Free The Greatest Evil by William X. Kienzle Page A

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.”

8
    “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