tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post1110950321742769160..comments2024-01-20T00:00:10.459-08:00Comments on Mudblood Catholic: RequiemGabriel Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-10998691071121330412015-02-21T18:53:37.514-08:002015-02-21T18:53:37.514-08:00I'm not sure the funeral would not be granted,...I'm not sure the funeral would not be granted, necessarily. The first class requires the heresy to be "notorious" - if everyone knew at the parish, say, that the deceased was a vocal opponent of the Church's teachings, that's one thing, but if it was only known that they were given to a certain kind of sin, there wouldn't be that condition. The second of course tends to be rare today, and inapplicable in this case. The third depends on how the funeral Mass were to be conducted. If it is made clear that the purpose of the requiem Mass is not so much to celebrate the life of the deceased, let along any sins she may or may not have committed, and that the pastor is satisfied that the deceased repented before her death (which we will, of course, would never know, because of the Seal of Confession), there would not have been a bar to holding a funeral. Of course, the final judgment call is explicitly vested in the bishop, and his judgment appears to be final or at least granted deference by the law.Cojuancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10279471579178661984noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-6603465583960804912015-01-16T17:00:05.460-08:002015-01-16T17:00:05.460-08:00As a side issue, after reading the linked articles...As a side issue, after reading the linked articles, I must say that the headlines are outrageously misleading. Both admit that the funeral was canceled after the family refused to cut the proposal/kissing scene, implying that it could have proceeded if the scene had been cut. Yet the headlines read, "A Colorado church cancelled a lesbian's funeral at the last minute after church leaders learned of her sexual orientation" in one case, and "Church Cancels Funeral As Family Waits For It To Start, Because Deceased Was A Lesbian" in the other. In both cases asserting that it was her sexual orientation per se that resulted in the refusal, rather than the video, even though one of the articles states that the pastor knew of her orientation beforehand and was evidently prepared to go ahead with it, up until the conflict arose over the video. In fact, he did go ahead with it, but at another venue. Agelliushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03305597900813126268noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-49991750066803365972015-01-16T16:31:53.590-08:002015-01-16T16:31:53.590-08:00I agree that the proposal is the problem and not n...I agree that the proposal is the problem and not necessarily the kiss – though it also might depend on the nature of the particular kiss in question as well. <br /><br />Again the problem may be how much we don’t know about the situation. Do we know that the church didn’t make its principles known beforehand? Was the video submitted to the church in advance, or did they only become aware of it, say, 30 minutes before the funeral, and it took them 15 minutes to give it the thumbs down? <br /><br />Another way of looking at it is, if the great tragedy here is that the funeral was canceled just 15 minutes before it was to begin, and if this was such a terribly cruel thing to inflict on the family and loved ones, it seems like omitting a single scene from a video would have been a relatively small price to pay to avoid that outcome. <br /><br />I wonder, if that had happened, if the funeral went ahead as planned and the only thing the family had to complain of was the fact that they were made to cut this scene from the video, would it have resulted in this blog post? Agelliushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03305597900813126268noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-64059371540457954032015-01-16T16:23:11.909-08:002015-01-16T16:23:11.909-08:00An elegant enough solution, if the deceased's ...An elegant enough solution, if the deceased's loved ones had been willing to go along with it, and in fact the church did make that request. Mrs Collier's friends and family refused, unsurprisingly -- after all, whatever we think of it philosophically, it was an extremely significant moment in her life, and it would be a very natural thing to include in a memorial video. I personally think the proposal a more difficult matter than the kiss; I mean, a kiss between two women isn't necessarily wrong, so that displaying it in a church, while odd, isn't necessarily wrong either. The traditional Christian doctrine of marriage, on the other hand, would rule out Vanessa Collier's proposal.<br /><br />If one insisted, one could therefore view this as a case of the grieving loved ones refusing to respect the ministry's principles. The thing is, the ministry itself ought to have taken care to make those principles plain before agreeing to perform the funeral (after all, in this era and country, those principles don't go without saying, church or no church). Fifteen minutes after the service was supposed to begin is not a good time to hold such a discussion.<br /><br />This may show that the ministry is guilty of foolishness and clumsiness, rather than of uncharity. If that's the case, then good; I mean, nobody wants them to be clumsy fools, but it'd be even worse if they were practicing jerkdom from the heart.Gabriel Blanchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-87413626468546762482015-01-16T15:46:00.413-08:002015-01-16T15:46:00.413-08:00[Sorry if this gets posted twice but it doesn'...[Sorry if this gets posted twice but it doesn't seem to have shown up the first time.]