Does the Church still sometimes withold funerals from suicides?

[DL82]

I know Hollywood is always a bad place to go to get information on Catholic theology, but in the movie ‘Constantine’, a woman has to prove that her mentally ill sister was not in control of her own mind when she jumped off a building before the bishop will agree to a Catholic burial.

I know the Church does now allow some suicides to be buried in consacrated ground, but does the Church still investigate these cases? Must there be proof of insanity, possession, other mitigation, before this is allowed?

Is there anything (excommunication, apostacy?) for which the Church will still withold full Catholic requiem and burial?

 

[Joannm]

I know Hollywood is always a bad place to go to get information on Catholic theology, but in the movie ‘Constantine’, a woman has to prove that her mentally ill sister was not in control of her own mind when she jumped off a building before the bishop will agree to a Catholic burial.

I know the Church does now allow some suicides to be buried in consacrated ground, but does the Church still investigate these cases? Must there be proof of insanity, possession, other mitigation, before this is allowed?

Is there anything (excommunication, apostacy?) for which the Church will still withold full Catholic requiem and burial?

I know when John Gotti died a few years ago, the bishop of Brooklyn refused a funeral mass for him. i know it made all the papers. I think he was buried in a Catholic cemetary however.

 

[wanner47]

See here:

The Church denies funeral rites to the following people, unless they gave some signs of repentance before death:

• notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics;
• those who chose the cremation of their bodies for reasons contrary to Christian faith;
• other manifest sinners to whom a Church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful (cf. Canon 1184.1.1–3).

If a dispute arises as to whether a Catholic funeral should be granted a particular person, the local ordinary should be consulted and his judgment followed. Even if the deceased is refused a Catholic funeral, Masses can be offered for his eternal well-being: “A priest is free to apply the Mass for anyone, living or dead” (Canon 901).

May someone who commits suicide receive a Catholic funeral? In the past, people who committed suicide were often denied a Church funeral. This was not a judgment of the deceased’s eternal destiny (indeed, the Church has always offered Masses for those who have committed suicide). Rather, a Church funeral was denied to the deceased in order to avoid giving scandal to the faithful and to emphasize the grave nature of suicide.

As in the past, the Church teaches that suicide is and always will be objectively and gravely wrong. At the same time, today she better understands the psychological disturbances that may influence a suicide and thus mitigate personal culpability. This being the case, those who take their life are now typically provided funerals (cf. Catechism, no. 2282).

 

[puzzleannie]

today, with our improved knowledge of human psychology and mental illness, we know that a suicide may not have had full free will to commit that act. The benefit of doubt will always be applied. Only in a case where the individual was notorious in rejecting the Church teachings, publicly flaunted them, and may even have committed the act in delibarate, stated defiance of them, might the Christian funeral rites be denied.