Page 229 - What They Did to the Kid

What They Did to the Kid 217

8

May 31, 1963

Things grew worse. Suddenly someone in Rome, some Machiavel-
lian cleric slinking around behind the open-hearted Pope, probably
some Borgia cardinal at the Sacred Congregation of Universities and
Seminaries desperate to preserve traditional Catholicism against the
progressive theology of Vatican II, promoted simple Rector Ralph
Thom pson Karg up to the exaggerated rank of Papal Chamberlain
with the title Very Reverend Monsignor.
As a young man, Karg had first been a freshly ordained priest
saying Mass in a parish in an cornfield in Iowa before the War
Department had commissioned him a chaplain in the Air Force
with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He had come out of combat in
the War into combat in the Church as the longest reigning rector
of Misericordia. He had become a soldier-priest championing the
discipline of a muscular Catholicism.
He accepted his elevation to Papal Chamberlain like a blister
on his ’umility. He wore his new black and purple robes like a peni-
tential hair shirt. He preached to us that the title and robes were
vainglorious. He tugged at his cassock and shoulder cape. His rank
embarrassed him. He knew he was a lightning rod for both warring
sides in the civil war of Vatican II. I hoped the lightning would strike
him and kill him.
I had watched him for ten years and I could only wonder if
his promotion was the old Roman rule of thumb: Promoveatur ut
amoveatur, Let him be promoted so he may be removed. Maybe some-
one in Rome wanted to get rid of him and remodel Misery. Karg
had lectured us with his story of his ’umble beginnings so often, my
mind’s eye had long before fantasized the fub duck movie version of
his life to which I added adjectives.
He had been born the only son of an Iowa farmer whose

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