Deathbed

by William Kienzle

  “Would you change the policies if he—they—demanded it?”

  “No. I couldn’t. Not in good conscience.”

  “If you didn’t, then what?”

  “I might be asked to leave the order.”

  “Leave the order?”

  “Leave religious life. Stop being a nun.”

  “He’d do that?”

  “I don’t see how he could avoid it. No matter how he felt about it.”

  “And what would happen to St. Vincent’s?”

  “That’s a prognosis I can’t make with any certainty. In its present state, with the clientele that come here now, I suppose eventually it would close. I know that we are having a difficult time staying open now. But we’re surviving. This is just not a facility for white middle-class suburbanites. No more than is St. Patrick’s a parish for the affluent. That’s not our community. We are doing our best now to relate to our community, such as it is. We are trying to bring a distinctly Christian attitude to this health care facility. And Christianity knows no color, no class, no restrictions in its Christlike love.”

  Lennon shrugged and packed away her pen and notepad. “I shouldn’t have asked you any of these hypothetical questions. That was not professional of me. I can’t afford to consider consequences of a legitimate story. If I did, I’d be a basket case in no time. And the public would be denied its right to know.”

  Lennon rose and smoothed her skirt. “I hope you understand, Sister. But whether you understand or not, it is my job.”

  “I understand, Pat. It’s not going to make my day. But that has nothing to do with your job. You’ve got to be faithful to that. Just as I must be faithful to mine. No matter what happens, know that I will not hold you responsible. The decisions were mine. I made them. Now I must live with the consequences. Maybe it will not be as bad as I anticipate.”

  “I certainly hope not.”

  Lennon left the office. She did not look back. She couldn’t.

  6

  Father Robert came home to Father Harold.

  Where else in the world, thought Koesler, as he parked in the garage adjoining St. Anselm’s rectory, would you hear anything like that except in the celibate world of the Roman Catholic priesthood?

  A Catholic rectory, mused Koesler; a home for unmarried fathers.

  This association between him and Father Harold was somewhat less than a marriage of convenience. It was more a union stemming from desperation.

  Definitely, it was not a marriage made in heaven. But few rectory matchups were. In the good old days—in the sixties and before—when there were comparatively lots of priests, men were teamed at the whim of the bishop. Or, more likely, as the result of personnel juggling by the men of the Chancery, with a perfunctory blessing by the bishop.

  Now, as the Church was running out of priests, all too frequently parishes were forced to shift for themselves. When it came to priests who would assist the pastor.

  Thus it was by a combination of fidelity and luck that Koesler had managed to secure the parish-sitting services of Father Harold while Koesler played chaplain at St. Vincent’s. Fidelity in that Koesler faithfully led a group of St. Anselmites to an annual retreat at the Passionist Monastery. And luck, since the Passionists happened to have a surplus Father Harold for the first few weeks of the new year.

  From frequent association, Koesler knew Harold quite well. He was a large man in his sixties, only slightly balding, and always, when on call, garbed in the religious habit of the Passionist order.

  The Passionists had been founded in the early eighteenth century by St. Paul of the Cross for the purpose of preaching retreats and missions. The Passionists remained faithful to their roots as well as, and frequently considerably better than, any of the other old religious orders. But once in a while a Passionist could be cut from the herd to pastor a parish or, in this case, baby-sit one.

  Friendly and reservedly gregarious, Harold hailed from somewhere out west—Oklahoma or Texas. It was never dear exactly whence. His theology was anchored squarely in the pre-Vatican II Church. A fact that left him a bit nervous, a condition betrayed by his darting eyes. He never quite knew when what was to him an innocent dogmatic statement might draw anything from good-natured laughter to derision to, at rare moments, agreement. So he seldom volunteered conversation. Mostly, he reacted to questions from others.

  Koesler entered the kitchen from the connected garage. He heard some at first unidentifiable noise. It was television, the local evening news. He remembered now: Father Harold watched television a lot.

