Strangers

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        "And you've reflected on what you've read," Father Wycazik said. "So have you found anything so far that… helps you?"
        Brendan sighed. Shook his head.
        "You continue to pray for guidance?"
        "Yes. I receive none."
        "You continue to search for the roots of this doubt?"
        "There don't seem to be any."
        Stefan was increasingly frustrated by Father Cronin's taciturnity, which was utterly unlike the young priest. Usually, Brendan was open, voluble. But since Sunday he had turned inward, and he had begun to speak slowly, softly, and never at length, as if words were money and he a miser who begrudged the paying out of every penny.
        "There must be roots to your doubt," Father Wycazik insisted. "There must be something from which doubt's grown - a seed, a beginning."
        "It's just there," Brendan muttered, barely audible. "Doubt. It's just there as if it's always been there."
        "But it wasn't: you did believe. So when did doubt begin? Last August, you said. But what sparked it? There must've been a specific incident or incidents that led you to reevaluate your philosophy."
        Brendan gave a softly exhaled "no."
        Father Wycazik wanted to shout at him, shake him, shock him out of his numbing gloom. But he patiently said, "Countless good priests have suffered crises of faith. Even some saints wrestled angels. But they all had two things in common: Their loss of faith was a gradual process that continued many years before reaching a crisis; and they could all point to specific incidents and observations from which doubt arose. The unjust death of a child, for instance. Or a saintly mother stricken with cancer. Murder. Rape. Why does God allow evil in the world? Why war? The sources of doubt are innumerable if familiar, and though Church doctrine answers them, cold doctrine is sometimes little comfort. Brendan, doubt always springs from specific contradictions between the concept of God's mercy and the reality of human sorrow and suffering."
        "Not in my case," Brendan said.
        Gently but insistently, Father Wycazik continued. "And the only way to assuage that doubt is to focus on those contradictions that trouble you and discuss them with a spiritual guide."
        "In my case, my faith just… collapsed under me… suddenly… like a floor that seemed perfectly solid but was rotten all along."
        "You don't brood about unjust death, sickness, murder, war? Like a rotten floor, then? Just collapsed overnight?"
        "That's right."
        "Bullshit!" Stefan said, launching himself up from his chair.
        The expletive and the sudden movement startled Father Cronin. His head snapped up, and his eyes widened with surprise.
        "Bullshit," Father Wycazik repeated, matching the word with a scowl as he turned his back on his curate. In part he intended to shock the younger priest and force him out of his half-trance of self-pity, but in part he was also irritated by Cronin's uncommunicative funk and stubborn despair. Speaking to the curate but facing the window, where patterns of frost decorated the panes and where wind buffeted the glass, he said, "You didn't fall from committed priest in August to atheist in December. Could not. Not when you claim you've had no shattering experiences that might be responsible. There must be reasons for your change of heart, Father, even if you're hiding them from yourself, and until you're willing to admit them, face them, you'll remain in this wretched state."
        A plumbless silence filled the room.
        Then: the muffled ticking of the ormolu and mahogany clock.
        At last, Brendan Cronin said, "Father, please don't be angry with me. I have such respect… and I value our relationship so highly that your anger… on top of everything else… is too much for me right now."
        Pleased by even a thread-thin crack in Brendan's shell, delighted that his little stratagem had produced results, Father Wycazik turned from the window, moved quickly to the wingback chair, and put a hand on his curate's shoulder. "I'm not angry with you, Brendan. Worried. Concerned. Frustrated that you won't let me help you. But not angry."
        The young priest looked up. "Father, believe me, I want nothing more than your help in finding a way out of this. But in truth, my doubt doesn't spring from any of the things you mentioned. I really don't know where it comes from. It