Seventeen
Sunday came. Mass attendance was down, not precipitously, but down. It was mostly the earlier masses, among the older members who probably had strong objections to being served communion by an accused murderer. The later mass didn’t seem too bad, but I did notice gaps in the pews that hadn’t been there the previous Sundays.
I got through the mass without any problems, gave the final blessing, and began the recessional. As I was walking down the aisle behind the altar servers, I saw one of the ushers waving at me frantically. I no sooner cleared the doors when he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me off to one side.
“You don’t want to go out there, Father,” he whispered.
I looked down at his name tag. “What is it, Norman?”
“That reporter’s outside. Has a camera set up an
