The Greatest Evil

29

As he came up from the basement, Koesler heard angry voices. Concerned, he hastened toward the living room.

The conversation ceased as both men turned toward him.

“Bob,” Delvecchio said, “I’ve had a really ugly day. And”-he glowered at Tully-”this evening has worsened a migraine: I pray you hold me excused. There really isn’t any ceremony called for; all I need is to give you this envelope. All the necessary papers are in here. This takes care of everything; all you’ll have to do is go talk to the boss. You may arrange that at your mutual convenience.”

“Wait,” Koesler said. He made no move to accept the proffered envelope. “You and I have to talk. We have to talk tonight. You don’t have to stay for the party … but, believe me: We have to talk.” He put special emphasis on the final four words.

Delvecchio stared at him for several moments. A knowing expression grew into a confrontational gaze. “Okay, Bob. Maybe you’re right. Maybe in the middle of a horrendous headache would be a good time for a showdown we’ve put off too long.”

“Let’s go to the basement,” Koesler said as he gestured toward the door. “We won’t be disturbed there.” He stood aside to allow the bishop to precede him. As he left the room, Koesler stage-whispered to Tully that they were not to be interrupted.

Tully nodded, but mouthed to Koesler, “This has not gone well!”

Koesler nodded understanding and followed Delvecchio downstairs.

They stood on opposite sides of the pool table. Koesler assumed that Delvecchio would fire the first round, if only to get everything off his chest and start to work on losing his headache.

But the bishop, silent, only stood and stared at Koesler malevolently.

“Vince,” Koesler said finally, “whatever happened to the kid who had to play the organ during Requiem Masses … the kid with the devil-may-care personality … the kid who was fun?”

“He grew up. He learned that rules are important. And that life is serious business.”

“Long as we’re talking about rules, how about the Golden Rule?”

“You’re a fine one to invoke the rule of doing to others as you’d have them do to you! How would you like it if your sister debated you in public on moral theology?”

“I suppose you’re referring to Lucy and the abortion question-”

“‘Question’? There’s no question. Not among Catholics. It’s a serious sin. And carries the penalty of excommunication!”

“Of course abortion is a serious matter. But that depends on how one defines abortion. And excommunication? You know as well as I that a person must know beforehand that an ecclesial penalty is attached to a sin before one can incur the penalty.”

“And you believe that Lucy didn’t know?”

“That’s what she said. You just didn’t ask her. And you should have.”

“You believe she was telling you the truth?”

“Of course I do! I believe she was telling me the truth about not knowing about the penalty and about believing that a person, for an adequate reason, could terminate a pregnancy within the first trimester-without sin.”

Delvecchio, arm raised, finger pointing at Koesler, said, “You know very well the Church’s official stand on abortion!”

“Of course I do. But we’re not talking about me; we’re dealing with what I believe is Lucy’s well-formed conscience.”

“Should we have gone along with Hitler’s ‘well-formed conscience’?”

“Hitler was a homicidal maniac. We’re talking about a sane, serious, and conscientious young woman. We’re talking about the supremacy of conscience.”

“Supremacy of conscience!” Delvecchio spat out the words.

“It is as John Henry Cardinal Newman said …” Koesler again invoked one of his favorite epigrams. “‘I will drink to infallibility. But first I will drink to conscience.’”

“You’re just playing with words!”

“And you were trying to intimidate your sister so she would be on the defensive if and when the media tumbled to the story of the Monsignor and his Sister the Abortion Doctor. But”-Koesler raised his hand in a stop-traffic gesture-“we’ll get back to Lucy later.

“Earlier this evening, Zack Tully asked me what made you tick. This as a prelude to taking you on about this Oath and Profession thing.

“In telling him what I knew about you, some questions came to mind. I found some answers in my own experience, as well as from a few phone calls I made here tonight.”

At any other time, or to anyone else, the bishop’s fish-eye might have been daunting. But Koesler, like a locomotive picking up steam, was not to be sidetracked.

“This steady march of yours to the conservative right wing began with Frank Morris’s suicide. You were in complete agreement that he should have no Church funeral, even though he had attended Mass regularly and tried his best to get his marriage ’fixed up.’ The denial of Christian burial dumped all the guilt of suicide on Frank. You were involved in this, even if in an innocent way. But you found a rule that absolved you. Rules could be helpful.”

Delvecchio looked as if smugly safe in his bunker barricaded by rules.

“But by far the most serious question I had concerned your mother’s death.”

For the briefest instant, Delvecchio’s eyes lost their focus. Then they snapped to attention with a snakelike fixedness.

