Tuesday, January 17, 2006
THE FUNERAL EULOGY
will cease at a Fort Mitchell, Kentucky parish.
The Rev. Dan Vogelpohl, pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church, made that decision at the end of last year, and imposed the ban effective Jan. 1.
Roman Catholic teaching allows the deceased's friends or family members to speak some words of remembrance about their loved one's faith at the end of a funeral Mass.
Such messages are supposed to be brief - just a few minutes at most, Vogelpohl said. But often, speakers go on for 15 to 30 minutes, and the remembrance becomes more like a eulogy, which is forbidden by the Vatican.
Is this a common practice? I've never seen it done anywhere. According to the article sometimes these eulogies become heretical when pantheistic poems are recited.
Vogelpohl said that the focus of a Catholic funeral is on the future life with Christ, not on the life that has ended. True of the funeral Mass, certainly. But I don't think that is true of the funeral itself. Perhaps he is separating the "wake" from the funeral Mass. Certainly the funeral is also about the family of the deceased who must now go on without them. One of the important parts of that transition is remembering the life shared with the deceased. A funeral without these memories is a sad affair.
