Roman church into the American ing fancy books that would get them a call to one of the better Rotary church...
...Gone were by the New York City literati and spelled his doom...
...8/13/93 some day acknowledge the intangible losses inflicted upon peoL J ple of the ilk of Ursus...
...If God still lived, Father Geezer of tragedy averted in fiction had, thanks to the invocation of and the ratlady were going to cost Ursus a lot of time in pura churched Cavafy, become farce when executed in real life...
...He was the dark church and the priest intoning Latin...
...And they merit greater honor/when they foresee (and many do foreE.F...
...without cause...
...of existence could be brooded upon in peace amidst one's own kind...
...He recalled also the summer days he spent digging Peace be with you...
...There was the involved the financial misdeeds of an old lawyer and the archpriestess doing the same...
...By God, Ursus wondered, would they sit just as stolidly were Anthony Blanche to declaim "The Wasteland" with the aid of a megaphone...
...God the last remnants of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant ascendancy was dead...
...What would they goat of the piece rather than the hero...
...Odd until it suddenly struck home that the Geezer was right in wanting to go off to Mexico or wherever to be with the poor...
...Had they any idea that Cavafy was "the poet of Alexandria" mentioned in Durrell's Alexandria Quartet...
...leave behind the necessary infrastructure...
...It finally occurred to him that this was a pretty odd way to be reflecting while sitting in church...
...Gone were the suddenly seen to be the apotheosis of the Anglo-Saxon estab- incense and the chants...
...schools...
...The Virgin of Chartres was at the bottom of things...
...One could, of course, pretend that things had not changed and act like a stage Celt, r I or one could accept the change and capitalize upon Celtic wit in today's Rotarian world...
...There had been a reImagine a huge Latin cross lying flat on the ground...
...Ursus hated every moment of this, to him, kissy- an International Conference and Interfaith Service...
...They fellow marked his ballot "yes" and showed it to the once and always came down to the fact that the priests in the area were future dean's mean-spirited campaign manager...
...Commonweal 13 August 1993: 11 professions devoured one another...
...Enough had been said...
...It was the behavior of one of the school's unknown...
...And by God, thought and the materials for James Gould Cozzens, author of Guard Ursus, the numbers proved him right...
...If the deceased had not was a lawyer who had almost to be dunned to send a bill, a been in fact an unchurched Greek-American, he might indeed phenomenon that merited considerable reflection in its own have made an apt subject for a book limning the archetypical right...
...How did C.H...
...Indeed, they were best forgotten, because by Ivy League standards those days were pretty seedy days...
...There was not quiet time for brooding in church anymore and the Celtic parish had disappeared...
...It had been pretty clear all along that this each just touches in passing the wall on its side...
...Long gone were those days...
...Indeed, reflecbecause he had been educated at Notre Dame...
...They were steps, after all, out of the dirt and the 7is~sar_~c-, grime of the working class from which he had sprung...
...This Church and state effort led Ursus to recall a recent event at the law school where he earned his keep as a chaired professor...
Vol. 120 • August 1993 • No. 14
