Catholic funerals in twentieth-century America saw a lot of change from before and after the Second Vatican Council, but the most important elements have not changed in centuries. Though the culture around the Church in a particular time and place may change, truth it- self cannot change, and thus the Church will continue to proclaim that truth in all times and places. How that truth is presented, however, may be adapted to suit the needs of the people, since the Church also adamantly seeks to engage her people personally and meaningfully.
When working with changes from before and after Vatican II, one must first dispel two prevailing myths surrounding Vatican II and liturgy. The first is that there was no liturgical change from the first session of the Council of Trent in the 1540s to Vatican II in the 1960s. This is false. There were plenty of liturgical developments over those 400 years. Science tells us that all living things change through growth and development; if the goal of liturgy then is connecting living people with a living God, how can it not change? This does not mean it under- goes a fundamental change on the level of its essence. Rather, it means that the truths of the liturgy are expressed differently over time. At all times the Church seeks to convey the truths of her teachings accurately and with compassion. Though she has a reputation as unsympathetic and overly strict, the Church instead searches for pastoral responses, sensitive to the needs of her flock. These same principles will apply to funeral liturgy, especially during the changes of the twentieth century.
The second myth is that there was a substantial change in Church teaching surrounding death after Vatican II. This is also false. Church teaching, by and large, does not change, but is merely expressed and presented differently over time based on the needs of the Church in particular times and places. Church teaching on death has two main components: that death is final and must be accepted, but that the resurrection of the dead is also real. Therefore, we can and should trust in God’s merciful love to care for those who have died, not to assure each other with certainties we do not have the power to give but with confident hope in the love and justice of God. Funeral liturgy today continues to convey these two truths, just as it has always done.
There are some developments in the Church’s teachings surrounding certain circumstances of death which will not be covered here. The purpose of this discussion is rather to lay a foundation for future conversation on the subject of the liturgy of funerals and the expression and progression of grief through liturgy.
Why then does there appear to be so much change in funeral liturgy in a relatively short period of time? A large influence on funerals, as on just about any aspect of life, is the culture in which those funerals are taking place. Thus, as American values about death change, the Church must balance clearly communicating truths—which can now appear to conflict with those of the culture—with being approachable, accessible, and sensitive to the suffering of her people. To examine this issue in more detail, we will walk through the twentieth century in three stages to see how the Church responds both liturgically and pastorally to teach truth and respond to the needs of her people.
In most of secular society in the early twentieth century in the United States, death was considered a natural, though saddening, conclusion to the end of life rather than the disruption of uninterrupted amusement it is considered to be today. The First World War, Spanish Flu epidemic, and Great Depression were all contributing factors to a sense of sobriety around the idea of death. For the most part, people died in their own homes with family members close by, making death something personal for a family. Death was a part of life, not a foreign concept looming on the horizon to be forgotten and ignored. Rather, death took the old and the young, children and young mothers, soldiers and laborers. Life was significantly more challenging then, with fewer medical advances, a greater portion of the population engaged in hard labor, and farming still a leading form of income for a family.
When people from this era died, their deaths were accepted with finality if also sadness, and this is reflected in their tombstones. In one such example, the German inscription reads in part, “Rest in God's peace; Hope lessens the pain.”1 Death was real and final, but there was also real hope for a future in the next life. Death was still revered as mysterious, and God was still the author of life, not man. This life was seen as valuable, of course, but not the end of existence. This could potentially have contributed to a greater willingness to sacrifice one’s life for others, especially one’s country, which was reflected in the patriotic war songs of the day. For example, in the song “I Have Come to Say Good-Bye,” the soldier says, “I would gladly give my life,” for America, its values and its freedoms. This soldier offers his life for something greater than himself, but at the same time recognizes the legitimate sacrifice that such an offering is, as most of the song is dedicated to assuring his girl, Mary, that he will remain faithful to her and intends to re- turn to her. He clearly sees the life and future he is risking by going to war but chooses to do so anyway for the sake of his country.
