{"id":1687,"date":"2010-12-17T23:02:35","date_gmt":"2010-12-18T04:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1687"},"modified":"2010-12-19T22:15:27","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T03:15:27","slug":"a-celebration-of-the-life-of-the-deceased-or-not-as-the-case-may-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=1687","title":{"rendered":"A Celebration of the Life of the Deceased, Or Not, As the Case May Be …"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previous I Read The News Today Entry<\/a> | Next I Read The News Today Entry<\/p>\n

A Celebration of the Life And Music of the Deceased Or Not, As The Case May Be …<\/h2>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These I Read The News Today<\/em> postings of mine seem to have taken on a rather Catholic coloring.\u00a0 The latest news item to bring out the itchy trigger finger in me is along the same lines.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Seems that, as reported in the Times<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Archbishop Denis Hart, the Roman Catholic prelate of Melbourne, Australia, is trying to draw the line <\/a>against efforts to characterize Catholic funeral services there as \u201cCelebrations of the Life of …\u201d or to play secular music.\u00a0 \u201cRomantic ballads, pop or rock music, political songs, [or] football club songs\u201d do not make the cut.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You can see where he\u2019s coming from.\u00a0 Religious services<\/em> ought to be, um, religious.\u00a0 And what Hart surely takes from that is that they should be about God, for instance, and not about us mere mortals except as in relationship with God.\u00a0 Religious services <\/em>should not import values that contradict religious values, either by directly challenging them (e.g. Jim Morrison hollering: \u201cYou canNOT petition the Lord with prayer\u201d<\/a>) or by shutting them out (most love songs, for example, and certainly, to choose an example from Archbishop Hart\u2019s bailiwick, the Melbourne Victory fight song<\/a> \u2013 musical performances where references to the Divinity are scarce or nonexistent).<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Well and good.\u00a0 Except that nowhere is it written that funerals must be exclusively religious services<\/em>.\u00a0 Even when they incorporate a Mass, and Catholic funerals generally do, they have a lot of different functions:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A) Funerals can, and I guess when delivered under Catholic auspices, must<\/em> provide reassurance that the life of the departed is changed but not extinguished, and that God will ultimately save every creature and dry every tear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 B) But they also have to help the bereaved grieve; and if you think grieving is about being all reassured that the departed is safe and sound in the arms of his Maker, you\u2019ve never experienced real grief.\u00a0 Grief is a confrontation with the fact that the person who died is nullified, erased from this worldly existence of ours, and a confrontation as well with the tenuousness of the evidence that that person still goes on in some other mode.\u00a0 Grief is acknowledging that in important ways that person is lost to us, and that religious reassurances could be wrong.\u00a0 The grieving process is about going through all that, and moving on.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 C) And finally, and I would maintain quite legitimately, funerals are<\/em> to celebrate the life of the person who died.\u00a0 (And anyone, even an archbishop, who says otherwise is ignoring his own humanity.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So even granting Hart’s premise about religious services, funerals are generally hybrid affairs, and\u00a0surely the secular objectives are equally pressing with the religious ones.\u00a0 \u00a0And to\u00a0reach the secular goals, immersion in the music loved by the dearly departed may be singularly effective.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As it happens, though, I don’t even grant Hart’s premise, that religious services must explicitly be about God.\u00a0 Let me illustrate with a fairly recent memory.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A few years ago, a friend of mine, still middle-aged, died suddenly.\u00a0 His brief final illness struck him right in front of us all at church, while he was singing in the choir, a circumstance from which it may well be appreciated that there was no hostility on his part or ours to church music. But this friend had been a disc jockey in earlier life, and popular music was always important to him.\u00a0 For the funeral, his daughters put together a tape of short excerpts from songs the man had loved.\u00a0 For about ten minutes we listened, rapt, as the melodies, some shallow, some profound, none religious so far as I can recall, helped bring him back among us.\u00a0 We were freed up to love him again in a way that would not have been possible without this aid.\u00a0 Damn straight we were celebrating his life!\u00a0 Do I think God felt slighted or envious?\u00a0 Do I think God was worried we were focusing our attention in the wrong place?\u00a0 Uh, nooo.\u00a0 That tape was the high point of the funeral, and I don\u2019t think for a minute it took any of us away from God.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve written elsewhere in this blog<\/a> that if, as Catholics are all taught, there is a God who made us all in His image and likeness, it\u2019s hard to see how the distinction between sacred and profane is possible.\u00a0 The Archbishop\u2019s ukase, I think, tries to preserve this hopeless distinction.\u00a0 Love songs direct our attention to romance, and perhaps to sex.\u00a0 But God is the Author of these things.\u00a0 We cannot focus on them without focusing on Him, by another name.\u00a0 Fight songs direct our attention to athletic feats and identification with teams.\u00a0 But God is the maker of the bodies and the competitive spirit with which we and our sports heroes exercise.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Celebrating the life of the deceased is<\/em> celebrating God.\u00a0 Not in some ethereal, metaphorical kind of way, either.\u00a0 If we are believers, the departed is a piece of God, a member of the Mystical Body, whom we shall never see again in this life.\u00a0 Best to bring that person, with all his or her good and bad points, into high relief, before letting him or her go.\u00a0 And to do so fully integrating fight songs, ballads or whatever else made that person happy or special, right into the sacredest parts of the service.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Doing so honors God just as much as it does the person whose death has brought us together.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

Previous I Read The News Today Entry<\/a> | Next I Read The News Today Entry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the funeral, his daughters put together a tape of short excerpts from songs the man had loved. We were freed up to love him again in a way that would not have been possible without this aid. Damn straight we were celebrating his life! Do I think God felt slighted or envious? Do I think God was worried we were focusing our attention in the wrong place? Uh, nooo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[791,4],"tags":[1919,1926,1930,1918,1933,1936,1924,1939,1929,1928,1175,1932,1923,1920,1921,1940,1935,1931,1938,1925,1934,1927,1937,1922],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-i-read-the-news-today","category-closeup","tag-archbishop-denis-hart","tag-catholic","tag-celebration","tag-denis-hart","tag-fight-songs","tag-football-club-songs","tag-funeral","tag-god","tag-grief","tag-immortality","tag-jim-morrison","tag-love-songs","tag-mass","tag-melbourne-australia","tag-melbourne-victory","tag-mystical-body","tag-political-songs","tag-popular-music","tag-profane","tag-religious-service","tag-rock-music","tag-roman-catholic","tag-sacred","tag-the-soft-parade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1690,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/1690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}