It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 11: Chapter I (Cont'd)

Coarse and offensive language and attitudes. Reader Discretion Advised.

There is no better summation of the true character of St. Gregory's than Mrs. Lynch's rendition of the Great Fire. Her story, at face value, blamed the conflagration on natural occurrences. The buildings of the parish were old and mostly made of wood and were not well cared for, and such buildings tend to make good kindle. Anywhere else in the world, this would have been an acceptable story of truth—sans ghosts and atonement.

But not in St. Gregory's.

That's not to say that fires never occurred in the parish. There were many fires. You had 'Insurance Fires', and 'I'm-Bored' fires, and the always entertaining 'I-Need-To-Dispose-Of-The-Body-and-I-Don't-Wanna-Dig-A-Hole' fires, but ones of nature? Never.

Alfonso Ignatius Carr, being one of those curious children, always had his suspicions about Mrs. Lynch's account, so just before he fled the city, having fully adopted the name Alan, he took a day trip to the Public Library, where he set himself on a quest of research. He dove and delved into every bit of microfiche he could find on the subject of the Great Fire of '87, and what he discovered confirmed his long festering suspicions.

There was a fourth category of fire in St. Gregory's Parish. The most effective. The 'Pay-Attention!' fire. In fairness, the parish as a whole hadn't been the target. Just the church. That's where it started after all. The culprits, as the papers of the time reported, were two local brothers, who had, like Mrs. Lynch, been born in St. Gregory's, and believed their home to be the Center of the Center of the World.

Whatley and Emerson Finneran.

They were identical twins, and the only way to tell them apart, according to the newspaper, was that Whatley had a more developed mustache, and Emerson spoke with an impediment. The fire was only meant to destroy the church, yet that night, unlike in Mrs. Lynch's version, had been a pleasant evening in the fall, dry, with a soft wind that carried and whipped the inferno from establishment to establishment. Nine people died, four of whom were children, and within six months both Finneran brothers hung by their necks in the old Charlestown State Prison.

But why did the Finneran brothers want to burn their church?

Alan Carr again had suspicions.

The biggest clue came from a comment of a neighbor of the Finnerans, a Mrs. Dot Callhan of 27 Glendale Road, who, when asked on the eve of the execution, how she felt about the brothers, responded, 'It's not their fault. If they'd just listened to us, none of this would have happened. Those boys were standing up for their own. The blood isn't on their hands!'
But on who's hands could the blood reside if not the perpetrators of the crime? Why, on the most villainous entity the parish ever did face. No, not just the parish. Mother-City as a whole. A villain with the power of God behind them, but the devil in their hearts. The very organization meant to protect and defend the good Catholic residents of St. Gregory's.

The Archdiocese!

In the preceding ten years prior to the Great Fire, St. Gregory's Parish had repeatedly petitioned the Boston Archdiocese to fund a new church. Every other neighborhood had one. Some had two. Some, if they were big enough, or donated sufficient amounts of money to the Cardinal's coffers, had three! St. Gregory's just wanted to be included, to share in the wealth.

Silence was the only response they received.

Even when the walls of the farmhouse became soft with mold, and the floors sagged with water damage; when the birds poked holes in the roof, and the parishioners held hymnals over their head to avoid falling chunks of excrement, the Archdiocese looked on.