Posted on 07/21/2005 11:10:46 PM PDT by Crackingham
A parish priest has refused to give an Italian woman a Christian funeral because she had “lived in sin”. Father Giuseppe Mazzotta, parish priest at Marcellinara, near Catanzaro in Calabria, said that he had denied a Christian funeral to Maria Francesca Tallarico, who died of breast cancer at the age of 45, because she had lived with her partner but never married him. Her partner was separated and had an 11-year-old daughter.
“She lived with her lover, so she was a public sinner,” Father Mazzotta said. “I decided not to celebrate an official Mass for this woman, who was not in communion with the Church.”
Father Mazzotta said that he had performed the liturgy of absolution for the dead. He added that he was close to the dead woman’s family and had offered them “words of comfort”.
Father Antonio Sciortino, the Editor of Famiglia Cristiana, a popular Catholic magazine, accused Father Mazzotta of “excessive zeal”. Mario Paraboschi, a local councillor, said that he was perplexed. Father Mazzotta said that his action carried a message: “Marriage is a sacrament. We cannot simply pretend.”
The priest’s decision has underlined the growing power of conservative Catholicism in Italy. The liberal and secular Left is increasingly alarmed by the return to “Catholic values” in politics and everyday life, which has clear implications for the general election, due next May.
Yesterday Romano Prodi, the leader of the opposition Centre Left, who hopes to oust the ruling Centre-Right coalition of Silvio Berlusconi, came under fire from the Church and the Right for suggesting that he would follow “the French example” and recognise homosexual “civil unions” if he were returned to power.
Signor Prodi said that he would not go so far as Spain and legalise gay marriage, but Il Giornale, the conservative newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family, said that that was the logical next step.
The most powerful sermon I ever heard on God's grace came from a Baptist pulpit. The deceased, a member, was about to go on trial for molesting another member, a child. On the appointed court date, he phoned the police to report a gunshot in his back yard ...
The text was Romans 8:1,2 and the message was that salvation was God's free gift to the undeserving -- such as the deceased. Such as you and me.
"The Cafeteria is Closed" bump.
Italian families are averaging 1.3 kids, I think. Loss of faith -> loss of hope -> loss of charity -> extinction.
The only alternative is a revival of Biblical and fecund Christianity.
It is allowed only in some circumstances, for practical reasons (e.g. infectious diseases, local civil regulations, lack of space - not an American problem this one! - or other very special and rare occasions)but ONLY IF it is clear and certain that there was no intention of denying the resurrection of the body.
Of course God can resurrect the bodies of those died millennia ago and now turned into ash, but since the very beginning the Church prohibited cremation to fight the pagan notion of death and to instill faith in resurrection.
Speaking in Irish Catholic terms, it used to be the "wake" was in the house. And the body buried in the Catholic cemetery after the funeral. Hence, no absurdly extreme costs. A simple pine box is fine. Does anyone really need Ivory casket handles after they are gone?
I have mixed feelings about this case and article. Not enough details here to know the whole story. In the old days, suicides were denied burial. THAT is no longer the case. Everyone is offered forgiveness. Unless there is a very good and compelling reason, death is not the time to make some sort of political statement bearing on moral controversies.
If she had made a sincere death-bed Confession, etc. On the other hand, it might serve as a warning to others leading lives outside of consecrated Matrimony. But so would a stern sermon at a funeral or memorial Mass.
At any rate, contrary to popular superstition, the decisions and opinions of a mere priest, of whatever standing and orientation, do not control the pearly gates.
Just a foonote: the famous American ex-Catholic writer F. Scott Fitzgerald could not be buried with full honors due to his lapsed status. His body supposedly lies adjacent to consecrated ground in St. Mary's Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC.
That evangelical apologist (James White? William Webster?) needs to consult a decent Catholic catechism about the definition of mortal sin. To summarize, it requires full freedom, full knowledge, and grave matter. There's no way to know anything about the individuals' freedom or knowledge from the story in II Macc. The most anyone can judge is whether what they did was grave matter, and it's not an absolute certainty than it was. (I would tend to doubt that all sins against the first commandment are grave matter.)
Your apologist is mistaken.
It's permitted (but somewhat frowned upon) unless it's done to deny the dogma of the resurrection of the body.
My father was cremated, because it's much cheaper and he didn't want much money spent on his funeral.
There were several articles on FR recently (I pinged some out) about a referendum held in Italy about, IIRC, cloning and possibly stem cell stuff. The Pope spoke out against it, or at least other Catholic Church higher ups, and urged people to note vote. If less than 50% of the electorate didn't vote, it was null and void. Less than 50% turned out to vote, and the whole thing was quite heated.
A number of public figures stated they weren't voting specifically to defeat it.
I guess the family didn't pay the expected tribute.......
or
this is PR spin
Technically, in the Catholic Church, the prayers offered at a Funeral Mass or a Requiem Mass are for the dead - that their time being purified be lessened.
UNREPENTANT sinners. In other words, people who haven't received the Sacrament of Penance lately and are living openly in sin with no remorse and no attempt to change.
