Brendan Hoban: We haven’t lost our faith in funeral rituals ​ Western People 12.11.2024

Not too long ago when a competitive spirit between Christians of different denominations was the order of the day and religious identity seemed more significant than it is now, there were accepted bench-marks that underlined denominational labels. 

For instance, conversions from Protestant to Catholic and vice-versa, were chalked up as victories over the opposing side – like, in the Wild West, when notches on a gunslinger’s weapon represented the number of people killed by that gun. 

Of particular notoriety was the decree Ne Temere promulgated in 1907 by Pope Pius X that ruled that all children of ‘mixed marriages’ would be raised as ‘Catholic’, a pre-condition that the Protestant party was obliged to accept. 

Now denominational labels in the wider Christian family seem more respectful though less defined. The first time I noticed the trend was many years ago when I was called to attend to a man I didn’t know who had taken ill very suddenly. When I arrived the doctor was with him and he motioned me to anoint him. 

A friend of his then intervened and informed me that the dying man, his best friend, was ‘a Protestant.’ A few days later I saw, from the death notice, that the man was in fact a Catholic. At least his remains had been taken to a Catholic Church and he had received all the rituals of Catholic burial – funeral Mass, etc – everything, that is, except anointing!

What sort of a Catholic, I wondered, was he if his best friend thought he was a Protestant? How important were his religious convictions? What did he actually believe? And when it came to his funeral arrangements did it really matter what, if anything, he believed? 

The changing religious or some would say irreligious landscape has thrown up a series of awkward situations. Like the time I was called to anoint a man who had died suddenly. He was, the family told me, Church of Ireland though the rest of the family were Catholics. I attempted to persuade them that a Catholic anointing was not appropriate and while I won that argument it was clear that there was less tolerance for my reservations about saying a Funeral Mass for the Protestant deceased in the local Catholic Church. 

It was at the time a working conundrum, one that might not exercise too many minds now. Eventually, when the issue was bordering on a crisis, Bishop Tommy Finnegan decided that the local Church of Ireland rector should be invited to lead a Church of Ireland funeral service in the Catholic Church. It was a happy compromise though less ecumenical parishioners on both sides of the religious divide holding rigidly to the superiority of their own denominational services were less impressed. 

Now minds and possibilities are more open as ‘funerals without faith’, as a colleague of mine once unkindly labelled them, are becoming more frequent. While secular or non-religious ‘celebrants’ are now a common feature of marriage ceremonies – running now, it is said, at around half of the total of church marriages solemnised – secular celebrants have had less success in establishing much of a presence in the funeral market. 

Despite the significant decline in attendance at religious ceremonies, funerals have retained an extraordinary popularity in that while anything – almost literally anything, on some occasions – seems acceptable in a secular wedding, most Catholics, faith-hungry or faith-bereft, seem to draw a line at secular funerals and prefer to opt for the traditional liturgies that have become hallowed by time rather than the comparable ‘giddier secular novelties’ accepted at weddings. 

One cynical explanation for this from a dispirited priest-colleague was that because most Catholics now attend more unprescribed funerals than prescribed weekend Masses, their familiarity with the standard funeral rituals has generated over the years a respect and a reverence akin to that of the old Latin Mass.

There are, as we say, Catholics and Catholics in it. And nowadays a growing part of the mix of Irish life is the presence of what might be called ‘cultural Catholics’, people who have little or no religious faith, no perceptible interest in religion and no commitment, financial or otherwise, to parish. 

Yet, in filling in the census papers they are happy to describe themselves as ‘Catholic’ and they would be shocked if someone suggested that they shouldn’t have a Christian burial.

So, invariably, they get the full Catholic rituals of death and burial.

I don’t know how busy the Humanist Association is with secular funerals but certainly here in the West such ceremonies seem to be fairly thin on the ground. In rural parts, whatever about our city counterparts, we tend to bury atheists, agnostics and ambivalent ‘Catholics’ as if they all had a firm faith in the resurrection from the dead. ‘Who am I to judge?’ as Pope Francis famously said in another context.

There are two reasons, I suspect, why secular funerals are still relatively scarce, especially in the west. One is social, the practised art of ‘fitting in’. The other is that the protocols, rituals and prayers of Catholic funeral ceremonies are still embedded in the common memory and generally people have retained a happy familiarity with them. 

There is an ease with the unchanging pattern of the funeral liturgy and with what’s expected: what to say, when to stand, what not to do. The lilt of the Rosary before the coffin is closed, for example, draws us into a familiar and comforting world in the face of grief. The shouldering of the coffin, at once a duty and a privilege, is an unspoken but moving experience. The holy water, the incense, the familiar prayers, the final commendation, ‘Receive his soul and present him to God the most high.’ And, finally, the shouldering of the coffin, the familiar and engaging prayers at the graveside, the final decade of the Rosary, all part of a ritual and a routine, at once familiar and accustomed and still deemed necessary to establish not just the dramaturgy of death but the respect, faith or no faith, that is everyone’s due.