Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise Paul Connell issued a statement this week prohibiting wakes in the diocese’s churches – and more dioceses are expected to follow suit.
It comes as open-coffin wakes in churches have become more common in recent years, mainly in parts of rural Ireland where no funeral home is available to accommodate families.
A parish priest in the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise – which contains most of the counties of Longford and Leitrim, with parts of counties Cavan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo and Westmeath – said the issue had arisen around the pandemic after health watchdog Hiqa indicated that ‘they weren’t comfortable with’ undertakers using nursing homes to wake people.
‘At that point, the reposing defaulted to churches, so it’s a new question for the Church,’ said the priest, who spoke anonymously to the Irish Mail on Sunday. He said that while he had seen ‘no misbehaviour of any kind’ at wakes that have happened in his church, he has heard of refreshments being served at other church wakes and people standing around during the wake socialising.
He said it is up to the priest to not allow that to happen.
He said funeral directors who don’t have funeral homes ‘are making noise’ about the ban from Bishop Paul Connell.
Meanwhile, those directors who do have funeral homes ‘weren’t comfortable because we were seen to be offering a service that they were offering’.
Bishop Connell’s statement this week described church wakes as an ‘inappropriate’ use of the church premises, ‘given the sacred nature of the building and in particular the presence of the blessed sacrament’.
‘A church is designed for public worship and quiet prayer and reflection,’ the Bishop said. ‘Reposing, by its nature, may involve loud engagement and even the provision of hospitality.’
Fr Paddy Byrne, a parish priest in Abbeyleix, Co. Laois, told the MoS he welcomed the Bishop’s statement and said it may be time for society to ‘provide secular spaces for wakes’.
Fr Byrne said he is aware of church wakes having ‘crept in’ in other parts of the country since the pandemic.
‘We need clear guidelines for our sacred places, that they don’t become community halls,’ he said. ‘Maybe one answer to this would be, is it time for civic society to step up and provide secular spaces for wakes?’
Fr Byrne continued that there has already been a ‘seismic shift’ in Irish culture – and with it, funeral practices – in the decades of his priesthood, and expects a lot more change in the decades to come, with the average priest now well over 70.
‘In a secular – what I would call almost post-Christian country – the reality and sensitivity that we once held [around funerals] is no longer there,’ the 51-year-old priest said.
In many cases wakes are ‘minimised’ to an hour, while the reception of the remains to the church on the night before a funeral, ‘absolutely the norm’ in the early days of Fr Byrne’s priesthood, has almost vanished.
‘There was a sense that the mortal remains we r e in a sacred place,’ he said. ‘In the secular world, we almost try to humanise, or desensitise death and say, “Oh, I wouldn’t like them there – they’d be on their own.”’
The Carlow native said ‘even the language of death has changed’.
He explained: ‘We don’t like to use the word “death”.We call it passing. There is that Americanism that has crept in. Years ago, our most raw moment was putting the corpse into the ground, looking at the clay. Now, apart from in some places in rural Ireland, the clay is covered up with false grass, and it’s almost just “Oh no, we don’t want to see or feel this reality.”’
Fr Byrne said that the role of the priest has also changed with the ‘shift in culture’ and ‘privatisation of the secular society’.
‘I mean, is it OK now for me just to ramble around and knock on someone’s door and say “How are ya?” he asked. ‘You almost need to have an appointment, an invitation.’
Speaking on the issue, Mayo funeral director David McGowan told the MoS: ‘The funeral director that doesn’t have a funeral home is pushing, I think, the churches to open them up as somewhere you can have a wake, because it’s convenient – car parking, lighting, and usually the parishioners will form a group and control the traffic. There’s a motive there. If you can use the churches or persuade the priests or the parishioners to open up the church for wakes, he’s on to a winner. You can drop the coffin there and you don’t have to come back till the mass is over the next day.’
The Ballina-based undertaker, who has three funeral homes, said he ‘totally’ agrees with Bishop Connell’s new directive.
‘The church is a place of worship and what people don’t realise is that churches are actually busy places,’ Mr McGowan said. ‘You have month’s mind masses and anniversary masses, you have weddings, you have funeral masses, you have novenas, you have baptisms. Churches are actually very busy places. Sensitivity we once had for funerals is not there’