<br /><br />"The church reportedly objected to the presence, in the memorial video, of footage of the deceased (Vanessa Collier) proposing to her wife and kissing her."<br /><br />Speaking, as you say, hypothetically, since I know very little about the actual people and situation involved, it seems like a simple solution would have been to edit the proposal/kissing scene from the video and carry on as planned. Why is it necessarily the church's fault that it couldn't go forward? Couldn't they have met in the middle? Agelliushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03305597900813126268noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-21311154668630946642015-01-16T11:40:53.451-08:002015-01-16T11:40:53.451-08:00Oh, I agree. The curious tendency of the world at ...Oh, I agree. The curious tendency of the world at large to feel entitled to dictate what Catholic rites ought to mean, and how they ought to be observed, is rather puzzling to me. I half-suspect (as the late Fr Neuhaus hinted near the end of his book "Catholic Matters") that it comes from a dim, unconscious perception that the Catholic faith is indeed for everyone. The trouble about that is that it is for us, not from us; the deliberate opening of oneself, the decision to be receptive to rather than demanding of, the Catholic faith, is a rare activity even among those acknowledge that it's the right thing to do, and the concept is not well understood by the sophisticates of the postmodern Occident, caught between the last gasps of an emaciated Christianity and the vague, sentimental worship of secular progress. The simplest Moslem and the most body-forsaking Buddhist or Hindu monk may well enter, or at least comprehend, the Kingdom of Heaven before they.Gabriel Blanchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-17361165246492160672015-01-16T11:31:11.479-08:002015-01-16T11:31:11.479-08:00It's been pointed out to me (unfortunately the...It's been pointed out to me (unfortunately the person who did the pointing out, as far as I can discern, seems to be a commenter whom I have banned, which is why I haven't simply published the comment) that the Church's canon law does put certain definite restrictions on Catholic funerals and funeral Masses. The point is worth a little attention, and I've provided a link to the relevant section of the Code at the end of this comment.<br /><br />The Church prescribes that "Unless they gave some sign of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals: 1) notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics; 2) those who chose cremation of their bodies for reasons contrary to the Catholic faith; 3) other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful" (Canon 1184). This is of limited relevance, since New Hope Ministries is not a Catholic association, but it could be argued that this canon is based on a principle applicable to Christians in general. It cannot be denied that, to all appearances, Mrs Collier's convictions about sexuality and marriage were out of accord with Catholic views, so that a Catholic parish would almost certainly have had to refuse to conduct an ecclesiastical funeral for her.<br /><br />However, this would have been a matter of first principles, not -- forgive me -- a matter of nitpicking about what the Church will and won't put up with in a memorial video. Moreover, this doesn't -- as far as I can tell -- prevent *any funeral at all* from being given, only a specifically Catholic one, whose implications are that the deceased died in the peace of the Church (hence, I presume, the restrictions cited above). To bury the dead is still a work of mercy, whether it is done by means of a requiem Mass or not, and is to that extent still an appropriate activity for the faithful.Gabriel Blanchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17607504369762849930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5766538007498037282.post-59623770189776018832015-01-15T23:53:26.942-08:002015-01-15T23:53:26.942-08:00This is a strange -- and compelling -- story, for ...This is a strange -- and compelling -- story, for several reasons. It seems to me that if the pastor knew that the late Ms Collier was in fact a partnered lesbian and had given his consent to show, during the service, home movies of the deceased and her loved ones, then his discomfiture over the kiss is a bit odd. Sort of a Claude Rains-ian "shock."<br /><br />However, I'd hate to see a precedent set (or an assumption made) whereby a church's refusal to show a home movie (of either a straight or a gay couple) would automatically be deemed discriminatory, or uncompassionate, or otherwise bad. As I'm sure you know, sir, Catholic churches balk at abrupting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with too many personal reminiscences and matters extraneous to the liturgy: whether the deceased be gay or straight is immaterial.<br /><br />And as you have noted, there are many folks in the gay community with a broad notion of what constitutes homophobia. If our civil society were to proscribe every expression of thought that abrades against certain sensibilities, I think that our church would be out of business. (Still, even within the framework of traditional teachings, there is room for greater compassion.)<br /><br />I have to confess that many of the issues you raise here do not concern me directly, or if they do, they do not affect me as deeply as they might affect others, but as always I admire the restraint, the logic, the tact, the capacious compassion and the considerable intelligence with which you write -- even when I feel the need to withhold wholehearted agreement!Thomas Dhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13217297262702709978noreply@blogger.com