Emer O'Kelly: Rule must apply to all or funeral rite becomes a farce

EVERYONE has stories about funerals where the congregation is reduced to shifting in its seats in embarrassment, or helplessly trying to stifle laughter at less than appropriate remarks or choices of music. 

Because in recent years, funerals, particularly those held in church, while claiming to observe the regulations of a given religion, can frequently seem more like honky-tonk carnivals than dignified memorials.  

It has actually reached the stage where there seems to be more religious observance at non-religious or specifically humanist funerals than at those conducted by priests and ministers of the various churches. 

But back as far as the year 2000, the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Sean Brady (he had yet to receive the red hat) issued guidelines for his priests on how to deal with increasing secularism in funeral ritual. 

Well, not so much guidelines, more an edict. Which was fair enough: Roman Catholic theology and liturgy is laid down quite strictly. All Dr Brady was doing was restating the rules, which he wasn't just entitled to do, he was obliged to do. He was also obliged, as is every primate and archbishop, to make damn sure that those rules are enforced.

The rules state: "A brief homily based on the readings should always be given at the funeral liturgy, but never any kind of eulogy. Requests by members of the family to speak after the prayer after Communion should be firmly but sensitively refused."

The edict was observed. . . from time to time. . . from place to place. . . sometimes. . . usually. 

But despite the Brady dictum, people began to notice that if you were a wealthy patron of the church, famous, important, or merely "well-got" with the local PP (or indeed a declared atheist who had been born a Roman Catholic,) you seemed to be able to have a designer funeral with personalised bells and whistles chosen in advance (a bit ghoulishly) by the dead person, or by their grieving loved ones.

And funerals frequently deteriorated into bad-taste fests: not so much a personal eulogy stuck in along the way as a full-scale variety concert, with football anthems, murdered and murderous versions of My Way, and uileann pipe solos, which seem to be popular due to their profoundly depressing effect on all present. (At least they keep the congregation in suitably sombre mood.)

There have been numerous attempts since 2000 by various members of the clergy to stop what they see as the rot, most notably by the Bishop of Meath, Dr Michael Smith, who renewed his determination a couple of weeks ago by reissuing guidelines for his diocese forbidding any kind of eulogy at a funeral service, and recommending that, if required, they should take place at the family gathering.

But Fr Joe Mullan, the parish priest of Rathgar in Dublin, then entered the fray, giving his opinion that the ban on eulogies published for the Dublin Archdiocese in May applied only if they replaced the liturgical homily.

So it would seem that once again the clergy are in a funeral limbo, left to carry personal responsibility for each decision as to whether the families of the dead have a right to design their own funeral service, or must stick to the liturgy of the church to which they claim to belong.

And the row looks like becoming ever more bitter. 

Because while some parish priests who see themselves and are seen by their parishioners as on the "liberal" side of the church – that is, prepared to bend church rules in favour of modernity and popularity – will give permission to all comers to personalise funerals, others are rigid in their insistence on the unadorned liturgy supported by sacred music.

The squabbling interpretations in themselves are undesirable, and bound to breed resentment that an accident of geography can be the decider. 

It is understandably resented when people are refused permission to deliver a simple eulogy for a much-loved partner, parent or dear friend, knowing that a mile to the east or west, permission would have been granted. 

It could be resolved, perhaps, if the clergy who refuse permission just had the guts to tell the truth: that if they let the rules slip even a little, the funeral is on the road to the variety concert. 

It may start with a eulogy which is slightly tasteless, meanderingly sentimental, or appallingly badly delivered, all or any of which can be excused.

Except what happens if the eulogy is blasphemous?

There is very little understanding in Ireland of the exact nature of blasphemy, and the most supposedly observing of Catholics are frequently guilty of it. 

Should a priest take a chance on the best friend of a 'hard chaw' eulogising the dead man's incessant verbal blasphemy, and his falling into the font at his son's baptism 25 years earlier because he was plastered, as though these were admirable qualities?

(Such eulogies are frequently delivered by people who are themselves drunk.)

Of course, the priest should not take such a chance. 

And the only way to ensure that decorum and dignity are preserved at what is supposed to be the committal of a soul to the eternal mercy of the god in whom he or she professed to believe, is to enforce the liturgy without deviation.

But then we have the pillars of the church or the non-observing underminers of the church, whose funerals frequently are in the nature of trying to cash in a religious insurance policy at the last moment.

They're the people whose fame in life, or money in life and death ensures that the clergy, even the most rigorous adherents to the official liturgy, are bought off either with a large donation, or with honeyed words of promised notoriety for the place of service. And the celebrations begin.

In the meantime, the children of little Mrs Murphy, who meekly attended 10am Mass daily for 40 years, and who was buried last week, were refused permission to say a few words about their mam. As they walk past the church, their ears are assailed with gales of laughter and scratchily booming recordings of On the One Road or The Fields of Athenry.

The church needs to remember that it promotes itself as the defender of spiritual equality. 

That includes ceremonial rites that offer no privileges or exceptions for fame, wealth or status. 

Otherwise, it's yet another ugly sapling of hypocrisy in the church's already weed-filled garden.