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Post by hibernicus on Jul 6, 2009 16:58:34 GMT
This may not be specifically liturgical, but this is as good a place to put it as any: Last week, the IRISH TIMES reported that Bishop Drennan of Galway had ordered that corpses should not be left in churches the night before the funeral on the grounds that the socialisation which accompanied this disturbed the reverent atmosphere appropriate to a church and that the church ought not to be taking on the function of a funeral parlour. The odd thing about this is that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the clergy made considerable efforts to ensure that corpses should be brought to the church the night before a funeral, rather than being left in the house to be the focus of wake games and other unedifyingly secular displays. So what do you think? Were those earlier priests mistaken and is a separation between secular goodbyes and religious ritual appropriate? Is the bishop weakly acceding to the further secularisation of funeral rituals? Or is he responding to a secularising process which is already underway and which has caused people to lose a sense of the reverential behaviour appropriate to a church? Discuss.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 12, 2009 11:53:07 GMT
This relates to the parish of Liscanor in Co Clare and the parish priest is facing down the Bishop on the issue.
I think funeral liturgies these days are heavily informed by the fictitious depiction of funerals on soap operas.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Aug 12, 2009 15:43:40 GMT
The eulogy has spread like a pandemic in recent years.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Aug 13, 2009 13:40:20 GMT
You know I heard many people object to the eulogy, but it is on the way to becoming near universal.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 17, 2009 11:09:00 GMT
The eulogy should be at the graveside rather than in church; perhaps a desire not to stand round in the rain has something to do with it.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Aug 17, 2009 11:31:30 GMT
Indeed. But then is a traditional wake not a more appropriate forum for a eulogy?
Incidentally many priests turn their funeral sermons into eulogies. These can be embarrassing to hear from time to time.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 22, 2009 10:38:45 GMT
Here goes for a firestorm, perhaps. I am not really competent to judge whether or not it was right to give Stephen Gately a Catholic funeral. (I think a private funeral would have been acceptable as Mr. Gately does appear to have possessed religious faith and to have done much charitable work, whatever his shortcomings). However, according to news reports, the ceremony at St. Laurence O'Toole's Church included offering the top hat and menu from his "civil union" ceremony (i.e. homosexual marriage in all but name) at the Presentation of Gifts, and Mr. Gately's male lover was treated by all present, including the priest, as a widower in all but name (and the press certainly referred to him as Mr. Gately's "husband"). This seems to me to go too far, just as the practice of giving a church blessing to couples who cannot have a church marriage (usually because one or both parties is divorced), something which I have noticed in the IRISH TIMES Saturday magazine's wedding reports, IMHO goes too far. It amounts to specifically calling down God's blessing on adultery or unnatural vice, in the same way that bandits in certain Latin countries are alleged to have habitually gone to church to pray for the success of their next robbery, or to have a knife blessed when they intended to murder someone with it. Church teaching is not a set of inconvenient rules to be evaded as far as possible; it reflects God's plan for creation as to how we should live. To deny it in all but name is neither charitable nor compassionate, no more than it is compassionate to tell someone that if they walk off the top floor of a skyscraper without a parachute they will float safely to the ground below.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Oct 22, 2009 19:03:41 GMT
I have to say I agree with Hibernicus. No doubt everyone's intentions were good but what happened was most ill-judged and could only cause confusion about the Church's position.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 17, 2010 11:12:32 GMT
I noticed a letter in the IRISH TIMES recently from someone who complained that while secular music and eulogies in church were not allowed at a recent funeral of a relative of theirs, both were in evidence at the recent funerals of Gerry Ryan and Bob Geldof Senior. The letter-writer asked was there one rule for celebrities and another for the rest of us. the explanation in part may be that the letter-writer was writing from outside Dublin and practice may vary between dioceses - but it does seem a reasonable point.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 23, 2011 21:32:38 GMT
RORATE CAELI reports the refusal of the Diocese of Bergamo (in northern Italy) to allow celebration of a EF funeral Mass although requested by the family (the deceased is the father of a prominent trad) and even though the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei intervened to support the family! What sort of advance arrangements can be made to guard against such an eventuality? rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2011/11/another-traditional-funeral-mass-denied_20.html
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