Yesterday’s New York Times included a front-page article about euologies and the recent crackdown on them in Catholic churches. The paper asks when they became excessive and looks at Princess Diana’s funeral or some other celebrity event.
Jim Goodness, a spokesman for the Newark archdiocese, traces part of the trend toward expansive eulogies to a 1990 change in church rules that allowed “a few words of remembrance” during Mass.
“But a couple of moments became long treatises,” said Mr. Goodness, “and all of a sudden people were talking about how what they really wanted to say could be best expressed in the words of Dr. Dre,” the hip-hop performer.
The fact is that they’ve been an issue for years. Part of the problem is that people believe that what they see on TV is real so that when some TV show depicts a eulogy at a funeral, they think that’s what they should be able to do in real life. It isn’t helped either when exceptions are made by Church officials for the rich or famous. If they’re going to allow it for JFK, Jr., then they have to allow it for everyone.
But the other part of the problem is that most people don’t understand what funerals are about. Most people don’t recognize the reality of sin and the symbolism of the Resurrection.
For one thing, most euologies sound like canonizations, where the deceased, no matter what kind of life he lived, is assumed to be in Heaven. I know it makes the family feel better, but if they think he’s in Heaven, then who’s praying for the soul that might be in Purgatory?
I have been writing the petitions for my parish for several years. In the beginning I started with the canned ones, customizing them to fit our congregation. Eventually I threw away the book and just did them from scratch.
Now that I’ve been doing them for a long time, I have at least two sets saved for each liturgical year. All I have to do is pull up the one for the thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (year C), change the date, make some minor adjustments, and it’s done.
Where it used to take me a half hour or more to come up with something original, not it takes me about 15 minutes. According to the “General Instruction of the Roman Missal” the prayers should be: 1. For the needs of the church, 2. For public authorities and the salvation of the whole world, 3. For those burdened by any kind of difficulty, 4. For the local community.
I follow that formula and make sure I refer to the day’s readings. For example, this past Sunday we prayed that Jesus would stay at OUR house. I really just ask myself, what do we want to pray for?
While it’s certainly worth praying for, the people in my parish, in suburban St. Louis, really don’t care all that much about land mines. They’re much more concerned with local issues and their own families.
By the way, we ALWAY pray for the men and women of the military.
At our daily Mass the priest opens the prayers up to the people. Painfully distracting. It places me in the near occasion of sin.
I don’t want to hear about Aunt Betty’s gallbladder problems before 9am.
It isn’t just a recent phenomenon, and it isn’t just JFK, Jr. I remember watching RFK’s funeral on TV in 1968, and hearing Ted Kennedy’s very moving eulogy of his brother. I’d be sorry if such eulogies were not permitted.
I was present in St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington for the funeral of Cardinal O’Boyle in 1987, though, and most of the eulogies could easily have been dispensed with. All the politicoes got up and said nice things about what a great guy he was, but only Cardinal O’Connor said anything memorable, which was to hail Cardinal O’Boyle for being “a lion of courage” for standing up for the teaching of the Church upon the issuance of the encyclical Humanae vitae in 1968. (When a raft of Washington-diocese priests issued a statement of dissent from the encyclical, O’Boyle suspended their faculties to teach, preach, or hear confession. Unfortunately, he didn’t get any support from his brother bishops, and Rome twisted his arm to get him to adopt a mealy-mouthed kind of “pastoral solution” was arrived at, by which the dissenters were allowed to go back to preaching their errors from archdiocesan pulpits, and misleading the faithful in archdiocesan confessionals). I’d have been much happier if O’Connor’s had been the only eulogy that day.
I have been in parishes where people are invited to write their petitions on pieces of paper and put them into a basket. They are then included as a group during the prayers of the faithful. That seems to be a good compromise. Aunt Betty gets her gallbladder prayed for and everyone else is spared the gory details.
Io. I abhor eulogies at Mass and pine for a return to the old Requiem Mass with the black vestments, the poignant chant and somber reminders of Sin, Hell, Purgatory and Heaven (they read the riot act to us. As if the last two years racked up some points on their collective credibility.
But before all of you start issuing anathemas, there is an alternative.
