I read it as going against rules which could be seen as judgmental during a time of intense grief for family members. The funeral director is taking a broader, non-judgmental approach to ease the grief of the family. The last thing a family needs during this time of grief is a point by point lecture list of “evils” of their recently deceased which may not allow them to have certain rights. This is the difference in opinion that I see.
The funeral home can plan whatever takes place at the funeral home. But the funeral director doesn’t have authority over what happens in the Church.
Amen to that!! How bizarre that any funeral director would think they have a right to says what goes on in Mass.
It’s really pretty crazy! I will email this article to him…he’s going to get a kick out of it.If all the details, such as, the Masses; the burials in a Catholic cemetery (consecrated grounds);and the deceased being a Catholic “in good standing” ; the Church has the authority…NOT the funeral directors.
Yet the dispute goes over a strict interpretation of the rules. It is fair to assume that the guidelines were followed but had a fair amount of grey area for grieving.
The latter two paragraphs brings in so much unnecessary suffering for family members. To be strict comes off as being very cold hearted by the Church to family members in their time of suffering. That time of grieving is not the time to take out an arbitrary checklist and judge the person (sometimes harshly we can assume by what we know of the policy). It serves no purpose to the Church, the grieving and the deceased at this juncture in their lives.
What are some of the things that consist of “dotting every i and crossing every t” that hurt the family members?
Look at the middle paragraph I posted. A harsh interpretation of any one of those could almost be slander after death for the deceased. The last thing the family wants is to hear how horrible their recently deceased was.
What normally happens is they should ideally work together. We can assume that is not happening in this case in the linked story. My impression from the story is the priest seems to be taking all of the control for himself and not work professionally with the funeral director. Most disagreements like this should be able to be worked through without a lawsuit being filed. It is true the priest has the final say but that responsibility has to be used properly, otherwise he is not living up to the standards of grief ministry.
I can’t see how the funeral director has any valid point at all.
Boy, oh boy…I hope the judge tosses this one out the window…and the funeral director’s attitude as well. In our diocese you also need to obtain from the church a burial permit if the person will be buried in a Catholic cemetery…there is one director who just prints his own in violation of the diocese’s rules too. I just don’t get their arrogance of church regulations. One funeral director said that all directors should be automatically grandfathered as “deacons” so they can circumvent the church entirely…yeesh!
The article addressed what you are saying here when it said this:
And this is a cold interpretation of the official rules which will make many a grieving family member upset. It goes against the purpose of grief ministry. There are rules on paper and there are the application of the rules in real life with real people.
We are talking about real people here, they do make exceptions, it addresses that clearly. Why would you insist that everyone ought to just pretend that the deceased would have wanted to have a Catholic Mass when they didn’t attend them while living?