Sir, - I was shocked and infuriated by Archbishop Brady's letter and the new guidelines on funeral rites being considered by the Catholic Church Liturgy Commission.
Liturgy, if it is to be meaningful, must be relevant to people's lives. Death is a significant moment in a person's life and to offer nothing other than a cold formal ritual would be of no comfort to those who mourn their loved one.
Vatican II defines the Church as "The People of God" and encourages us to play a more active role in church services. It advocates inclusiveness and dialogue. Are these just meaningless words?
The archbishop says that "the Church attaches great importance to the Word of God". I agree that this should be so. In a recent homily I heard one of his fellow bishops state that "unless the Word of God touches the runway of our lives it is meaningless". The Jesus of the gospels reached out in a human way to people in their loss and comforted them.
The "sacred nature" of the liturgy is referred to. Surely the death of a person is a sacred moment and it is appropriate to celebrate the sacredness of the person's story and how that person's life made a difference.
I myself prefer to think of the holistic concept of the person, as the Hebrews did, rather than the body/soul dichotomy of the Greeks where the spirit and the flesh are separated. Teilhard de Chardin had no difficulty in uniting the sacred and the so-called secular. We are not pure spirits; we have human needs and this includes the need to be supported, comforted and uplifted by appropriate rites of passage.
Who is better qualified to speak about the deceased than those who have shared his/her life? From a psychological point of view, it is therapeutic to be able to celebrate the life and publicly acknowledge the story of a loved one. Words spoken before a final parting have a great capacity to heal and strengthen. We were all taken by John Bowman's recent eulogy. Would you deny him that privilege?
I would appeal to Archbishop Brady to "get real", to listen to the heartbeat of humanity and not get bogged down in the mire of doctrines, dogmas and Canon Law that hail the love of law rather than the law of love. Please don't make the practice of religion so heavenly that it is of no earthly good. Please listen to the voice of those of us who are still interested because this backward step you are proposing will alienate people and the diminishing congregations will diminish further. - Yours, etc.
Madge Scanlon, Barton Drive, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.