Catholics to bury personalised funerals

Have you heard that the Catholic Church is looking at banning personal tributes to the deceased at funeral services? I think they’re making a grave mistake.

Part of this article on the subject says, Placing mementoes such as football guernseys or photographs on coffins and playing popular music during funeral services are likely to be discouraged under Catholic Church guidelines.



Catholics’ final farewells have become increasingly personalised and irreverent, according to the church’s National Liturgical Commission, which wants funerals to regain their significance as acts of worship.

While I can understand them getting concerned about services becoming irreverant (though I wonder by who’s standard) I do wonder why a funeral service shouldn’t be personalised. I certainly hope that my funeral will be personalised. It won’t be a generic dead body in that casket, it’ll be my remains.

I think that a funeral should be a time where friends and family can remember the part the deceased person has played in their lives. Hopefully there’ll be some happy memories. As far as I’m concerned, that’s an act of worship. When we remember those we love we can thank God for letting them be part of our journey.

Sure I won’t know one way or the other at the time, but I’d be terribly dissapointed if there wasn’t a bike or two at my funeral. I can’t think of too many other objects that would be better reflect my own attitude of worship. I’ve cycled over 25 000 kilometres raising money for the distribution of God’s word. My bikes are very much a part of my acts of worship. I think the problem begins when we define acts of worship only as rituals that happen within a church building. To me, worship isn’t about performing certain rituals or singing certain styles of music. It’s about living each moment as a partnership with God and following the direction he calls us to follow. The God I follow isn’t a solemn old man who frowns on fun, he’s the guy who invented fun.

Parish priests have complained of inappropriate behaviour, including the telling of blue jokes, a beer bottle opened at the altar and a eulogy that included an attack on the church.

Pop songs and personal remembrances should be left for the night before the funeral or for the graveside or wake, the commission says.

Its executive officer, Father Peter Williams, said funerals primarily organised as a personal celebration of the lives of the deceased sidelined Christian messages.

“You’ve got a collision between the church’s rites and people’s expectations in memorialising someone important to them who has died,” he said.

What the? We should sideline people’s expectations of memorialising their loved one?

When a friend of Jesus died, he wept. He got personally involved. Why should the church, which is acting as a representation of Jesus, want to do anything less?

I don’t think a funeral should be a place where ‘anything goes’, and if a person’s family chooses to ask a church to officiate at a funeral they should have respect for that church, but surely a blanket ban that depersonalises funerals is heading down the wrong track entirely.

Posted by Rodney Olsen

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