  “Hello!” Koesler called above the TV noise. He placed on the dining room table the burger and fries he had picked up on the way home.

  “Hello there, Father.” Harold greeted him warmly and moved from the living room to the dining area. Thus, as usual, he would be able to watch TV and keep Koesler company while he ate.

  “What do we have on the evening news?” Koesler placed his hat and briefcase on the seat of a chair, draping his coat and scarf on the back of the chair.

  “What?” Harold was able to focus on only snatches from both Koesler and the TV. But he was able to recall from his subconscious what he had missed from each medium. From experience, Koesler knew all he had to do was wait. “Oh,” Harold predictably continued, “it’s that skirmish they had the other night over at Cobo Hall. They’re just beginning to identify some of the people they arrested. Mostly kids.”

  “I guess that’s who you’d expect to find at a rock concert.”

  “What? Oh, yeah. I suppose so. Ought to be home. Only trouble when they’re out that late. Unsupervised.”

  “I suppose.” It wasn’t worth arguing over. Koesler opened the foil that protected his steaming burger. Others came home to a prepared meal, he thought. Oh, well, this is considerably better than nothing.

  From his briefcase he took a soft-cover booklet entitled, Ethics Committees: A Challenge for Catholic Health Care. Sister Eileen had lent it to him. He had paged through it earlier. He wanted to read a couple of sections more carefully.

  “How’d things go at the hospital today?”

  “Pretty good. I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. It can’t be much different than making sick calls in the parish, eh, Father?”

  “No, not much different. “ It was wildly different. Koesler did not care to seriously interrupt Harold’s evening news.

  The ethics brochure contained a brief history as well as an explanation of the ethical directives. Koesler felt a twinge of parochial pride to learn that the first U.S. Catholic code of medical ethics, in 1920, was a reprint of the Surgical Code for Catholic Hospitals for the Diocese of Detroit. This basic code had been revised, in effect, only twice: in 1954 and again in 1971.

  Briefly he wondered about updating such an important document only twice in more than sixty years. Especially since those years spanned a unique knowledge and information explosion, particularly in the field of medicine. The wheels of the Church grind exceedingly slow, he thought, but really!

  He continued reading.

  “Harold,” Koesler said at length, “do you know why doctors don’t tie a woman’s tubes in a Catholic hospital?”

  “What?” Once he reran the tape, Harold blushed. He always got a bit flustered when confronted with anything even remotely sexual. “Uh . . . oh. It’s against the law. Isn’t it?”

  Actually, Harold was quite certain it was against the law. At least it had been the last time he’d looked. But for all he knew, it might have been changed this morning. No telling what these hairy young whippersnappers were going to do next.

  “Well, according to this, and I think it’s correct, it’s not so much laws that govern medical ethics as it is Church teaching.”

  “Church teaching?” Harold’s mind might be partially tuned to a conversation with Koesler, but his eyes were riveted to the TV set. “Oh, the ordinary magisterium, you mean.”

  “Precisely. The good old ordinary magi
sterium—the ordinary teaching authority of the Church.”

  “That’s when the Church isn’t teaching infallibly.” Harold was just making sure that hadn’t changed either.

  “That’s right. And there are those who claim there’s been only one infallible statement since the doctrine of infallibility was defined a little more than a hundred years ago at the First Vatican Council.”

  “The doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven, wasn’t it?”

  “Right. So everything else—and that’s a lot—falls under the ordinary magisterium. And do you know how they came up with this medical code?”

  “Just look at this, Father. This was the only goal the Red Wings scored last night.”

  Koesler craned sufficiently to see the TV screen. He was just in time to see a red-suited skater sweep across the ice, receive the puck in a pass from his wing man, fake the goalie, and slide the puck inside the crease.

  “They’re not doing very well, are they?” Koesler did not follow sports as faithfully as he once had.