The Catholic understanding of death at the time in America was very similar. Death was a reality of life not to be escaped, but held alongside real hope in the power of God, His mercy, and the resurrection of the dead. The Church’s funeral liturgy of the time reflected these ideas with heavy emphasis on the Psalms of God’s mercy, such as Psalm 130, which reminds all that “with the Lord is mercy, with Him is plentiful redemption.”2 So too does Psalm 51 tell of the Lord’s generosity, as it begins, “Have mercy on me God, in accord with your merciful love.”3 Placing this psalm in the funeral liturgy along with other selections of Scripture such the Canticle of Zachariah, which responds to God’s providence and divine plan, imparts several important messages to the faithful on the part of the Church.4 First, while death is daunting as it involves so many unknowns, God is ultimately in control. Therefore, we do not have to fear, since He, a being more powerful than we can imagine, is in command of the universe.
Second, God is merciful and loving rather than vengeful or cruel. Certainly we may say along with the psalmist that “you are just in your word, and without reproach in your judgment,” but also that, “you desire true sincerity,” and “a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn.”5 God is both just and merciful, not merely one or the other. Therefore, we can trust Him not only to judge our beloved dead fairly, but also to know that their sincerity of love for Him will be of definitive importance. Thirdly, Scripture in the funeral Mass reminds us that God has a divine plan we cannot begin to comprehend. His will happens in His time, not ours, and thus apparently unjust deaths—such as those of children or accident victims—otherwise inexplicable to us, become part of His providence. Therefore, we can join Zachariah in his confidence that the Lord “show[s] mercy to our fathers,” fulfills His promises, protects His people, and provides for their salvation.6
It is a curious choice for the funeral Mass to choose the Canticle of Zachariah, as it is said every morning in the Divine Office, and it is typically associated with the beginning of activities, rather than the end of a life. However, this can be read in several ways. It could be an indicator of the Church’s confidence and trust in God to give the de- ceased new life with Him forever. It could also be, and perhaps of more importance at the funeral Mass, a reminder to those still living of the new chances presented each day to repent, return to Christ, and to offer more and more of our life and self for His service. This is not a thinly veiled plea for religious vocations but rather an invitation to greater holiness. It is often the Lord’s way to use our suffering to invite us into deeper union with Him, given that we are easily sidetracked when seek- ing Him with our strength alone. The death of a family member is very often the means He uses to inspire those still living to follow Him more closely. Thus, the funeral liturgy is as much a prayer of intercession for the dead as it is a plea to the living to turn back to God with the time they have left and commit themselves to His ways.
Pastorally, the Roman Catechism explains more explicitly the Church’s views on death, allowing the faithful to better understand and enter into the mysteries of the liturgy, grieve for their dead in a healthy manner, and make any necessary changes in their lives for their own salvation. The Roman Catechism of the time put special emphasis on the resurrection of the dead as a source of hope for those mourning their dead. In Article 11, the Catechism says:
Again, in all our afflictions and calamities the thought of a future resurrection must bring the greatest relief to the troubled heart, as we learn from the example of holy Job, who supported his afflicted and sorrowing soul by this one hope that the day would come when, in the resurrection, he would behold the Lord his God.7
By uniting our sufferings with those of Christ, we can deepen our relationship with Him and achieve a constructive outcome for our pain and loss. Like the solider going to war to defend his loved ones, Christ gives His life on the cross in sacrificial love to free us from sin.
By the middle of the twentieth century, American secular society’s views towards death had changed quite a bit. By the 1950s America had gone through two World Wars and had entered into the Cold War. Television was also more widely available, which played a large role in the changing societal views on death. Now death was seen on a much larger scale especially from popular TV. Shows such as The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, and Bonanza could now show death as casual and routine, as just part of the adventure. “Bad guys” were easily replaced in the next episode and were mowed down without pause. After two World Wars, the Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression, the public could not easily forget the experience of widescale death and destruction. Watching death regularly and in a casual manner on TV let the public escape from processing that much pain and instead trivialize and even sterilize the idea by desensitizing the population to the reality and gravity of the loss.
Music of the time followed suit, now treating death, especially that of the young, not only as a tragedy, but also as glorious. Medical technology had advanced, and many more treatments were available and successful. Additionally, materialism had taken off as wartime mass production of weapons and war supplies turned into mass production of civilian goods. The advent of regular TV entertainment pro- grams allowed for the standard of the family’s material status to be set nearly nationwide on a level never before imagined. Never before could you see, and even experience in such detail, the life of those living the ideal American life previously only briefly glimpsed in newspaper advertisements or heard on radio shows. Now you could see modern appliances and conveniences, and more importantly the idea of life set up to be convenient and amusing, quite regularly on shows such as I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best, and Leave it to Beaver. Happiness and fulfillment were found more and more often in material possessions or attaining a “perfect” family life. Goals were becoming confined to this world rather than the next, and heartfelt acknowledgement of a divine being was rarely made on public programming. American society moved towards having greater confidence in outcomes of its own design and creation, rather than those of God.
