Funeral music

Who "owns" a funeral conducted according to the rites of a body such as the Catholic Church?  What is the meeting space between the desires of a grieving family and the requirements of a Church with a prescribed liturgy?

Last week the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne published guidelines affecting music at funeral masses.  The local press has greeted the news with alarm -- new impositions from on high, according a story in the Herald Sun, which rolled out Fr Bob Macguire to add a splash of colour and wonderment to spice up the coverage.  Now, this is the priest who is said to have floored a congregation at a funeral by walking up to the coffin during the eulogy and knocking on the side, checking to see if the occupant could hear what nice things were being said about him.  Some clergy of a certain generation combine a striking idea of tradition with liturgical crankiness on an epic scale.  Fr Bob's line is that the punters won't like it, but he's got the choice of losing his job and putting people offside, so he'll acquiesce.

The article included a couple of quotes from funeral directors, pointing out that the guidelines put a barrier in the way of their multimedia product, a slideshow of family snaps covering the life of the deceased connected up with two or three pop songs hand-picked to induce an emotional reaction.  While these can be interesting, the scope for the cringe factor is very high indeed.  It left me wondering if it is necessarily true that what works in a funeral home is appropriate in a church, and whether funeral directors really do see the distinction.  It struck me that funeral directors now assume multimedia presentations to be a core part of their routine service, and the quotes in the article didn't do much to dispel that.

Before I get to the general point, it must be said that the guidelines from the Archdiocese don't say anything new.  The document is yet another restatement of the existing rules.  One needn't ask why restating the rules was so pressing.  Having attended my fair share of Catholic funerals (in a professional capacity), all I can say is that it's about time there was more rigour, rather than leaving things to the whims of families and clergy, combined with the commercial impulses of the funeral directors.  Funerals are big business: attending to your clients' needs and wishes is the basis of winning further customers in the future.  Invocare Australia, which owns some of the largest funeral "brands" in the country, is a publicly-listed company.  Their shares are much in demand by superannuation funds.  Being seen as an industry leader is important, hence the growing importance of the provision of multimedia presentations as a core part of the ordinary course of events at a funeral -- part of the product, if you will.  It's all about responsiveness to clients and customer satisfaction.

However, photographs can cross a lot of lines between the private and public faces of the deceased.  This is surely why it was customary for these sorts of things to be shared during the gathering after the public service, because many of the memories associated with photos are essentially personal -- sometimes intensely so.  Funeral directors do not generally organize the reception following the funeral service unless it is taking place at their premises, so it is natural for them to encourage this sharing of pictures to be imported into the service, courtesy of the installation of data projectors and decent sound systems.  The growth of civil celebrant-led funerals has seen the evolution of a service format which dwells on the life of the deceased, much like an extended eulogy.  It is easy to see how a slideshow of family snaps would fit into something like this, however high the potential cringe factor.  These sorts of funerals actively shun the metaphysical beyond the most general sense of passing into the beyond.  When well led they are fine occasions, but when it starts with third-rate poetry recited poorly, you know it's going to be a hard half hour.  The whole focus is necessarily on telling the life of the deceased, and that is the driving force behind the structure of the service.

But what to say about the liturgical reality of Catholic funerals?

99% of funeral services in churches are organized on the hop.  Even among the elderly and terminally ill, it is very rare that the content of the funeral service have been thought through ahead of needing to set things in motion.  Most Catholic funerals are a big affair, because there is a culture of wanting to make a statement, along with that bizarre attitude towards the liturgy which demands a high degree of subjectivity.  (Does arranging a funeral activate the same part of the brain as organizing a wedding?)  The fact that the funeral mass is frequently the only public event associated with a death means that it is invested with a great deal of freight, and there is a certain urgency about incorporating as much of the funeral director's product into the event in a bid to make the service as personal as possible.

The musicians usually get involved within hours of the funeral directors assuming control of events leading to the service.  There is a great deal of pressure to offer a distinctive service, and it is understandable: the company wants to be seen favorably by the family, in the expectation that this will lead to word-of-mouth referrals.  The family wants something tailor-made.  And they want it now, they want control, but they are not really sure about what goes where.  They are seldom encouraged to begin with what the Church provides, a reflection of the generally poor teaching about the role of a set liturgy for weddings, baptisms and funerals among the main denominations, and an especially urgent problem in the Catholic Church.  It is not the job of funeral directors to make up for decades of poor formation in the parishes.

Most clergy are involved in the background during the days before the funeral.  In reality, they exercise an enormous amount of power, with the right to approve or veto anything proposed to be part of the service.  It is a power frequently deferred to the funeral director (who usually produces the booklet).  The result is that the product (sorry, music) for a Catholic funeral is pared down into a fairly predictable menu of the following:

Psalm 23 (often Crimond)
Ave Maria (usually Schubert; rarely the Gonoud setting, and even more rarely the Caccini one)
Panis Angelicus (for communion)
Pie Jesu (Faure, usually used as filler somewhere along the line)
Time to say goodbye (not so bad if performed live, but usually a CD)

It is easy to see that Catholic funerals draw on a highly standardized selection of music for the public mass.  The rite itself is prescribed quite clearly in the Missal, however much the clergy tinker at the edges, and they often proceed in autopilot, moreso among those much in demand for funerals.  This means that where something different to the accustomed pattern is to be sung, it has to be tattooed to the priest's forehead to make sure he stops to allow it to happen.  (How many complaints have arisen because the priest blustered on where the singer was meant to have way?  Clergy don't tend to be blackballed for mucking up the service by preventing the musicians from doing what they'd been asked to do.  Heaven help the organist who plays to the end of a specially-requested piece when the priest is champing at the bit.)  The only way a distinctive product can be incorporated is through the music chosen (which is no more than a substitute for the texts prescribed in the Missal), and the increasingly common innovation of multimedia presentations as an adjunct to the eulogy.  Even the eulogy is an add-in: there is no provision for it in the rite as it is set forth in the Missal, so it is usually takes place before the commencement of the service proper.

I think the publication of the guidelines for Catholic funerals is a good thing.  However, it's not difficult to see that this document will go exactly the same way as its predecessors: it will be ignored as a matter of routine.  Funeral directors are faced with the commercial reality of needing to provide customer satisfaction, which drives them towards solutions which are successful in civil celebrant-led funerals but work against the whole purpose and meaning of a liturgical funeral.  The clergy generally want to get on with their day without being pestered by bishops (it's hard to tell what that says about either party concerned).  The ingredients of an unsatisfactory situation are unchanged by the publication of the document, although it's a relief to know that the rules are still there to be restated once again.

What's an archbishop who cares about the rites of the Church to do?