The Greatest Evil Read online

  My dearest Marty,

  You probably will want to blame someone for what I’m about to do. But it isn’t anybody’s fault. Maybe those guys in Rome. Everybody else has just tried to help.

  Without you and our years together, I would have missed everything. I love you more than life itself. Which is exactly why I’m going to do this. You and the Catholic Church go together. Your whole life is built around your Church.

  I guess I never have forgiven myself for taking you away from your sacraments. If it weren’t for me, you would be in good—top-standing with the Church. Now you’ll be able to take Holy Communion. Honest, it makes me feel very good knowing that you will be back in the Church’s good graces.

  For this, I willingly die.

  If God is exceptionally kind, I will be waiting for you.

  Thank Father Koesler for—well, for being Father Koesler.

  And, darling, remember one thing: I love you more than life itself.

  Your own,

  Frankie

  Father Koesler was fairly sure that nothing that could happen in the future would ever move him more than this. This misbegotten sacrifice.

  He looked at Martha. “I am so sorry … so very, very sorry.”

  Martha shrugged. “You’re the one—the only one—who is completely blameless. We came to you. You explained everything. You told us how difficult it would be. You were very frank about our chances. And we could tell how embarrassed you were and how bad you felt when you had to tell us we’d have to live as brother and sister …” She shook her head. “You’re the only one …”

  “Your sister wanted to help. She knew how much you wanted to live as a Catholic and receive the sacraments—”

  “She meddled in our lives. If she hadn’t started this, I’d still have my Frankie. I don’t want to think of her the rest of my life.”

  Koesler knew there was no point in pursuing this now. In time, maybe. But not now. “We have some ladies in our parish who are good at helping with funeral details. They volunteer their services. They’re really good people. How about if I send them over?”

  It occurred to Martha that, having dismissed her sister, she was now alone. She needed help. “Yes,” she said quietly, “that would be good. Thank you.”

  “And,” Koesler added, “I’ll try to arrange for Christian burial.”

  Martha looked at him attentively for the first time. “Why would you do that? Frankie committed suicide.”

  “I know that’s what it looks like. But the Church regularly presumes that in such cases the person is not responsible for what he did … temporary loss of free will.”

  “But you read Frankie’s note: He seemed to know what he was doing.”

  “I can try.”

  “Don’t!” she said forcefully. “I can’t stand to be crushed by my Church again. The last rejection cost me my husband. I want no more from my Church. Not ever!”

  Koesler surmised that Martha’s feelings toward both her sister and the Church would soften, given time. Now was not that time.

  “I’ll ask those women that I mentioned to get in touch with you right away. I’m sure they’ll be a big help.”

  With that, Koesler gave Martha his blessing—which, he thanked God, she did not refuse. Then he left.

  He would certainly have to visit and work with Louise and her children. They must be feeling just awful. But at least they had each other.

  The one left out on a branch by himself was Vince Delvecchio. He had been informed of his uncle’s suicide. But Koesler knew well the macho spirit that was one goal of the seminary training at St. John’s. If Koesler’s assessment was correct, Vincent had been called into the rector’s office and notified. It wouldn’t matter whether or not Vince asked permission to go home. He would be advised to “tough it out” and remain working through the seminary’s routine.

  One thing that could break into that relentless routine and allow Vincent to react emotionally would be a visit from Father—and emphasize the Father—Koesler. The seminary rector had too much respect for the priesthood to refuse him access to the grieving student.

  And so Koesler headed for the Provincial Seminary in Plymouth.

  In little less than an hour he pulled into the circular drive that he knew so well.

  As he had anticipated, he was warmly welcomed by the rector, who immediately sent a secretary to summon Delvecchio.

  Koesler and Delvecchio went down to the visiting parlor, where, at this time of day, they could be alone and undisturbed.

  Of course Vincent knew of the tragedy; the notification had been as Koesler guessed.