“Specifically, I wondered about her medication for pain,” Koesler said. “The morphine bottle remained untouched even into the mid-stage of her cancer when she was in considerable pain.

“I asked her about that. She explained that she intended to join her suffering to that of Jesus on the cross. It was a heroic decision. I’m sure I couldn’t have carried it off,” he added reflectively.

“But after she explained this, I paid no further attention to the bottles at her bedside. You’ll recall the doctor wanted her to medicate herself. And so she did.”

Delvecchio gazed at Koesler unwaveringly, but wordlessly.

“When she died and the medications were being removed, I noticed the morphine bottle was empty. I assumed the pain had become so unbearable that she had begun taking the morphine. It didn’t occur to me what a coincidence it had to be that she had run out of the pills just as she had died. For surely if she had run out of them, she would’ve asked one of us to get her some more.”

Though it was cool in the rectory, especially in the basement, a thin line of perspiration had formed on the bishop’s upper lip.

“Then,” Koesler continued, “I ran back in my memory the sequence of events as your mother died.

“It was early afternoon and we were taking turns sitting with your mother. I remember you went upstairs. You stayed about twenty minutes. You were followed by your brother. Then he came down and told us he thought she was going. We all went upstairs. She was, indeed, breathing her last. She seemed to be having a most difficult time getting a breath. And then she died.

“One of the calls I just made was to Dr. Moellmann, the medical examiner.”

Delvecchio started, then seemed to regain his composure. But so attentive was he that it was as if an electrical current had switched on inside him.

“I presented it as a hypothetical question,” Koesler clarified. “I described the bottle containing the morphine and asked if a person took all the pills at one time in a suicide attempt, how long would it take for this person, already near death from cancer, to die?

“He said about twenty minutes-just the length of your visit. Allowing for you to dissolve the tablets and have your mother drink the lethal amount, and for Tony’s brief visit, that would pretty much use up the time between your visit to your mother and precipitate her death throes while Tony was with her. ”

Then there was her special difficulty breathing. The doctor said that death in such cases is caused by asphyxiation.”

Koesler paused. The bishop stood statue-silent, his gaze penetrating.

“Dr. Moellman added,” Koesler went on after a moment, “that after all these years there would be no trace left of the morphine in the body.”

He paused again. This time he gave no indication that he would continue for the moment.

“That’s not the way it was …” Delvecchio seemed to have regained total composure. “That’s not the way it was at all,” he said more firmly.

“How was it?”

“Mother was planning suicide. She wasn’t taking her pain pills. She was squirreling away the morphine so that if the pain got to be too much, she could end it. That was obvious.”

“Did you ask her about it … or talk to her about the morphine?”

“Of course not. It was obvious. She wouldn’t have told me the truth if I had asked; she’d be afraid I’d take them away from her.”

Koesler shook his head. “You just assumed all that. I talked to her about the pills and, as I told you, she didn’t take the pills because she wanted to join her suffering with that of Jesus on the cross.”

“What are you saying, Bob?” Delvecchio was now obviously on the verge of losing control.

“What I’m saying is that with a very badly mistaken intention … you killed your mother.” Koesler made the accusation reluctantly.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Delvecchio shot back. “It was the indirect voluntary-the double effect. I gave Mother some pills. The immediate effect was to prevent her suicide and save her from hellfire. The secondary effect was her death-which I did not directly want,” he added quickly. “My God, I tried to organize a prayer campaign for a miracle that would save her!”

Koesler shook his head again. “Vince, even if you could introduce the double effect principle-which I refute from the outset, since she told me why she wasn’t taking the medication, and it was not for suicide-it wouldn’t qualify. You’re torturing the concept. You didn’t give her ‘pills’; you gave her a lethal overdose of morphine. The first consequence would be her death. Only secondarily would it save her from hell.

“And anyway, she was not headed for hell. She was going to join her Savior, with whom she had already joined her suffering.”

“Believe what you want,” Delvecchio said disgustedly, as if lecturing an uncomprehending student. “I know I did the right thing.”

How can you be so blind? thought Koesler. What an impenetrable set of defense mechanisms you’ve erected!

“I suppose you’ve poisoned the mind of Father Tully toward me with your lies. What other calumnies have you invented?”

Koesler was pained that Delvecchio would accuse him of lying.

“First,” Koesler said, “this business”-he could not bring himself to call it by its proper name, murder-“with your mother is between us and no one else. For the rest of what I’ve learned tonight, all I can say is that you have usurped one of God’s functions.”