A bishop who doesn’t spend as much time fooling himself, or his flock, might issue a pastoral letter telling the faithful what is and is not appropriate on such occasions. He could use this as an opportunity to remind them of the act of mercy in comforting the bereaved at such occasions.
He could do it in November, when the Poor Souls are best remembered.
My father is not long for this world. When I speak at his funeral, I will thank those who came. I will tell a story I knew as a boy. I will tell what losing him means to me, to my siblings, and to their children. But most of all, I will plead on my father’s behalf, that his friends and loved ones pray for him. I won’t be the one kidding anyone; in this case, about the need for any less.
Best of all, it’ll be finished in five to seven minutes, which is more than I can say for most homilies.
Dad wouldn’t want it any other way. And God pity the fool who tries to stop me.
Unfortunately, my pastor does the same thing. Sometimes the responses can make me cringe mightily.
One of the things I like about the Byzantine liturgy: all the bases are covered in the liturgy. (clergy, travelers, peace, the dead and dying, the Pope, etc.) Anyone not familiar w/ what I’m talking about should look up the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and have a peak.
When I read at Mass, I modify them somewhat. I change “faith community” into “our parish, ______”, for example. Today I threw in one to Our Lady of Guadalupe for an end to abortion.
Maybe we should always add “for an end to crappy liturgy, evil liturgists and the subtle heresies they promote, unsuitable music, bad english translations, and improperly dressed communicants, let us pray to the Lord.”
Lord, hear our prayer.
At our daily Mass the priest opens the prayers up to the people.
My parish doesn’t do that but other churches I’ve been to do…BAD idea!
You don’t just get Aunt Betty’s gall bladder. You open a can o’ worms. Invariably, it turns into a political debate.
“Now that I’ve been doing them for a long time, I have at least two sets saved for each liturgical year. All I have to do is pull up the one for the thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (year C), change the date, make some minor adjustments, and it’s done.”
Sounds like a budding commercial opportunity to me, Deacon Mike. Just be sure to put that little “circle c” after each of ‘em.
Actually, no. My suggestion is just a bit too crass. But it must be tempting to want to compete with the leftist prayer-panderer publishers.
“…and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the weevils.”
Nice business idea…Intercessions Inc….customized and personalized intercessory prayers (conservative and liberal) for all occasions…….
The same issue of the Tidings in L.A. that ran that Weigel column also ran an article by a priest declaring: “A sound Catholic mentality welcomes a petition like, ‘That all world leaders may put aside their political differences and work for true and lasting peace.’” So, the priest is pontificating Weigel is not of sound Catholic mind.
http://www.the-tidings.com/2004/1029/miller.htm
Last week’s Richard McBrien column attacking the Legion of Christ did not have a similar counter-viewpoint article declaring that McBrien is not of sound Catholic mind.
Dom, and the rest of you, we can all stop kidding ourselves now.
You will never get rid of eulogies. The same bishop who outlaws them will be virtually canonized by his fellow priests at his funeral—even if it is during the homily, which is no more appropriate for such presumption than anywhere else. They made exceptions for Cardinal O’Connor, and it won’t stop with him.
But the same bozos will think we’re going to take them seriously when they read the riot act to us. As if the last two years racked up some points on their collective credibility.
But before all of you start issuing anathemas, there is an alternative.
A bishop who doesn’t spend as much time fooling himself, or his flock, might issue a pastoral letter telling the faithful what is and is not appropriate on such occasions. He could use this as an opportunity to remind them of the act of mercy in comforting the bereaved at such occasions.
He could do it in November, when the Poor Souls are best remembered.
My father is not long for this world. When I speak at his funeral, I will thank those who came. I will tell a story I knew as a boy. I will tell what losing him means to me, to my siblings, and to their children. But most of all, I will plead on my father’s behalf, that his friends and loved ones pray for him. I won’t be the one kidding anyone; in this case, about the need for any less.
Best of all, it’ll be finished in five to seven minutes, which is more than I can say for most homilies.
Dad wouldn’t want it any other way. And God pity the fool who tries to stop me.
Another thing. One of you is going to bring up graveside services, as being the more appropriate time to testify to the memory of a loved one. I thought of that too.
Anyone been to one of those lately? Assuming the weather is good, the modern graveside service is rather stilted by traditional standards. The priest makes no attempt to formalize the event. The body is rarely lowered into the ground at the time anymore, waiting for a couple of strangers in dungarees putting down a six-pack off in the distance.