  Harold shook his head sadly. “Not like the good old days with the Production Line—Lindsay, Abel and Howe. Man, that Gordie Howe—what a player!”

  “Those were the good old days, all right.” If he was no longer an avid jock, Koesler could at least remember. “And those blood-and-guts games against the Maple Leafs and the Canadiens!”

  “Umm—excuse me, Father, what did you ask me about?”

  “The Code of Medical Ethics. Know how they arrived at it?”

  Harold shook his head. “Not rightly.” He returned to the TV.

  “They asked for it.”

  “Eh?”

  “Catholic hospitals kept bugging the bishops to spell out medical moral ethics. Can you imagine that, Harold? Talk about the good old days ! Nowadays we hope the bishops and the Pope will keep quiet and not muddle things any more than they already have. Back then they wanted the word. And they surely got it. The bishops even sent the question of tubal ligation and material cooperation to the Vatican. And they got their answer. Now we have to live with it.”

  Harold clenched his jaws. He didn’t care for talk that made light of the bishops and the Holy Father. But he was a guest in this rectory. And his parents had raised him to be well-mannered.

  “So,” Koesler continued, “to return to my original question about why Fallopian tubes aren’t tied in a Catholic hospital: The reason is because the Vatican said so. That’s it.”

  Harold felt compelled to say a word for Holy Mother Church. “But Father, that is the ordinary magisterium!”

  “I know that, Father Harold. But to demur from the ordinary magisterium is not to be branded a heretic.”

  “No, you’re not a heretic if you deny the ordinary magisterium. But you’re wrong.”

  “That’s one view.”

  “Oh, really, Father!” TV was disregarded. “I must object. I believe that Catholics may not dissent from Church teaching. And—not that I mean for a moment to presume to tell you your obligation—but pastors may not accept dissenting views in their parochial ministry. And finally, Catholics who have any doubt about Church teaching may suspend or withhold assent while they take every opportunity to resolve their doubt through study, consultation, and prayer.”

  “In other words, Harold, Catholics who don’t agree with Church teaching may pray until they do agree.”

  “You’re oversimplifying, Father.”

  “Am I? What about our obligation to form our own conscience and follow it?”

  “That’s true, Father. But the Church helps us form a true conscience.”

  “Sure, Harold, the Church is supposed to help us. But in your explanation, the Church is not so much helping as it has taken over the whole job. Instead of working to inform our conscience and help form it, the Church simply invites us to pour our conscience in her mold and all the Catholics come marching out believing in, and judging everything in, identical ways.”

  “Do you have another explanation?”

  “I think so. Try this, Harold. Suppose, to begin, that we have an obligation to recognize the Church’s teaching role. And we also have an obligation to know what the Church is actually teaching. I mean, Harold, how many times have you had a discussion or an argument with someone only to eventually realize that the other person doesn’t really know what he’s talking about—that he doesn’t know what the Church actually teaches about a given point.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Okay, so we’re together so far. We recognize that the Church is an authentic teacher. And we must know correctly what the Church is teaching. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Next step: If we’re uncertain or in doubt about a teaching of the Church, we give the presumption of truth to the magisterium. I think you’ll agree to that, too.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, now for the final step. If it happens that our own experience and conviction—which we carefully and prayerfully reflect on—tells us that the Church’s teaching on a specific matter is inadequate, incomplete or inapplicable to our personal life, then we have the right—the responsibility—to depart from the Church’s teaching and follow our own well-formed convictions and conscience.

  “What do you say to that?”

  “Depart from the Church’s teachings! Oh, Father, I could never believe that!”

  “How else could we possibly form our own conscience if we don’t have the freedom to do so?”

  “But Father, the power of the keys! Christ said, ‘Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church . . . and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind upon earth will be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose upon earth will be loosed also in heaven.’”