The Church recognized these shifts and responded with the consistency of her messages about death in the funeral liturgy, sensitivity to the faithful within the liturgy, and even more specific pastoral responses through her preaching. The funeral Mass had hardly changed since the turn of the century, though accessibility to it had increased. A 1947 Rituale Romanum detailing the funeral liturgy is identical to its 1925 counterpart, but 1954 and 1964 Collectio Rituum editions show signs of the Church’s work to make that liturgy more widely accessible for the faithful.8 The Collectio Rituum allowed the faithful to follow along in the liturgy in a similar fashion to Rituale Romanum texts, though they often included appendices for local traditions. The 1954 edition printed in Milwaukee includes translations of the prayers of the funeral Mass in English, though in smaller print at the bottom of relevant pages and without translating anything else, such as the people’s responses or the priest’s rubrics.9 Additionally, a special supplementary section was added entirely in English of “Chants for Funerals with English Words.”10 As the only all-English appendix for all of the liturgical rites in this book, it demonstrates that the Church recognizes the supreme importance of engaging with her own flock and visitors to the funeral Mass on grounds familiar for them.
By the 1964 edition the entire Mass had been translated with each page of Latin on the left-hand side fully translated, rubrics and all, into English on the right-hand side.11 The Church showed not only liturgical development prior to the landmark 1969 Roman Missal, but also a liturgical development with a distinctly pastoral purpose to allow the faithful more immediate understanding of the Mass. This would have been especially helpful for those attending Mass who were either not Catholic or not practicing regularly, who then would be totally unfamiliar with a Catholic Mass, let alone a funeral Mass.
In addition to liturgical response, the Church also responded pastorally to the needs of her flock in a particular age. While the funeral liturgy remains to teach unchanging truth through all time, pastoral responses have the ability to apply those truths more specifically and personally, based on the immediate needs of the Church. One of the best places to observe this in practice is in collections of homilies written for funerals. These collections are specific enough to portray the particular applications of truth while general enough to be published for wider audiences and thus accurately portray the pastoral response of the day in this country. One particular set of funeral homilies from 1948 entitled Paths to Eternal Glory gives many examples of how the Church is sensitive to the needs of her people in every age, not just after Vatican II, as often appears to be the case.
The Church recognizes cultural shifts and responds to them openly, with charity and compassion. Of first interest within this collection of homilies is explicit reference to the surrounding culture’s in- creasing obsession with this world. For example, while explaining the importance of the next life and the immortality of the soul, Fr. Henry Crock contrasts the Church’s teachings on the importance of the next life with society’s focus on earthly life, prevalent already in the 1940s. Fr. Crock explains, “According to such people, there is nothing knowable or attainable outside the realm of nature or the powers of reason; and what clashes with either or both is to be rudely brushed aside.”12 In response, the Church calls her faithful towards “aspiration after a life other and higher than the present,” in which there is a happiness and fulfillment beyond anything this world could hope to provide.13
Mimicking the liturgy itself, an entire section of this collection is dedicated to responding to the deaths of children, with the opening section explaining the apparent inconsistency of the Church’s choice of joyful psalms for the funeral of a child.14 This joy, Fr. Crock explains, is over the addition to Heaven of another child of God whom the grieving parents brought into the world and had baptized such that they may now trust in God’s love for their child.15 At the same time, the Church explains how all our suffering over the death of loved ones (and indeed all our suffering in life) has not been “nullified and made worthless” by the reality of the mercy and love of God, but rather, “all these sorrows and sufferings have become super-naturalized, for they cement the family ties forever between heaven and earth.”16
Moreover, remembrance of family members now passed, especially of children, “will forever raise your thoughts and aspirations heavenward.”17 Thus, the Church encouraged her flock to accept the reality and finality of death in order to place full trust and hope in God, while at the same time always remembering our loved ones who have gone before us to allow for our own sanctification as we pray for their souls and reflect on their union with Christ in heaven. Thus, funeral liturgy continued to be as much for the living as it is for the dead, to perpetuate the sanctification of those still on earth in the hope that they may rejoin their loved ones at their own deaths. More emphasis was being placed on the reality and value of suffering in this life, and the primary focus and final goal was still explicitly on the next life. While the Church was sensitive to the needs of her people, she continued to teach the truth about this world and the one to come.
