The Catholic Geeks

This is a very touchy subject for a lot of people; probably because most people involved in organizing and arranging funerals at a Catholic Church are fundamentally decent people.  Nobody wants to make anything harder on a grieving family.  They just lost a relative; and now they have to go through the additional sadness and stress of picking out what prayers, readings, and music to use at the funeral; in addition to dealing with the funeral home, and managing the relatives that they don’t usually speak to when they come into town to “help.”

And because most people in the employ of a Catholic Church are good folks, they usually don’t issue ultimatums to grieving families.  And this is exactly where our fundamental decency comes back to bite us.

Yes, it’s a funeral.  Yes, it’s hard on the family.  And yes, most of the time I’m usually willing to bend just a tiny bit to accommodate the individual taste of the deceased.  “Oh, my mother just loved the song ‘Amazing Grace.’  Will you please play it at the funeral?”

Except I can’t actually do that.

Well . . . to be honest, I loathe that song.  It’s also not appropriate for a Catholic Mass, and certainly not a Catholic funeral.  However, your mom just died.  If she requested that song specifically before she died, then I’m willing to grant the nice old lady’s request, and play the song.  The day before a funeral isn’t the time or place to pick the strict orthodoxy fight with anyone.

But we seem to have forgotten one very important thing: a Catholic funeral is still the Mass.  And therefore, all the liturgical rules about the Mass still apply to a funeral.  There’s been a large hole in the formation of Catholics in the last sixty years, especially regarding the proper music used in the Liturgy, and it’s even worse when it comes to funerals.

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