  Vince seemed to be holding up well. The rector must have been pleased at Vince’s growth in the image of John Wayne.

  “Mother didn’t say, and the rector wouldn’t know, but the cause of this, I presume, was the failure of the Pauline Privilege?”

  “Yes. I delivered the news to them last night—just hours before it happened.”

  Delvecchio shook his head sadly. “What happened … I mean, to the case?”

  “Too many uncooperative witnesses. Some wouldn’t testify. Others were ambiguous about whether Frank could have been baptized.”

  Koesler didn’t mention the petition again. But he filled in some of the details of the conversation he and the Morrises had had last night. He finished by telling Vince he wished he could conduct a Catholic funeral for Frank, but that Martha had turned down the offer. And he scarcely could be hopeful that he could slide that possibility past the pastor of St. William’s.

  Delvecchio looked surprised. “But why would you want to do that?”

  “Because your uncle was a catechumen, by any definition of the word. He had completed instructions. He had agreed to the tenets of Catholicism. The only thing that prevented his baptism was Rome’s rejection of his petition.”

  “But if he had left Aunt Martha …”

  Knowing their love for each other, Koesler had not considered this possibility. But, technically, Delvecchio was correct. Short of clearing Frank’s first marriage, the only way he could have been baptized and become a Catholic would be to live a celibate life. And that had not been in the cards—not in the Morris deck, in any case, because Rome wouldn’t go for it and Frank wouldn’t leave Martha.

  “Besides,” Delvecchio continued, “Uncle Frank committed suicide. That demands the denial of Christian burial.”

  “I think you’ll find, Vince, that the Church is rather lenient when it comes to that.”

  Delvecchio’s eyes opened wide. “It is the greatest sin. The greatest evil.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, Vince. The ultimate act of despair. Denial of even the forgiveness, comfort, and compassion of the Holy Spirit. But who among us can. know the mind of a tortured soul in the final moments of life?”

  “It is the law.”

  “It is a law regularly set aside.”

  “Well,” Delvecchio said, “at least Aunt Martha can go to Communion again.”

  Koesler almost gasped. The only other person who had expressed that sentiment was Frank himself—in his suicide note.

  There seemed little point in continuing the conversation. Besides, the purpose of Koesler’s visit had been accomplished: Delvecchio was handling what grief was his magnificently. No need to worry about him … at least for the present.

  Koesler left for the long drive home.

  Completely out of character for him, he did not turn on the car radio. He was deep in thought about Vincent and the manner in which he was taking the death of his uncle.

  Was this the same kid who’d trashed a liturgical rubric just so campers wouldn’t be bored during Communion time?

  Now, when it comes to his uncle’s suicide, he is appealing to law–Church law—to … what? To shield himself from the slightest responsibility for what had happened.

  To be brutally fair, there really wasn’t much responsibility to be shouldered by young Vince Delvecchio. He’d had a corner of responsibility for a matter of. min
utes—when his mother asked him to “do something” about the canonically irregular situation of his uncle and aunt.

  Then, in the space of just a few minutes, he had shifted the load to others. Suddenly it became someone else’s duty to contact a young priest who was busy translating book learning to the school of hard knocks. And from then on, it was the responsibility of Father Koesler.

  Finally, there was the business of Communion and the other sacraments. To see death—suicide—as nothing more than making the sacraments available to one who had been denied them, seemed to Koesler to be crass legalism in its shoddiest form.

  Where was this boy headed?

  10

  The Present

  At the sound of the phone, Koesler instinctively started to rise from the chair. Just as quickly, he remembered that he was, or very soon would be, a Senior Priest, no longer responsible for the spiritual care of a parish. No longer responsible for answering the phone. With a twinge of regret he eased himself back into his contour-programmed chair.

  He looked across at Father Tully, who made no move to pick up the phone. Why not? Koesler wondered.

  Maybe it was the seminary of Koesler’s day. If it’s your job, you clean the floor. If it’s your job, you answer the phone.