“What-!”

“In the Bible it says, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.’ But you have proven yourself a most vindictive person.”

In the examples he was about to offer, Koesler knew he would have to skip over Delvecchio’s harsh, cruel treatment of Jan Olivier, late of the Detroit chancery. That event was protected by the Seal of Confession. It could not be discussed even with the penitent unless the penitent gave permission.

But Koesler felt he had more than enough examples of Delvecchio’s vengeful bent.

“You, to my knowledge,” Koesler said, “never took even the smallest step of reconciliation toward your aunt Martha. She has been estranged from you and the Church for all these years. You thought she was responsible for your mother’s fatal illness.”

“How many ‘small steps’ did she take to apologize for what she did?”

“But you’re a priest!”

“So?”

Koesler began to sense the probable futility of his hope that Delvecchio would wake up to his own meanness of character. Still, now committed, he plowed on.

“Your brother long ago discarded you. It probably would have worked out better if the separation had been mutual. But Tony hurt you. Your mother’s funeral Mass was the last Catholic service Tony participated in. He didn’t even attend your ordination as a bishop.

“Making matters even worse for you, Tony was a popular celebrity, especially locally. He was a sports and TV personality. In occasional interviews it came out that he had nothing to do with any organized religion. And you, his brother, a priest, a monsignor, a bishop!

“I know that hurt you. And you do not endure hurt stoically; the person who wounded you must suffer too. But you really had little opportunity to strike back until Beth, Tony’s significant other, came to you for instructions.

“She couldn’t know it at the time, but she was presenting Tony to you on a silver platter.

“On paper, you could justify requiring sexual abstinence of Tony and Beth for the instruction period. On paper you could tack on six more months of not only abstinence but living apart.

“You knew with the knowledge of a close relative that Tony would never stand for a separation that long, especially one requiring him to move out of his home.

“And this with a couple who had lived together a quarter of a century! Even you would not have done this except out of sheer vindictiveness.

“You got at Tony through Beth, and in the process destroyed their relationship-their life together. All you had to do was convince Beth that you had the words of eternal life. And, I must admit, you’re pretty good at that-”

“You know, Robert, it’s peculiar how we start with similar premises and end with vastly different conclusions. Mother dies at my hand. You think it’s murder. I know I saved her from hell.

“And now, as far as our Catholic Church is concerned, Tony and Beth were living in mortal sin. Each time they copulate it’s another sin. How can she learn of our moral teaching and continue sinning? How can she prepare for marriage, especially, without showing the good faith of living apart?” Delvecchio spread his hands, indicating the argument was self-evident. “Res ipsa loquitur.”

“Vince, it was within your power to dispense. How could you have been so rigid, so uncompromising, so lacking in understanding? How could you demand that a man move out of his own home? Especially when you knew the couple had lived together so long? If they committed a sin-and when will you stop being other people’s conscience? — it would have happened when they launched their original relationship. They were headed in no other direction than into the arms of Mother Church. Until you drove them away and ruined their lives.

“I wondered about that until it occurred to me that you wanted to punish Tony for having embarrassed and disgraced you-by making it awkward for you as a priest and a bishop to have a fallen-away brother.”

“All you’ve proven,” Delvecchio said, “is that you and I treat people differently. And you are, at the very least, an erring bleeding heart. Now, if we can end this-”

“One more thing, Vince. It came to me just this evening. It’s practically your signature.”

“Well?” Delvecchio, eyes now closed in pain, rubbed his head, as he had off and on during this entire interchange.

“About Lucy and the abortion question. While you had no way of knowing whether she had incurred a penalty, still you accused her of being automatically excommunicated. I believe you did this to scare her, to intimidate her. That would have made it difficult for her to state her case under media scrutiny. Then I came along and let her conscience speak, thus crippling your plan. And so, just as you did with Tony, so did you do to me. All these years, you couldn’t get even with Tony because there was no way to reach him. That must have been extremely frustrating. And then eventually you were able to use Beth to get to him.

“I helped your sister in derailing your plan to make her helpless in defending herself. At the time, I didn’t know I was upsetting your applecart, but I was. So you had to get even with me. But you couldn’t; there wasn’t anything you could do to me.

“However, as you used Beth to reach Tony, you are trying to use Father Tully to have your revenge on me.”

“That’s preposterous!”

“Is it? I don’t want anything for myself. But I wanted Zack to have St. Joe’s parish. You knew you could get to me by making it difficult, or better yet, impossible for Zack to become pastor here. And you easily sensed that Zack had a real problem with the Oath and Profession. All you had to do was demand he swear his fealty in a public ceremony.

