Requiem for Moses

Chapter One

THE PRESENT

“I’m not asking you to bury him,” she said. “Just wake him.”

The woman and the priest were seated in his office in the rectory. The parish was St. Joseph’s, or “Old St. Joe’s” or “St. Joe’s Downtown.” Easily it was chronologically the first of many in the archdiocese of Detroit to be named after Mary’s spouse.

“To be perfectly frank, Mrs. Green,” Father Robert Koesler said, “I’m not at all sure just what it is you want me to do. May we back this conversation up and start from the beginning?

“Now, I understand your husband died this afternoon. And I’m sorry about that. You have my condolences. We’ll include him in our prayers in the Masses this weekend.

“But … why did you come here? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before. I don’t recognize your name as a registered parishioner.”

“We’d better get this out right at the beginning: The name is shortened.” Her tone was snappish. “It used to be Greenberg.”

“Then …?” Koesler spread his hands, palms upward.

“We live in your parish!”

“But you’re Jewish.”

“Moe is …. was … but I’m Catholic.”

Koesler, for no apparent reason, moved a pen from one spot on his desk to another. “I see.” He didn’t really. “So, your husband was Jewish. Then, why not …?”

“Look, Father, we got married twenty-one years ago. I was twenty; Moe was thirty-seven.”

By Koesler’s mental arithmetic that would be about 1975.

“Neither family was crazy about the idea. I was young. But we knew we could make it. And, by God, we did. It helped, I think, that Moe was Jewish in name only. Ethnically, but not religiously,” she explained. “We were married at St. Norbert’s in Inkster-and I’ve got the papers to prove it.” She reached for her purse.

Koesler waved a hand. “That won’t be necessary.”

As she put the purse down, she seemed to relax somewhat. “Moe made all those promises … you know; like he wouldn’t interfere with me being a Catholic-he couldn’t have cared less. And I promised I’d try to convert him-fat chance. And we both promised we’d raise our kids Catholic. Anything was all right with Moe … as long as the kids didn’t become something like Islamic.”

Koesler almost smiled.

“And we did. I mean, we raised our two kids-David and Judith-as Catholics. Sent them to parochial schools. Judith even went to a Catholic college.

“Look, Father,” she said earnestly, “Moe and I talked this all out. He’s been in such pain for so long. He really didn’t want to live. So we talked about his death. It was more of a comfort to him than talking about life the way it was treating him. We agreed there was no reason he should be treated as a religious Jew. The kids are Catholic. Lots of our friends are. My side of the family, by and large, finally accepted us. On his side, only his sister-we always call her Aunt Sophie-went along. This is exactly what he wanted: a Catholic wake and to be buried Jewish. He just made me promise to wait for Sophie to show up before burial. She lives in Florida and she’s on her way.

“That’s what he wanted. Don’t you understand?”

Her tone was that of one addressing a slow-witted child.

“Let’s see ….” Koesler leaned back in his chair, his fingers forming a miniature steeple. “You want your husband to lie in state in this church. You’re not asking for a Mass or any other kind of service. And you want this because you and your children are Catholic and the immediate family, whom you expect to attend, would be Catholic also.”

“That’s what I want. That’s what Moe wanted.” She looked at him with composure. “There’s no problem with that, is there?”

Koesler pondered. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.” He shook his head slowly. “In over forty years as a priest I’ve never come across an arrangement like this.”

Even as he spoke, he was reminded of a phrase he had come up with years before: The seven last words of any institution-including the Church-are, We Never Did It This Way Before.

Still, this was an unprecedented request, and Koesler did not react readily to new ideas or situations.

“There some law against it?” Her lips pursed.

“Well, that’s an interesting question. Let’s see.…”

Koesler stood and surveyed the glass-fronted bookcases along the wall. He located a coffee-table size book and a small, red volume that seemed both ancient and in desperate need of repair. He placed both books on the desk.

Reading the letters upside down and backward, she was able to make out the title of the larger book: The Code of Canon Law. It looked almost new; even the dust jacket was in good condition. She pointed at the book. “What’s that?”

“That’s the current book of Catholic Church laws, 1983 version.”

“And the other one?”

“This?” He held up the smaller book. “Its predecessor. This one was compiled in 1917.”

“Holy crow!” she exclaimed, “Catholics got that many more laws in ’83?”

Koesler smiled and turned the book’s cover toward her. She read the subtitle: A Text and Commentary.

“The commentary is what takes up all that space,” he explained. “Actually, there are fewer laws in the ’83 version.”

After checking the index he turned to the laws relevant to what the Church termed “Ecclesiastical Funeral Rites.” The canons, 1183 and 1184, pertained to those persons granted and those denied ecclesiastical funeral rites, sometimes called Christian burial, but always referring to the Catholic interpretation of Christianity.

Silently, he read over the canons. No possible way could Moses Green be granted a Catholic funeral. The closest his case came was, “In the prudent judgment of the local ordinary, ecclesiastical funeral rites can be granted to baptized members of some non-Catholic church or ecclesial community unless it is evidently contrary to their will and provided their own minister is unavailable.”

Moe Green, of course, was religiously neutral, let alone not baptized.

Koesler shook his head. “Well, you seem to be correct; I can’t find any law against it.”