  Koesler’s active memory recalled a time when his class was in its final year at Sacred Heart Seminary. His room was in St. Thomas Hall, a residential wing. The individual rooms provided some privacy for the students for the first time in their seminary career. But the rooms were not for claustrophobics. One wag stated that if a student died in his room, the rector would have handles attached to the outside and the room would be the coffin the lad was buried in.

  Just outside Koesler’s room in the seminary was a phone, used exclusively for intercom calls. However, once, in a unique exception, the phone rang—loudly—at about 3 A.M.

  Finally, after about ten rings, it was answered by the student assigned to that task. Groggy, he was understandably confused.

  Student: St. Thomas Hall.

  Woman: This Mr. Moon’s bar?

  Student: St. Thomas Hall.

  Woman (after a pause): What?

  Student: St. Thomas Hall.

  Woman: I got a wrong number?

  Student: St. Thomas Hall.

  Woman: Well, you’d think the least I would get was the right number.

  Later they found that the student on switchboard duty, when closing down for the night, had mistakenly programmed all incoming calls to the phone in St. Thomas Hall.

  It was the next day’s conversation piece. No switchboard operator ever made that mistake again.

  However, the compulsion to answer a phone was implanted. In Koesler’s case, the compulsion was intensified during his assignment to St. William’s, where the three assistant priests took turns being “on” the door and “on” the phone. Callers left to cool their heels at the door or callers on a phone that went unanswered were evidence of sins that cried to heaven for vengeance.

  Well, Koesler reminded himself, mundane decisions such as how the congregation would be served were no longer in his bailiwick. Father Tully was in charge … or would be, if the two of them could devise a way to treat the double requirement of making the Profession of Faith and taking the Oath of Fidelity.

  The phone stopped ringing. Koesler noted that while the light on the dial had ceased flashing, it remained lit: Someone else in the rectory had picked up. Undoubtedly Mary O’Connor.

  Sure enough, Mary peeked around the half-opened door. Out of long-standing habit, she looked to Koesler. She quickly corrected herself and addressed Father Tully. “It’s Inspector Koznicki on line one—”

  Before she was able to go on, Tully was getting to his feet.

  “You don’t have to take the call, Father,” she said. “He just has a question. I can give him your answer.”

  Tully stopped in mid-rise, then dropped back into the chair, looking up at her expectantly.

  “The inspector and Lieutenant Tully are tied up in a meeting. They and their wives can still make the dinner, but they’ll be late …”

  “How late?”

  “Nine, he said—maybe a little earlier, but no later. If nine is too late, they’ll have to cancel—or postpone the dinner.”

  Father Tully considered for a brief moment. “How do you and the caterers feel about it?”

  Mary smiled broadly. “We’re not going anywhere.”

  “Let’s go with nine then. And, thanks, Mary.”

  As Mary left for the kitchen, Tully turned back to Koesler. “What about the bishop? Should we tell him dinner’s going to be late?”

  “Let’s not,” Koesler replied without hesitation. “I have a hunch we may want to talk to Vince before the others arrive.”

  Tully sipped his tea. “That was some story!” he said after a few moments. “Nothing anyplace close to that’s ever happened to me.”

  “It was a one-time event for me.”

  “How did you feel? I mean, I can see how you’d want to console Martha and Delvecchio and his mother. But you … you must’ve had some deep reaction yourself.”

  “I’ll say I did. And it happened just as you suggested. I was operating on adrenaline from the first moment I heard what happened. But after I talked with Vince, I had to face up to my part in this … a classic time for second-guessing oneself.”

  “That’s happened to all of us,” Tully offered.

  “Yeah, I suppose it’s kind of normal. But this situation with Frank and Martha was well out of the ordinary.”

  “Are you over it now?” Tully inquired. “I mean, I know it’s been a lot of years. But did you ever fully recover?”

