A double mugging: defender of the faith gets maced.

It is not often that I travel by train late at night, particularly while carrying a contraband document. And it's not often that I get mugged. In fact, the last time was over twenty years ago, in a New York City park. The woman who would later become my wife and I were strolling hand-in-hand on a Saturday evening when another couple approached, asked us for the time, and in a second had a knife in my back. Kathleen, my future wife, was carrying a week's grocery money in her purse; she fended off the female assailant and escaped. I lost my wallet, a couple of dollars, and my dignity, but came out way ahead. Anyone who had seen Kathleen in action would have snapped her up at once, and we were married a few months later.

I don't like waiting for trains - it's something about Anna Karenina, I suppose - specially on deserted platforms. So I was happy one night this September when a Staten Island Rapid Transit train arrived promptly and transported me to a parents' meeting at our son's high school. The meeting was on how to finance a college education. And I was relieved again, following the presentation, when another train idled by and got me back to my home station. The meeting had been full of gallows humor, but it had achieved its purpose: I was now prepared to sign on for a life of perpetually indentured servitude to the college of our son's choice.

To keep me company on the round trip, I had brought along an embargoed copy of Pope John Paul II's yet-to-be-released encyclical, Veritatis splendor. (Embargoed in this case did not mean the pope was boycotting someone or something, but that the contents of the forthcoming encyclical were not to be divulged, publicized, or quoted prior to its official publication date.) As a journalist for this biweekly, I had obtained an advance copy of the encyclical, one I was pledged to defend with my life until October 5. Unlike Kathleen, the encyclical could not protect itself, but I hadn't considered that when I took it out for the evening.

To make a long story short, soon after getting off the train, I was surrounded under a deserted underpass by four or five energetic youths who proceeded to spray me in the face with Mace. They obviously hadn't heard of the pope's encyclical on moral truths. This time there were no inquiries about the hour, just basic economics: "Is that all the money you have?" (I had given them eight singles.)

"Yes." But they thought I must be holding out on them. After all, I was no longer looking at them in the eye.

"What's in your briefcase?" one shouted, applying a second blast of Mace to my face.

"My work," I gasped, holding on tight as they tugged furiously at my blue zipper bag, a gift from the aforesaid Kathleen. I know Saint Francis and perhaps even the pope would have let them have it, but I had an officially embargoed encyclical and these guys were not going to get it. The honor of journalism demanded it.

I don't think Saint Tarsicius came into my mind then - not even the pope mentions him in the new encyclical's long disquisition on martyrdom - but the young martyr was with me that night. Tradition says that Tarsicius was stopped, searched, and beaten to death in third-century Rome for carrying a concealed host to imprisoned Christians. And thanks to Tarsicius, just then several Christians emerging from a bowling alley came to my rescue. They yelled at the fugitives who went scunying into the night.

I felt like a skinned tomato that had been pummeled with hot pepper. Kathleen came to the Emergency Room and led me home by the hand. When my eyes cleared and I was able to get back to the encyclical, I found I understood the pope immediately when he wrote about intrinsically evil acts. I even thought about sending him my story, as the encyclical lacks examples.

But now another mugging has begun - a legal one, it's true - and certainly one I don't want to resist entirely. I mean the bills are coming in for my adventure: the ambulance, the Emergency Room, the doctors, and the medicine. Over $490 so far. I'm insured, thank goodness (is there a patron saint for being insured?); and the laborers are certainly worth their hire. But I find myself wishing now that in his long encyclical the pope had said a bit more about what some heterodox moralists used to call "systemic evil." Counting up the costs and consequences now, maybe I should have just let those kids have the encyclical. One glimpse of it and they might have fled in fear and trembling.