The Case Against Satan
mail in his confession on a dictation record and receive absolution by phone?”
    Father Halloran nodded. “Once or twice. He is hard to discourage.”
    â€œAnd the druggist—does he always expect you to deliver prescriptions if you’re ‘going that way’?”
    â€œYou mustn’t be hard on him. He only does that when he knows I’m going to visit an ailing parishioner who happens to be one of his customers. I don’t mind. This parish is something like a small town, you know.”
    â€œYes, I know.”
    â€œThat’s one of the pleasant things about it.”
    â€œThat very old gentleman,” Gregory continued, “Mr. Sowerby. I’m glad you prepared me for him. It must have been unnerving for you to administer last rites on three separate and distinct occasions, only for him to rally and live happily ever after, each time.”
    â€œYes, that has been extraordinary, I will admit.”
    â€œWhat about this Barlow family? The husband seems nice enough, rather placid, but the wife’s personality struck me as being—well, distilled to triple-strength. Is she always so forceful, so domineering?”
    â€œMrs. Barlow is a very respected woman,” said Father Halloran, “and considered somewhat of a leader among the ladies of the parish. She is quite active socially. In a way, I suppose she is an attractive person.”
    â€œI suppose.”
    â€œThe family I worry about,” said Father Halloran after a short pause, “is not the Barlows, but the Garths.”
    â€œIsn’t that the family we just left? The man and his daughter?”
    â€œYes,” said Father Halloran. “It’s a difficult problem, and complex. The girl—she’s sixteen, mother dead—is very disturbed, mentally. She has—fits. She’s seen doctors, and I strongly urged her father to take her to a psychiatrist as well. . . .”
    A sixteen-year-old girl with “fits.” Gregory smiled inwardly: it was such a quaint, old-fashioned word, “fits.” In young women,they were so often rooted in sexual hysteria. Sex, that great raw force that seethed and snarled for release, took strange forms.
    Gregory had often thought of it as a wildly onrushing river terminating in a roaring waterfall. Two men, coming upon the tumult of that waterfall, might react to it in two different ways. One man might be unconsciously repelled by such a display of mindless ferocity, of nature unrestrained; his inner reaction, though he himself might not know it, tends toward a desire to somehow stop it, or, failing that, to block off the rushing river, make it go away so he won’t have to look at it. It is too big and unharnessed for him, it offends him.
    The other man, of quite different stamp, says to himself: Ah! What a wonderful, wild, untamed force! But how wasted. This divine giant’s power can be channelled and used for good works. So he builds a dam that does not stop the raging water but makes it work for him, turning wheels, generating electric power, irrigating parched lands. That attitude toward the waterfall is the Catholic attitude toward sex, Gregory had always liked to think; the other attitude was Protestant. (“But then,” he was in the habit of shrugging, “I’m prejudiced.”)
    Father Halloran was looking at his watch. “I’m afraid I must be going,” he said. “Daylight Saving or God’s Time, it’s getting late. I have quite a drive ahead of me.”
    â€œYou’re all packed?”
    â€œMy bags are in the car.” He stood up. “Good-bye, Father Sargent.”
    â€œYou’re sure you won’t stay the night?”
    â€œI really can’t.”
    Gregory accompanied the elder priest to the door. “Good-bye, then, Father Halloran. And thank you again for easing me into my new post here. I’m very grateful.”
    At the door, Father Halloran turned

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