William Kienzle - The Greatest Evil

“Frank, what was there about your marriage to Mildred that didn’t work? In your own words, what made the marriage fail?”

“That’s a pretty big question, Father.” He thought for some time. Finally, he said, “Incompatibility … incompatibility that started early on and just got worse. We were great in bed”-his face reddened but he went on-“but after that, in just about everything else, the two of us could have been living on different planets.”

“Did you have any children?”

“No. Neither of us wanted kids. The way things turned out it was a lucky break we didn’t have any-say, Father: Could that be one of those impediments? I know the Church doesn’t look too kindly on birth control …”

“’Fraid not, Frank. Now, was there anything the two of you differed on or argued about a lot?”

Frank pondered. “Seems religion came up every so often,” he said slowly.

“Religion? What about religion?”

“Mildred was Lutheran. She was pretty strong about it. She was always after me to join her church. She was really sore because I refused to be baptized-”

“Wait a minute …” Koesler sat up straight. “She wanted you to be rebaptized in the Lutheran Church?”

“Rebaptized? No. I was never baptized at all.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because my dad and mother told me more than once. They said they wanted that kind of choice to be all mine. They left the whole thing about religion and baptism up to me.” Frank chuckled. “As it turns out, I didn’t do anything about either one. I didn’t want to join the Lutheran Church. And I couldn’t see getting baptized if I wasn’t going to join.”

“But you go to church all the time now …”

“Well, see, as incompatible as I was with Mildred that’s how compatible I am with Marty. I would’ve joined the Catholic Church and gotten baptized long ago, but Father Keller wasn’t in much of a receptive attitude.”

“To give the devil his due,” Koesler said, “Father Keller didn’t have much of a choice there. He couldn’t receive you into the Catholic Church until or unless you got your present marriage validated.”

“You mean this ‘living in sin’ bit?” Bitterness tinged Frank’s voice.

“That’s an unfortunate label,” Koesler said. “No one can crawl inside you and know what’s going on in your conscience. Your life of sin or grace is yours-and yours alone-to know.

“But so much for the internal forum-your soul. What we’re talking about is the external forum: whether or not we can baptize you and convalidate your marriage. And I think you have just uncovered maybe the only path to doing just that.”

Smiles all around.

“How? How, Father?” Martha asked. “We’ll do anything!”

“I’ve got to tell you right off,” Koesler said, “it’s a slim chance. I studied it in the seminary-not all that long ago-but I’ve never used it. Never thought I would.”

“It’s called the Pauline Privilege,” Father Koesler informed the rapt couple. He smiled. “I’ll try to explain it as briefly as possible,” he said, as he turned to search through the volumes on the shelves behind him.

The Bible, the Code of Canon Law, a book on moral theology-he consulted each cursorily, then turned back to his visitors. “This whole notion is based on St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians-the seventh chapter.” He half smiled at some private joke. “For one who never married, Paul had an awful lot to say about marriage and to married people.”

Koesler did not reflect that in this he was in the same boat as St. Paul.

“One of the questions for the early Church to settle was how to relate to non-Christians,” Koesler explained. “Christians were a tiny minority surrounded by a world where religion was a mixed bag. Polytheists and pantheists could count their gods-and atheists had no god.

“And all the earliest Christians were Jews, of course. So the Apostles had to lead their disciples through the rough waters of controversy.

“While the first Christians were Jewish in nationality, they were no longer Jews as a religious body. So, controversies raged over which Jewish laws should be preserved and which should be abandoned in this new religion. Customs-laws, as far as the Jews were concerned-like circumcision and dietary proscriptions-were wrangled over and, eventually, pretty much abandoned.

“One of the touchiest situations was intermarriage between Christians and non-Christians. And a companion problem was how to treat a mixed religious marriage that ended in divorce.

“Following the dictates of Jesus-and with no time yet for theological development-marriage for Christians was monogamous and lifelong.

“Now: Was there a distinction to be drawn when a non-Christian permanently left his or her Christian partner?

“St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, considers the plight of a Christian whose non-Christian partner leaves. As fate has it, this Christian falls in love again. Oddly, again, the loved one is non-Christian. But this non-Christian wishes to become Christian and marry.

“Paul grants the request as a ‘Privilege of the Faith.’

“Here, for the first time, we are not talking about an annulment. This one is called a dissolution.”

Frank and Martha were listening-hard. But Father Koesler realized that although they were taking in his words, a good deal of explanation was still necessary, particularly for Frank, the non-Catholic in this affair.

“You see, Frank, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, you and Mildred had a valid but not sacramental marriage. Now, ordinarily, you’d think of a priest as the minister of sacraments. But not the sacrament of matrimony: The bride gives the sacrament to the groom and vice versa. The priest, in this case, is an official witness.

“Now, in your case there was no sacrament because you were never baptized-and one has to be baptized in order to give or receive a sacrament.

“So, if this case plays out the way we want, you and Martha could be married in the Catholic Church. You would be baptized and then when you give your consent in marriage, your first marriage would be dissolved as a ‘Privilege of the Faith.’”

“But … but that’s wonderful!” Martha was almost breathless and enthused at the same time. “When can we do this-when can we get married in the Church?”

“Not so fast, Marty,” Frank cautioned. “There’s more to this than meets the eye …” He turned back to Koesler. “… ain’t there, Father?”

“I’m afraid so. Yes.”

“What? What?” Martha’s enthusiasm plummeted.

“It’s in the proof,” Koesler said. He looked at Frank. “You’ve got to prove that you never were baptized.”

“How do you prove something never happened?” Frank asked.

“Exactly,” Koesler responded. “If you-yes, you, Frank”-Koesler nodded-”if you were to take a baby into a baptistery and baptize that baby, that baby would be validly baptized. Yes …” He nodded again, anticipating Frank’s question. “… in the eyes of the Catholic Church, the baptism would be valid whether the baby was baptized in a Methodist church, a Lutheran church-or a bowl of water in the kitchen. For baptism, the ordinary minister of the sacrament is a priest. But for validity, anyone with the correct intention can baptize.

“So you see the problem when we allege that you never were baptized, Frank. What if when you were a baby, a kindly uncle-aunt, grandfather, whatever-took you to … anywhere there was water-”

“When you put it that way, Father,” Martha said, “it seems quite impossible to prove that Frank’s never been baptized.”

“Well, it’s not quite that comprehensively difficult.” Koesler smiled at Martha, then turned to Frank again. “What we need are witnesses-lots of extremely credible witnesses-to testify that the attitude of just about everyone who touched your young life was that your parents’ prohibition of baptism was well known and observed by everyone. Now you yourself can testify about the years after you reached the age of reason. But even then we need witnesses for those years too.