“Well, you were right about one thing: He’ll never do it. So, you can block his appointment as pastor here. It hasn’t been officially announced yet. You’ll take a good pastor away from this parish. But you figure you’ll have gotten to me. You’ll have your revenge.”

Delvecchio shrugged. “It’s his choice. If he doesn’t want to follow the rules, so be it. But he’ll never be pastor here, or in any parish in this archdiocese.” Then, remembering that he scarcely could speak for all of Detroit’s auxiliaries in charge of territories, he added, “At least none of my parishes!”

“‘The rules,’” Koesler repeated scornfully. “Yes, the rules. Besides speaking with Dr. Moellmann this evening, I also called Pete Jackson and Fred Haun.”

Delvecchio, instantly recognizing the names of two priests recently transferred into his bailiwick and named pastors, winced as he realized where Koesler was headed.

“I asked them specifically,” Koesler said, “about the Oath and Profession. Haun wondered why I asked. He Was in complete agreement with both documents. He had even suggested that the two of you make the taking of these statements a paraliturgical ceremony, inviting the parishioners to attend. You assured him that was not necessary. And in the privacy of the rectory you listened as Haun read the documents.

“I didn’t expect such docility from Jackson. And I was right. He’s the one, the only one, I believe, who’s on record as thinking there’s no priest shortage. He said there are already too many. He also told me this evening that if ever he read those documents in your presence, he would follow that with going, to confession to you. During which he would confess that it was all a lie. And you couldn’t act on it or tell anyone because of the Seal of Confession.

“Now I’m sure he was kidding. But the fact is that he has withstood you. His appointment as pastor is official; he is installed. And he is not going to take the Oath or make the Profession.”

“So?”

“So you have on record one pastor who plainly refused to read those documents, even in a private setting. And another pastor who was ready, willing, and eager to read them during a public ceremony. And in Zack Tully you have a priest who cannot in good conscience do this. While you, for your part, are insisting on the public ceremony for Father Tully that you dismissed in the case of Father Jackson.”

“So?”

“So, remember when you were trying to deny Christian burial to the deceased wife of George Hackett? You were making up your own rules-demanding more in that case than the Church required. And you were shot down by Cardinal Boyle.

“What if the Cardinal were to be informed that you’re at it again? Making up your own rules? Telling one priest to forget an unnecessary ceremony, then demanding the same ceremony of another priest? And what if I let the Cardinal know why you were doing this?”

This open threat was very unlike Father Koesler. And Delvecchio well knew it.

“You … you would do that?” the bishop said in a near whisper.

“If you do not promise to back down from insisting that Zack take the Oath and make the Profession, yes. I’m willing to go to the mat on this!”

“What could Boyle do to me?” Delvecchio demanded in a mixture of desperation and bravado. “I’m a bishop!”

“An auxiliary, not an Ordinary. It’s simple enough to relieve you of all your functions. You would be bishop of nothing, going nowhere. It’s been done. Much tougher to do that to an Ordinary, pretty easy when dealing with an auxiliary.”

There was a pause that seemed longer than it actually was.

“Well?” Koesler pressed.

“I … I’ll think about it.”

But Koesler knew he had won the day. He hadn’t actually convinced Delvecchio that he ever had failed, that he’d been wrong. That he’d ever sinned. But he had persuaded the bishop that getting even with Koesler through Tully was simply not worth the consequences.

“And now,” Delvecchio massaged his forehead with a great deal of pressure, “I’ll be going. Here are the documents you want.” He tossed the envelope onto the pool table and wordlessly left the basement.

As he stepped out the front door, he came face to face with the two couples just arriving for the retirement party.

Why, they asked, was the bishop leaving? He pleaded a bad headache. The Koznickis and Tullys expressed their concern. The encounter was over in minutes. Delvecchio was gone. The other guests were in the rectory, being greeted by the two priests.

Due to the comparative lateness of the hour, they all went directly to the dining room.

As he took up the rear of this procession, Father Koesler at least knew that this entire matter was finished … ended.

Even the theory-unproven and undocumented-that there had been some sort of conspiracy on the part of somebody-one or more of the Delvecchio kids? — either to kill Frank Morris or cause him to take his own life … that scenario, Koesler had long since concluded, was nothing more than the pipe dream of an elderly pastor with an extremely active imagination.

All the i’s were dotted. All the t’s were crossed. There couldn’t be anymore to this story.

Could there?