And most people (not nearly as many who attended the funeral itself), are looking at their watches, wondering what’s being served for lunch afterwards.
Hardly an auspicious occasion.
No offense David, but what exactly is the point of the eulogy? Is it to entertain a large audience?
I think we first have to ask ourselves what the purpose and motivation of eulogies is. I think that today their purpose has become a means to canonize the deceased or to work out some emotional response of a family member or something of the sort. That’s fine in it’s place, but the Mass is neither the time nor the place for it.
Maybe a wake, maybe graveside, but not the Mass.
As for the current conditions of the graveside service, I don’t think that justifies intruding into the Mass with a eulogy. The eulogy is an accretion not proper to the purpose of the funeral liturgy.
And, I’m sorry but your reasons for including it are not that different from the reasons people give for introducing all kinds of innovations to the Mass, like liturgical dance et al.
An update on this project from BishopAccountability.org – We will post only the names of priests against whom allegations have already been publicly made in the media or in court filings. Yesterday we received the database; the 59 archive boxes of backup materials arrived on Monday. We agree with Dom that quality is crucial, and our first impression is that Ms. Demarest and her colleague, Trish McLelland, have done a very careful job. The database appears to include hundreds of priests who have not yet been listed on the SurvivorsFirst.org list or other available lists. We expect to post the database shortly.
Terry, the problem is that once the accusation has been made and you report it, you are ethically bound to report anything the exculpates or mitigates the accused that likewise enters the public record.
Looking at the website now I have no way of knowing of any accused person for whom the accusations were withdrawn or disproven. It’s not enough to report an accusation in 2002 if the accusation was disproven in 2004.
As the number of cases that you track and sources that you use increase, the effort to track updated dispositions looks massive.
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I hope BishopAccountability.org, Inc. has a good liability insurance, defamation is actionable.
Patrick, your points are well taken. We are committed to posting all publicly reported aspects of an allegation. We will pull some of this material to the site, and other reports will be pushed to us by our readers, which will help with the scale problem you mention. In our view, the ethics of the situation do not bind us to be complete (which the bishops have made impossible anyway), but to post every public report about an allegation that we find or receive, when that report adds new information. We will invite informants, and we will not select or exclude.
By gathering relevant reports on an allegation from various sources, our database will help not only victims but also priests who are incorrectly accused. Our database will connect an allegation with an exoneration, and it will also connect an apparent exoneration with a later report that a priest has reoffended. Moreover, if a priest who worked in ten states is credibly accused in Iowa, his parishioners in other states deserve to know about the accusation. If he is cleared in Iowa, those parishioners should know too. Our work on assignment records will eventually make this possible.
The database will be a partial index of publicly available reports, nothing more. It will make no allegations. When its record on a priest is incomplete, it will at least provide the start of a thread that can be followed. And we will post that thread as it develops.
Of course, the issues you raise are a subset of a larger ethical mess. The material we post will include court documents and media reports about hundreds of priests convicted on abuse and porn charges. But it will contain many more reports of allegations and denials, and diocesan documents regarding settlements with “no admission of guilt” clauses. Charges are rarely withdrawn, and allegations are hard to prove or disprove. We have the bishops to thank for the murkiness of this situation. They removed most cases from the justice system by gaming the statutes of limitations, by concluding thousands of settlements with confidentiality agreements, and by isolating the victims from each other in order to limit the damage. Fear of scandal trumped the truth, with terrible results for the victims, and two results for priests who are innocent. Priests who were incorrectly accused lost their day in court, just as the victims did, and innocent priests in general work now within a fog of suspicion.
Sorry for this long post, but one last comment. At BishopAccountability.org we feel that transparency about this horrifying mess is a paramount ethical good, and our focus is managerial. We are especially interested in the bishops’ role. But everyone has contributed. Many priests kept silent because they had secrets too, or because they feared punishment within the diocesan pecking orders. Lay people were unwilling to report an offending priest whose Masses or politics they liked. The Pope has allowed the wound to fester, and he keeps bishops in office who should have been gone long ago. The materials we are collecting shed light on these other aspects of the crisis too.
Many thanks for your thoughtful post.