"It's not supposed to work like that!"

"It's not supposed to work like that!"

Father Francis Mulcahy on M*A*S*H (the TV show, at least - it's been too long since I've seen the movie for me to make any comments on that) is one of the best-realized fictional Catholic priests I can think of. Of course, each priest has his own personality and is a product of his time; Father Mulcahy is very much a priest of the 1950's. The only authority he really has any fear of is religious authority, but he does have fear of that, as shown in the episode in which the (Protestant) chaplain who's his official commanding officer comes to assess his work - and doesn't think too highly of it. Father Mulcahy's already afraid he'll be transferred when the visiting chaplain challenges him to recite Psalm 23. The priest fumbles around mentally and verbally a bit, until the chaplain explodes: "You don't even know the 23rd Psalm? 'The Lord is my shepherd...' The light of understanding breaks on Father Mulcahy's face and he says, "Oh, you mean your Psalm 23!" He says this innocently and guilelessly, just happy to realize why he wasn't able to deliver as expected. The Catholic 23rd Psalm at that time was the no less inspired, but harder to keep mentally separate from others, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof..." The Protestant and Catholic numbering of the psalms is the same now; as someone who's lived through both numbering systems, I still have a hard time remembering if "The Lord is my shepherd" is number 22 or 23 (I looked it up when writing this paragraph to make sure I had it right). To my father it was always Psalm 22 - even when it wasn't anymore.

My all-time favorite M*A*S*H episode shows another aspect of Father Mulcahy that's very much at home in a 1950's Catholic: taking the "without assurance" part of "hope without assurance" to the extreme of not wanting to ask God for anything specific, because we don't know His will or His purpose. In this episode, Father Mulcahy is despondent because he feels useless. The doctors are saving lives, but he can't help them in that. Despite his spiritual presence, most of the personnel live pretty unspiritual lives; his Sunday services are poorly attended.

While in this despondency, he's called to the bedside of a dying soldier. True to the tenor of the times, the Sacrament of the Sick was then usually called the "last rites," and it was considered the person's preparation for death. The Scriptural background for the Sacrament is "They will lay their hands on the sick and they will be healed," but you wouldn't know that from the way it was approached in those days. Father Mulcahy begins to administer the Sacrament, and the soldier opens his eyes and speaks. The doctors are jubilant and begin giving the medical care they'd thought was useless, leaving Father Mulcahy speaking mostly to himself when he exclaims "It's not supposed to work like that!"

"Hope without assurance" is really a paradox. In Father Mulcahy's time, the pendulum had swung so far toward "without assurance" that a corrective was needed, which came largely through the Second Vatican Council a decade after the Korean War. As with all paradoxes, it can sometimes be difficult to keep a balance and holding onto both poles can be uncomfortable. But the Truth we don't want to lose is that we can depend on God to know how it's "supposed to work," even when we don't.

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