Several images central to the post-conciliar funeral are also important in this era, demonstrating the continuity of truth through all time. Candles are lit, as they are for every Mass, but take on extra meaning during a funeral. For the living they provide light in a time of apparent darkness and confusion at the loss of a loved one. For the dead they represent the immortality of the soul, still living and, hopefully, preparing to be forever in the presence of God. The light of the candles is also representative of the risen Christ, a reminder to the faithful pre- sent at the funeral of the reality of the resurrection of the dead. Holy water is a key link between the funeral and baptism. A person’s baptism joins him or her to the Church but also forges the intimate link as a child of God, allowing for the reception of God’s grace through life and thus facilitating a holy life, peaceful death, and reception into heaven. Finally, incense is used to honor the body as a work of God’s creation and a former vessel of the soul with which it will one day be reunited.18 As well as representing the prayers of the living on behalf of the dead rising to God, the incense is also a reminder to the living of the sanctity of their own bodies and their responsibility to care for both their bodies and souls in the hope of their own union with God and their reunion with their deceased loved ones.
Funerals right before the Second Vatican Council conveyed all aspects of the truth of death: not only its reality and finality, but also its direct link to baptism and new life in Christ. This framework remains true after the Council, even through the liturgical reforms. Emphasis on certain aspects might have been adjusted, but the truths were consistent.
By the end of the twentieth century, many cultural changes had taken place to influence society’s approach to death. This shift took the early century’s acceptance of death and the middle of the century’s simultaneous glorification and sterilization of death to a new level of fear and rejection. Now death was not just to be avoided, but to be escaped. The continued progress of medicine and technology, along with the concept of continual progress of the human race explicit in the culture at the time allowed for the escape of death to appear more real than ever before. The leading influencers of this change were the cultural revolutions of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.
One cannot point to any particular trend of thought in this period to blame for American society’s warping of the nature of death, but rather to the concept of having a revolution at all. The pattern seen across the world of people taking a more personal and active role in the community to the point of political or social upheaval can easily escalate to attempts to control many things far beyond the power of man- kind. In this iteration of revolution and underestimation of power, American society took off with the idea of technological advancement and the future as a perfect society. Beginning in the late 1950s and picking up steam in the late 1960s, science fiction shows such as The Twilight Zone played on Americans’ dreams for a better future and showed them a world in which technology had solved all our problems, especially evident in such programs as Star Trek and The Jetsons. Even reality seemed to reflect this idealized world view with the progress of our space programs, culminating in the first moon landing in 1969. The production of a space laboratory, deep space telescope, and space station still in operation today would follow and perpetuate the ideas of the human race’s genius and invincibility.
The shift in the minds of Americans was clear: humanity was taking its future into its own hands, and thus out of God’s. Death, the one event even modern medicine could not prevent, was put out of the public’s mind, and the subject was avoided as much as possible. This provided the need for a cosmetics market which now generates about $445 billion in sales.19 If attempting to escape the harbingers of death through cosmetics did not succeed, one could then simply dismiss death as beneath one’s notice, since, according to a tombstone from 1985, “it happens.”20 Death continued to be eliminated from daily life. No longer did death “[enter] another home.”21 Rather, death was intentionally kept out of the home, relegated to hospitals and hospice centers; anywhere but the homes of living people, as if it were some sort of sickness that would spread if allowed to come any closer. If it could not be solved, death was going to be dismissed and ignored, which had massive psychological effects on the nation, as any mass denial of a fundamental reality of life does. The Church could not ignore this serious change in cultural attitudes and refused to give in or stand idly by.
The Church responded to these significant cultural shifts in America and around the world in a variety of ways, starting with the global response of the Second Vatican Council. The first of the constitutions of the Council, promulgated in 1963, discussed reforms for the liturgy with two brief but specific sections on the funeral Mass. The first dealt more broadly with incorporations of local customs and traditions with additional specific emphasis on the “paschal character of Christian death.”22 The second dealt more specifically with pastoral response, calling for a revision of the funeral rites for infants, with a provision for a special Mass for this sole purpose.23
With the reforms of the Council, funeral liturgy appeared rather different from its former version, but the truths of Church teaching were all still present. In a notable adjustment, a Sprinkling Rite was made more prominent at the very beginning of the funeral Mass to better connect the funeral with the sacrament of baptism.24 This more explicitly demonstrates the continuity between the new life received at baptism in Christ and the new life hoped for in heaven. Despite this adjustment as well as the removal of Psalms 130 and 51 from the funeral Mass— resulting in a significantly different feel to the liturgy—the goals and truths of the funeral remain. While Psalm 130 can still be used in funeral liturgies outside of Mass, the removal of it from the Mass itself does mark a decided change in the feel and sentiment of the funeral Mass.