  Koesler grimaced. “No. Of course, I’ve come to terms with responsibility. I wasn’t even the initiator in that process. And I did everything I could. I was young and inexperienced. But I checked all along the way with older priests. Everybody I talked to was practiced in the Privilege of the Faith cases—including my Canon Law professor.

  “I know in my conscience that I’m not responsible in any way for what happened. And yet … from time to time I can still see Frank Morris. A good man. A better husband than many comfortable Catholics I’ve known. Even now, I can hardly think of him as a suicide.”

  “Do you think you could have provided Christian burial if his widow had wanted it?”

  Koesler thought for a few moments. “I don’t know. I’ll never know. Even back then, when the Church was comparatively strict about granting Christian burial, it might have been possible.

  “I can recall one incident involving an Italian family. The family was extremely faithful—pillars of the Church. Uncle Louie died. One of those cases where Uncle Louie had said bye-bye to the Church after confirmation … when he was just a kid.

  “Mostly for the sake of that faithful family and their desire to bury Louie from the Church, we tried like crazy to find some evidence that Louie might have—even mistakenly—could have wandered into a church at some recent time.

  “Finally, the family turned up somebody who remembered Louie tipping his hat as he walked past a Catholic church. The witness wasn’t positive that it had been a conscious, voluntary act of devotion on Louie’s part. But, in the end, it was—mercifully—judged sufficient: Louie was buried from the Church. They even wound rosary beads in his hands.” He smiled. “I’ll bet that felt strange to Louie.”

  They both chuckled. Father Tully had never had that much trouble burying anyone. There’d never been any hostile forces or big brothers peering over his shoulder.

  “But”—Koesler grew serious again—”there was that suicide note. It was well thought out and carefully written.” Again he reflected for a moment. “I would have tried … but I wouldn’t have expected much success.”

  “You think you’d have that much trouble now?” Tully asked.

  “That law is on the books. And the note would be hard to deal with. And there surely would be some ‘keepers of the faith’ who would cause a lo
t of trouble if they got wind of what I was doing.”

  Tully shook his head. “It all started with a canonical problem with a marriage. I was going to suggest that you might have gone the route of a ‘pastoral solution.’ But there couldn’t have been many—if any—priests who knew about that relatively painless procedure in those days.”

  “You mean,” Koesler clarified, “when confronted with an impossible marriage case, you let the couple’s conscience settle the matter …

  “Well, for one, as you say, the time had not yet come for that solution … though, in recent years, I have used it quite a few times. It’s a simple enough concept. Ask a Catholic couple, who’ve been forced by Church law into a civil wedding, if they honestly before God consider themselves to be truly married … or a little married … or not married at all.

  “It’s a loaded question. Of course, nine times out of ten, they consider themselves married. But they also feel that the Church is uncomfortable at their arrangement. So, the priest makes them feel at ease with their conscience and prepares them and advises them to live sacramental lives.”

  “Actually,” Tully observed, “when we were growing up Catholic, we were told we had an obligation to form a correct conscience—and then to follow it.”

  “Yes. And it’s perfectly possible that in forming that conscience, still it may disagree with Church law—in which case a person must be extra cautious about the matter.

  “But if, after due deliberation, the disagreement continues, conscience must be supreme.

  “I love the story about the First Vatican Council, when the bishops were rather bulldozed into passing part of the doctrine on infallibility. In England, a Catholic college faculty was gathered for drinks before dinner. And Cardinal John Henry Newman raised his glass in a toast. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I drink to infallibility—but first, I drink to conscience.’”

  “Ah, yes …” Tully smiled. “You gotta watch those converts like Newman. They have subtle ways of correcting things.

  “But,” he said, “getting back to Frank and Martha: I must say I’m surprised that the tribunal would not accept them into full participation even if they were willing to continue living as brother and sister. That would seem to settle the matter for Church law—even if it constituted a nightmare for the couple.”