  “We’re all familiar with the ‘Tu es Petrus’. . . text, Harold. But, like everything else in Scripture, you’ve got to put it in context. How did Peter conduct himself in the early Church?” Koesler continued, answering his own question. “Read the first twelve chapters of Acts with the idea of checking out St. Peter’s role in the Church. He does not have anything close to the power and authority of the Popes of recent memory. Peter is challenged not only by Paul in their famous confrontation; the entire Christian community—which was then entirely Jewish—calls Peter to task for admitting Gentiles into the Church. And later, Peter doesn’t just decide to take a trip as a missionary; the whole group sends him off.

  “Peter’s role in the Church is not that of an infallible potentate, but a coordinator, a leader. And that’s what I think we mean when we call the Pope the successor of Peter. So, the ‘power of the keys’ maybe isn’t as absolute as we’ve been led to believe.”

  “I don’t know, Father. I just couldn’t bring myself to disagree with Church teaching.”

  “And nobody’s asking you to, Harold. My point is, there is more than one view of the teaching Church. And our separate views represent the thinnest line between a liberal and a conservative attitude toward the Church. There are, for instance, Catholics who would not grant the amount of time you so generously concede to conform one’s conscience to Church teaching. As far as these people are concerned, if you doubt, you’re out.

  “On the other hand, there are liberal Catholics who would not offer the magisterium the benefit of the doubt, as I would. These people are convinced that at least most of the bishops are far more concerned about preserving the institution than searching out evangelical truth.

  “Then there are liberals who are so liberal they themselves admit they simply have left the Church altogether. Just as there are conservatives who have fashioned their own rigid Church that is far more Catholic than the Catholic Church.

  “Then there are people like you and me, Harold, who differ minimally if radically.” Koesler smiled. “I’ll let you be a Catholic if you’ll let me be one too.”

  Harold returned the smile. It seemed a happy compromise. Then he grew concerned. “But how will this look to outsiders, Father? Won’
t this give scandal if we Catholics openly disagree with each other? If we’re not united?”

  “It’s already happened. Pope Paul insisted that his encyclical, ‘Humanae Vitae,’ was not an infallible statement, but it certainly was the ordinary magisterium of the highest order. And in that document, he spelled out the traditionally approved methods of family planning: rhythm or abstinence. But Catholics, at least in the First World countries, have maturely and prayerfully decided that this particular Vatican decision is not for them. Has anybody confessed practicing artificial birth control to you lately?”

  “No.”

  “Remember how it used to be?”

  “Yes.” Harold winced. “Almost all the marrieds either were expecting, or practicing birth control—and confessing it.”

  “So family planning remains a moral problem for a few lay Catholics, some priests, most bishops. And of course the Pope. As a matter of fact, in the field we’ve been talking about—medical moral ethics—there is a bit of divergence.”

  “There is?” Harold was surprised.

  “The Code of Medical Ethics has been approved by the U.S. Conference of Bishops and supplemented by and blessed by the Holy See, but it is not enforced by any national conference of bishops. It is implemented by each individual bishop in his own diocese.”

  “It is?”

  “Uh-huh. So there is a bit of divergence. Generally, they try to overlook the differences within the good-old-boy network. But differences there are.

  “Really! I had no idea! Father, will you look at that cloud pattern on the weather map. Looks like we’re in for some more snow.”

  “I guess so. “ Koesler went into the kitchen to make some instant coffee. As far as he knew, he was the only one left in the world who would attempt to drink the coffee he made. The taste never offended him. And he was at a loss to know why others refused his coffee. He had forgotten that years in the seminary had made him an omnivore. And that if not for bread and peanut butter, he very probably would have starved long before ordination.

  As he stirred his usual overabundant spoonful of instant coffee granules into the steaming water, he wondered what he had accomplished by his disputation with Father Harold. Probably not much. Harold would continue to let the Church Xerox his mind and conscience. At most, perhaps he would understand how others might responsibly differ with the ordinary magisterium. That alone was a not inconsiderable achievement.