She smiled. It was a very attractive smile.

“Let’s see what the 1917 version has to say about it,” he said.

She stiffened. “Excuse me, Father, but you just read the current law. What’s the point of going back to something that’s outdated? Are you just trying to get rid of me and my family and our friends? We may not have registered in this parish, but I’ve been here for Mass on Sundays once in a while.” She dabbed at emerging tears with a lacy handkerchief.

There was no way Koesler could testify for or against her claim. She could have easily become lost to him in a fairly crowded Sunday Mass. And as long as she used the traditional side of the confessional that protected anonymity, he would have no way of knowing whether she had ever been his penitent.

But she was absolutely mistaken in thinking he was trying to find a reason to refuse her request.

“I assure you, Mrs. Green, if anything, I’d like to welcome you to this parish-registered or not. You see, when the 1983 text was issued, the former code was not completely replaced. Some of the laws in both texts are exactly the same or very similar. And some of the older law can clarify some of the new law.”

She seemed unconvinced.

He paged through the table of contents. “One of my problems,” he said lightly, “is that this old book is entirely in Latin. And while I was pretty fluent in the language in the seminary, I haven’t had much use for it-especially lately.”

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.

“Okay.” A smile played about his lips even though he was feeling quite ambivalent at this point. “Level with me. Any more surprises?”

Certain she had won, she would now mention her final two concerns, though she was not sure he would consider them genuine problems. “Well … there is the time for visitation. We wanted it from 6:30 until … well, about midnight.”

“Midnight! Visitation routinely ends about nine. Why in the world are you thinking of midnight?”

“Aunt Sophie.”

“Aunt Sophie? Oh, the only one on your husband’s side of the family who accepted your marriage. What about Aunt Sophie?”

“Did I mention she lives in Florida? I called her right after I notified the kids. She said she would get a flight to Detroit even if she had to charter a plane. And under no circumstances were we to bury Moe until she got here and viewed him.”

“Even then! We’re supposed to keep the church open? What if she doesn’t get here tonight?”

“You don’t know Sophie. She does what she says. If she has to charter a plane, she’ll do it. She’ll be here tonight. If she gets here and the church is locked, she’ll huff and she’ll puff and she’ll blow the place down.”

“Still …”

“Father, I’m sure she’ll be here much earlier than midnight. I was just trying to be honest by drawing a worst-case scenario.”

“Can’t she visit him tomorrow morning if she misses tonight?”

She shook her head. “We’re planning on refrigerating Moe at Kaufman’s. We’ll go directly to the cemetery from the funeral home.” Aware of his growing irritation, she added, “And, Father, we’ll provide security people for the length of the viewing. We’ll guarantee the security of the church. We’ll even lock it before we leave-whatever time that will be.”

“This is growing like Topsy.”

“There’s just one last thing.”

Would this never end?

“Father, I would really appreciate it if you would just say a few words.”

“Say a few words! I didn’t know your husband. I never even met the man-”

“I know. I understand.” She might have been consoling a hurt child. “But this surely can’t be the first time for this sort of thing. A busy priest like yourself, and all the years you’ve been a priest, you can’t have personally known every individual whose funeral you conducted. You must’ve had to eulogize some people you knew no better than you knew my husband.”

Koesler was getting the notion that he was following a script that had been crafted by this woman. Every argument he made, every point he advanced led to a perfect response from her. Every move he made she checked.

“Sure,” he said, “of course I’ve had to do that. But at least the deceased and I were of the same faith. If I could not speak from a personal relationship and knowledge of the deceased, I could talk about our common belief. I have never officiated at a funeral for a non-Catholic. According to your own account, your husband was not only not Catholic, he was only ethnically Jewish. In sum, he was a man of no religion at all.”

“Father, just a few words. Everyone would appreciate that so very much. And remember, a good number of people there will be Catholic.”

“A few words! A few words about what?”

“I’ll tell you all about him … introduce you to some of his friends, acquaintances, his children. You’ll be more comfortable once you meet them. I know you can do this.”

“Well …”

“Just be in the church about seven o’clock. We’ll get you acquainted with some of the people … 7:30, a few words, and you’re done.”

Scheduling seemed to play a significant role in this lady’s life. By sometime tonight-at Aunt Sophie’s good pleasure-the wake would be over. A few words at 7:30 and the eulogy would be done. No one was supposed to think about any specific complication, just about conclusions.

What a woman!

“Okay … okay. Is there anything else? Anything at all?”

With a satisfied smile, she shook her head.

“All right,” he said. “There’s one thing I’ve got to ask you.”

“Of course. Just tell me what the usual offering is and I’ll double it … no, triple it!”

“No, no, not that. The point is that things may get a bit dicey about this. My decision to agree to your request is pretty marginal. I could get into some trouble over it. All I’m asking you to do is to keep this as quiet as you can. The more we can limit and kind of control the information about this wake, the happier I’ll be. Would you see to that?”

“As best I can.” She smiled. “And you may be uninterested in the offering, but I’ll be back soon after we bury my poor husband.”

Koesler saw her to the door and watched as she walked through the adjacent parking lot, entered a Lincoln Town Car, and drove away.

His lingering impression was of a petite, attractive, emotional, feminine bulldozer.