I know the parish receives a sum from the family by way of the funeral home, but is it customary to offer money to the priest who said the funeral mass, and if so, how much?
Don’t hesitate to call the parish office to ask for a suggested stipend amount for the priest for a funeral Mass. The secretary is used to getting asked questions like this. In our parish, the suggested stipend for a wedding is $50 for the priest. I’m guessing it is about the same for a funeral.
If you have invited a guest priest to celebrate the funeral, I would say you might want to offer a stipend to them since the parish usually will keep the money that is already given to them rather than to split it with visiting priest. Otherwise, I think it is covered.
Yes. Any money that was sent to the parish from the funeral home was probably was for the use of the Church.
The fee for the church that is charged by the funeral home covers the stipend for the priest and the musicians.
This varies from place to place. Here the fee is paid directly to each. I have set up $100 each to the celebrant and the Church, $125 each to musicians. I got those figures a couple of years ago from our Bereavement group. I need to check to see if they should be updated.
Our fees are about the same as yours for the musicia, but I don’t think our priest gets that much.
I hadn’t even thought of the musicians. :o
When my mother died the funeral home took care of providing a stipend to the priest, the cantor, and for the use of the church itself. They wrote the checks and added the fees to the bill we paid. They knew what the customary fees were. I believe it was $150 for each of them.
I’m glad to know this information. I will have to become aware of where the money goes in preparation for the funeral. Some of the fees, as some have said, are a little high. Perhaps the clients could pay some of the fees toward the church and celebrant etc themselves instead of going through the funeral home. It is best to check with the parish regarding the usual stipends in such cases.
Shame on you My wife is a church musician. :D]
At our Church the Music Director gets $200 but that is not shared by the remainder of the musicians. They all volunteer their services.
I’m not even sure there were any musicians. There was the cantor, and I assume the organist was there, though I didn’t see her (but where else would the music be coming from?).
It would have been nice of the funeral director had mentioned all of this beforehand. All he mentioned was that if we felt like it we could “tip” the priest so to speak.