Evidence of the continuity between the pre- and post-conciliar funeral Masses is found in the Song of Farewell, part of the Final Commendation, which contains the familiar lines:
Saints of God, come to his/her aid! Come to meet him/her, Angels of the Lord! Receive his/her soul and present him/her to God the Most High. May Christ, who called you, take you to himself; may angels lead you to Abraham's side. Give him/her eternal rest, O Lord and may your light shine on him/her forever.25
Liturgical continuity alongside development and reform shows how the Church, over two millennia, continues to teach the truth while respond- ing to the needs of the time with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The General Introduction to the newly revised Order of Christian Funerals in which the new funeral Mass is detailed states:
The Church intercedes on behalf of the deceased because of its confident belief that death is not the end, nor does it break the bonds forged in life. The Church also ministers to the sorrowing and consoles them in the funeral rites with the comforting Word of God and the Sacrament of the Eucharist.26
This confidence in the resurrection of the dead is hardly new, as it has been stated explicitly through the Church’s history all the way back to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans in which he says, “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.”27 Christian funerals have always proclaimed Catholics’ “belief in the immortality of the soul,” as has been recognized through Church history and many phases of liturgical development.28
Pastorally, the Church continues to respond to the shifting cultural attitudes in large and small ways. On a global level, the Catechism of the Catholic Church from 1992 provided a more detailed and accessible explanation of the Church’s teaching on the resurrection of the dead in response to the rejection of the reality and finality of death made by the secular culture. In paragraph 1681 it says:
The Christian meaning of death is revealed in the light of the Paschal Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of Christ in whom resides our only hope. The Christian who dies in Christ Jesus is 'away from the body and at home with the Lord' (2 Cor 5:8).29
The truths the Church has taught from the beginning about death and the resurrection of the dead are still evident and central to modern funeral liturgy, even if how they are expressed through liturgy has changed over time.
Understanding the Church’s response in any age is a challenge, to be sure. There will, however, always be in some form the two pat- terns we found in this specific selection of the Church’s commitment to the truth paired with her compassion and desire to respond to the needs of her flock in that particular time. Thus, the truths she teaches can appear to change without actually doing so as they are presented in ways more suitable to a particular time or emphasized in different ways based on the needs of the people. Therefore, when responding to the changing social attitudes towards death in the twentieth century in America, the Church followed the same pattern she has for two millennia and continued to teach the truth of death’s reality and finality, while also pro- claiming confidently the hope of the resurrection of the dead and the mercy of God. Even though the forms in which those truths were presented underwent some change after the conciliar period and different aspects of that same truth were emphasized, the truths themselves re- main clear and consistent. At the same time genuine pastoral responses are also made to connect with the faithful on a personal level, rather than simply an institutional one.
Liturgical development is an organic process happening continually, not confined to specific conciliar periods. At the same time the Church teaches eternal truths which have not and will not change. While death is real and final, God’s mercy and the resurrection of the dead are also real. Therefore, funeral liturgy is meant to serve both the living and the dead, by providing genuine comfort to grieving families and by guiding them in prayer for the deceased, expressing the truths of the faith in pastorally-sensitive ways, and commending the loved one to God with the most efficacious prayer of the Church: the Holy Mass.
The Church incorporates and glorifies the culture around her for the good of her faithful through continuous and organic liturgical development. She responds to the needs of her people and desires to be close to them, especially in their grief. She recognizes and responds to the cultural changes in society while at the same time continuing to preach the truth of the Gospel message: that through our baptisms the faithful participate in the death and resurrection of Christ, giving us a genuine hope for our futures in the next life. Funerals then are the encapsulation of that two-fold goal: to comfort with love and instruct with compassion. It is my hope that this research will provide an opportunity for us to reexamine how we approach the Church’s actions in the twentieth century and provide a platform for continued discussion.
