William Kienzle: Requiem for Moses

He found the passage he wanted and began to read silently and slowly. Meanwhile, she tapped an agitated toe against the floor.

“Well,” he said finally, “I don’t find any law that is germane to this case.”

She brightened. “Then we can go ahead?”

“Not so fast. Well … this is a call that maybe ought to be made by someone else … namely our Cardinal archbishop. In both the new and the old books, there is a very specific reference to bringing doubtful cases to the ordinary-the bishop. The current book refers to ‘the prudent judgment of the local ordinary.’ The older code says …” He read from the tired little red book.“‘… in casibus aliquo dubio, consulatur, si tempus sinat, Ordinarius.’ That means, Mrs. Green, that in a specific case where there is any doubt about how to proceed with a funeral-whether to grant or deny Catholic rites-the ordinary should be consulted if there is time.”

“Aha!” she exclaimed, startling the priest.

“Aha?” he repeated.

“Do you know where your archbishop is?”

Although the media had made little mention of it, Koesler knew that Cardinal Boyle was, even as they spoke, returning from Rome, where he’d taken part in a synod of bishops. Koesler had not adverted to it until this moment. “He’s probably on a plane now returning to Detroit. But he’ll be back by late this evening. I’m sure I can get in touch with him tomorrow morning. That should be plenty of time to-”

“It’ll be too late!”

Koesler was puzzled. “But your husband just died today. Only a few hours ago …”

“We’re doing it the Jewish way.”

“What?” Now he was really confused. “What do you mean, you’re doing it the Jewish way? All this time we’ve been talking about your wish to have your husband waked in a Catholic church-my Catholic church!”

“Sure. That’s right. The wake is for the family, see? The burial is for him. He’s Jewish. Somebody asked him, he’d say he was Jewish. So we wake him in church-for the family. But we bury him Jewish.”

“You mean he’s …”

“Not embalmed.”

“Not embalmed,” he repeated meditatively. He was aware, at least vaguely, of Jewish burial customs. He knew it was customary for Jews to be buried as soon as possible after death, unembalmed, in a shroud. Until now in this current situation, he had not considered any sort of Jewish affiliation relevant. But they were coming perilously close to a Catholic funeral. This latest revelation derailed his thought process.

The song from Oklahoma! leapt to mind: Poor Jud is dead … it’s summer and we’re runnin’ out of ice.

“So,” Koesler said, “You’ve contacted Kaufman Funeral Home?”

“Yes, but they turned me down.”

“A funeral home turned you down?” Koesler had been subjected to a remarkable number of surprises this day. He had a hunch there would be more. “I’ve never heard of a funeral home turning anyone down.”

“Oh, they were nice enough about it. But after I explained what I wanted, the man said if we were going to wake Moe in a Catholic church there was just no way they were going to participate.”

“That’s ‘nice’?”

“They offered their refrigerator if we needed it overnight.”

“All things considered, I guess that was nice.”

“So what are we going to do?” She leaned forward. “By tomorrow we’ll be gone-out of your hair. No need to ask the Cardinal then. It’ll be over. And for something so minor you don’t want to bother him-maybe even wake him up-with a phone call. After all, you said yourself, there’s no law against it.”

“I know. But I’m beginning to think there’s no law simply because no canon lawyer ever imagined this precise situation.”

She brightened like the risen sun. “Then you’ll do it!”

He rose from his chair and walked to the window. He stood looking out, his back to her.

He considered this … this, as far as he was concerned, unprecedented … request. He couldn’t find any loopholes in her argument. There was no law even addressing this specific situation. There was plenty of room to question the wisdom of going along with her request. But any substantial doubt was supposed to be submitted to the ordinary-if there was time to do so.

Cardinal Boyle was winging his way across the Atlantic. Should he try to phone his archbishop aboard the plane? From experience, he knew that Boyle, for the most part, preferred his priests to handle parish-level matters in the parish.

So, Koesler decided, it would have to be his call.

He wanted to refuse her. He leaned toward agreeing with the Jewish funeral home: This was a hopeless mishmash of religions. The wake, Catholic for the relatives and friends; the burial, Jewish, as was the deceased.

If he said no, the widow undoubtedly would be upset. No, that was a serious understatement; she would be in a rage. But it would be over. “No” seemed the sensible response on his part.

Still, he hesitated. In his experience, true Christianity often did not lead to a “sensible” action. “Sensible” responses came from the head. In the Bible, God said, “I will give these people a heart to know that I am their God. And they shall be my people.”

Very much at odds with himself, he decided to go along with the widow and family.

He turned to face her. Her countenance betrayed her anxiety. It was evident that she was fearful. Something like a lawyer calculating the verdict from the length of time the jury is out, Mrs. Green seemed to think that the longer Koesler took to decide her case, the less likely his decision would be favorable.

He returned to his desk. “Let’s just check and see if there are any more surprises.”

She beamed. “Then you’ll do it?”

“First,” he admonished, “any more surprises?”

“Not that I can think of.” Her forehead furrowed as she considered the question.

“The funeral home,” he suggested, trying to be helpful. “Which one are you using?”

“McGovern.”

“On Woodward near Birmingham? They’re good. When will they have the body ready?”

“Now, I suppose. They really didn’t have to do much. I cleaned the body before they came for Moe. All they have to do is shroud the body and put it in the casket and bring it to the church.”

“You had time to select a casket?”

“I just asked them for their best.”

“And they’re going to use a shroud?”

“They had no problem with that.”

“How do you expect to notify the others on such short notice?”

“The kids, David and Judith, are calling people.”

Koesler thought about that. “Wait a minute.… If they’re calling people, they’d need to tell them where the wake is being …” He looked at her intently with a new appreciation of her self-confidence. “And,” he continued, “they’re telling the mourners that the wake will be at St. Joseph’s downtown, aren’t they?”

Her smile was playful. “We could have called them back.”

Maybe , he thought. But his guess was that this would have been her final salvo if all her other ploys had failed.

Not bad. She would have no way of knowing that she was borrowing the thinking behind a Church law. To students of the code it was known by its opening words: Omnia parata -everything is ready. A good number of canonical glitches could be overlooked in, say, a Catholic wedding because the bridesmaids are walking down the aisle and the groom is waiting and the glitch has just been discovered. Everything is ready. I.e., get on with it and take care of the problem later.

If Koesler’s decision had been in the negative, she probably would have noted that a hell of a lot of people would be arriving at St. Joe’s church this evening-all expecting to attend a wake. The good old parish priest might have had the onerous task of explaining what had happened.