Dear Editor: Uh…excuse me…but is it seemly that a Cardinal, of all people, who is supposed to be Our Savior’s representative here on earth, is given such a panoplied obsequy? One can see why some moneyed nincompoop would try to achieve with a fancy funeral what he couldn’t get in life”fulfillment”by a holy man? Who took a vow to walk in the steps of is poor and humble master, humiliated and crucified for challenging the High Priests? I dunno. Whenever I see such a gaudy sendoff, I respect even more the Wahhabi sect of Arabia Deserta. What they do is simply wrap the poor devil in white cloth, dig a grave and at the bottom hollow out a niche where the body is placed so that when they shovel the dirt back in it doesn’t pelt on Uncle Ahmed directly. After praying and keeping vigil for a few hours, hunkered down under black umbrellas on the burnt desert, the relatives leave, and in a few days the wind has effaced all traces. Kings as well as Bedouins are buried in this way. But to other people, having only a vague and general location of a deceased loved one is not enough. That’s why relatives of deep-sea plane crash victims are not content to let the body lie where it is, but they must fish up a remnant, a bone, anything, to bring home. Such is the magic and taboo surrounding the dead, reminiscent of the ancient Egyptians and Jews. You have to give this to the Wahhabis: they practice what all religions preach, that the body is nothing, the spirit is all. Mozart, in debt when he died young in 1791, was dumped in potter’s field, but his spirit, wafted in by radio, is with me tonight. T. Weed