And any sacrament can be refused on those grounds. Penance is refused to people married outside the church. Marriage can be refused with sufficient reason. I've heard of Holy Orders being refused for various reasons - all unrepentant individuals who took actions against church teaching.
This is not an isolated event.
Interesting. Thanks for the info.
The difference is that we have an "unrepentant" sinner, someone who had no intention of "going away and sinning no more".
If she had sought reconcilation she would have been advised that she would have to change her lifestyle before any absolution could be given.
We are all sinners but sacraments may be denied to those who think that Jesus didn't really mean what he said and persist in offending Him.
That is pretty much why my pastor would not allow it at times.
He has allowed a few in cases where the people honestly had no idea that it was forbidden, but the service was not held at the church.
Well that is one of the differences between the Baptist and the Catholic religion. In the Catholic Church the funeral is for the dead not a ritual to comfort the living.
I think you mean the books of Maccabees, not the book of Malachi. Maccabees is where praying for the dead is found. It's part of the Septuagint but not the Palestinian canon, which is why it's been controversial since St. Jerome's time.
Malachi, by contrast, is in ALL Bibles, Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant. The passage generally cited by Evangelicals re: tithing, is in Malachi.
Hmmmm.
ARTICLE 2
CHRISTIAN FUNERALS
All the sacraments, and principally those of Christian initiation, have as their goal the last Passover of the child of God which, through death, leads him into the life of the Kingdom. Then what he confessed in faith and hope will be fulfilled: "I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come."184
I. THE CHRISTIAN'S LAST PASSOVER
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."185
1682 For the Christian the day of death inaugurates, at the end of his sacramental life, the fulfillment of his new birth begun at Baptism, the definitive "conformity" to "the image of the Son" conferred by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and participation in the feast of the Kingdom which was anticipated in the Eucharist- even if final purifications are still necessary for him in order to be clothed with the nuptial garment.
The Church who, as Mother, has borne the Christian sacramentally in her womb during his earthly pilgrimage, accompanies him at his journey's end, in order to surrender him "into the Father's hands." She offers to the Father, in Christ, the child of his grace, and she commits to the earth, in hope, the seed of the body that will rise in glory.186 This offering is fully celebrated in the Eucharistic sacrifice; the blessings before and after Mass are sacramentals.
II. THE CELEBRATION OF FUNERALS
1684 The Christian funeral is a liturgical celebration of the Church. The ministry of the Church in this instance aims at expressing efficacious communion with the deceased, at the participation in that communion of the community gathered for the funeral, and at the proclamation of eternal life to the community.
1685 The different funeral rites express the Paschal character of Christian death and are in keeping with the situations and traditions of each region, even as to the color of the liturgical vestments worn.187
1686 The Order of Christian Funerals (Ordo exsequiarum) of the Roman liturgy gives three types of funeral celebrations, corresponding to the three places in which they are conducted (the home, the church, and the cemetery), and according to the importance attached to them by the family, local customs, the culture, and popular piety. This order of celebration is common to all the liturgical traditions and comprises four principal elements:
1687 The greeting of the community. A greeting of faith begins the celebration. Relatives and friends of the deceased are welcomed with a word of "consolation" (in the New Testament sense of the Holy Spirit's power in hope).188 The community assembling in prayer also awaits the "words of eternal life." The death of a member of the community (or the anniversary of a death, or the seventh or thirtieth day after death) is an event that should lead beyond the perspectives of "this world" and should draw the faithful into the true perspective of faith in the risen Christ.
1688 The liturgy of the Word during funerals demands very careful preparation because the assembly present for the funeral may include some faithful who rarely attend the liturgy, and friends of the deceased who are not Christians. The homily in particular must "avoid the literary genre of funeral eulogy"189 and illumine the mystery of Christian death in the light of the risen Christ.
The Eucharistic Sacrifice. When the celebration takes place in church the Eucharist is the heart of the Paschal reality of Christian death.190 In the Eucharist, the Church expresses her efficacious communion with the departed: offering to the Father in the Holy Spirit the sacrifice of the death and resurrection of Christ, she asks to purify his child of his sins and their consequences, and to admit him to the Paschal fullness of the table of the Kingdom.191 It is by the Eucharist thus celebrated that the community of the faithful, especially the family of the deceased, learn to live in communion with the one who "has fallen asleep in the Lord," by communicating in the Body of Christ of which he is a living member and, then, by praying for him and with him.
A farewell to the deceased is his final "commendation to God" by the Church. It is "the last farewell by which the Christian community greets one of its members before his body is brought to its tomb."192 The Byzantine tradition expresses this by the kiss of farewell to the deceased:
184 Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.
185 2 Cor 5:8.
186 Cf. 1 Cor 15:42-44.
187 Cf. SC 81.
188 Cf. 1 Thess 4:18.
189 OCF 41.
190 Cf. OCF 41.
191 Cf. 57.
192 OCF 10.
193 St. Simeon of Thessalonica, De ordine sepulturæ. 336:PG 155,684.
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