Posted on 11/11/2018 2:18:47 PM PST by ebb tide
If Pope Francis wants to change the canon law forbidding ecclesiastical funeral rites for “manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without scandal” (1983 CIC 1184 § 1 n. 1) he can do so. Till then Church law forbidding such funerals, a law that dates back many centuries, remains in effect, and its apparent gross violation last week by clergy of the Archdiocese of Boston, who (seemingly with approval from the chancery), granted notorious mob murderer James “Whitey” Bulger a Catholic funeral Mass, hardly justifies granting Church funerals to other “manifest sinners” who do not give “some signs of repentance before death”—which no one claims Bulger gave—not that that fact gave James Martin, sj, any pause before tweeting Bulger’s funeral as preemptive justification for Church funerals for “LGBT person[s even though] they are married”.
To be sure, few priests and prelates seem willing to observe even the softened canon law restricting ecclesiastical funerals that has been in effect since 1983. One bishop who did observe it was Brooklyn Bp. Thomas Daily who denied ecclesiastical funeral rites to John “the Dapper Don” Gotti, an American Mafia chieftain who died in prison in 2001. I defended Daily’s refusal here: Edward Peters, “Lest amateurs argue canon law: a reply to Patrick Gordon’s brief against Bp. Thomas Daily”, Angelicum 83 (2006) 121-142, on-line here. In accord with canon law (e.g., 1983 CIC 901), I would note, a later memorial Mass was permitted for Gotti (just as one would be permitted for Bulger and Martin’s ‘same-sex spouses’). But other bishops who think that canon law means what canon law says, besides Madison WI Bp. Morlino and Springfield IL Bp. Paprocki, seem few.
Now, to be clear (in case some folks think law means always having to say No) following the canon law on funerals does not always mean refusing such rites in controversial cases. For example, in 2009 the Archdiocese of Boston accorded the notoriously pro-abortion, etc., Sen. Edward Kennedy a Church funeral, a decision I defended as being within the law given public evidence that Kennedy had met the admittedly very low canonical standards for giving “signs of repentance” prior to his death. See Edward Peters, “Still trying to get the Kennedy funeral lessons right”, Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly 34/1 (Spring 2011) 57-59. As I said, though, no such claims were offered re Bulger.
So if all of this boils down to, the canon law on funerals is not well understood for clergy or laity, and it might be pastorally more trouble than it’s worth, I say, okay, then explain and enforce the law as is, or modify, re-explain, and enforce a reformed law. But don’t leave the law in place, yet disregarded. There are good reasons for and against the law as written—pace, I would say, murder-suicides, and especially family annihilators like Steven Suepple, cases for which no justification, I think, can be found—but for the rest I am willing to hear arguments for and against. So are many thoughtful others.
Till then, however, “manifest sinners” such as Whitey Bulger should not be accorded Church funeral rites and media priests such as Martin should not parlay violations of canon law into a reason to violate it again. That spreads disrespect for law and for the values it seeks to uphold; it implies that breaking the law itself justifies breaking it again. Of that mentality we need no more.
And may James Bulger, and his dozen-plus victims, rest in peace.
I don't think so. The priest can, and should, always make the public repentance of a notorious sinner's grave, manifest sins a requirement before a valid absolution is given.
N.B. I'm no canon lawyer. Just a neo-pelagian, sour-pussed, rosary counter.
I don’t know the details.
What details?
Details of sickness?
He was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in May 2008. He died in August 2009.
I recall that Sean O'Malley professed himself to be blinky-eyed, blindsided and astonished that any American Catholic could have any objection to his exhibitionistic funeral obsequies. As if O'Malley's brain had been in ambien-oblivion for, oh, 30 or 40 years.
But I know neither Ted Kennedy's life nor his death in detail. I certainly don't know what his confessor would know.
That's my point. For notorius public sinners, a catholic should know of repentance from the sinner himself, not the confessor.
Yet neither Kennedy nor his confessor provided evidence of such repentance. And Massachusett's catholics are still voting to murder their own babies and those of others; no thanks to Ted Kennedy, nor his confessor, nor Sean O'Malley nor Obama.
Nor Ed Peters.
They can have a memorial Mass. No body (in any form) is present.
Family may attend. It is more like a Daily Mass with a few references to the deceased.
How do we know if Kennedy did or did not repent.
It is not for us to know, thus we cannot judge.
P.S. I find it ridiculous that Peters criticized the funeral Mass of Whitey Bugler and defended a bishop’s refusal of John Gotti’s funeral Mass, yet supported Kennedy’s funeral Mass. We know no more of the first two’s “interior dispositions” than we do of Kennedy’s.
Kennedy was responsible for countless more deaths than the two mobsters combined. None of them made public reparation, but only one of them influenced millions to vote for the murder of babies.
How do we know Bugler and Gotti did not repent?
What’s the special privilege that Kennedy was given?
Who is Peters to judge?
Mark Leibovich of the New York Times notes that, among things, “The Rev. Mark Hession, the priest at the Kennedys’ parish on the Cape, made regular visits to the Kennedy home this summer and held a private family Mass in the living room every Sunday. Even in his final days, Mr. Kennedy led the family in prayer after the death of his sister Eunice . . . [and when] the senator’s condition took a turn Tuesday night a priest, the Rev. Patrick Tarrant of Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, was called to his bedside.”
No public repentance whatsoever.
What Catholic prelate has come out and said Kennedy had repented of his votes for abortion before his death?
The important repentance is with God.
God knows the answer. We don’t.
After all, "It is not for us to know, thus we cannot judge".
So we should give everyone requiem Masses?
Why not give everyone Holy Communion?
So the Sacrament of Confession, and ensuing absolution from a priest is not that necessary?
That doesn't sound very Catholic.
Neither does Sean O'Malley or Ed Peters.
Of course the Confession and absolution would have been included when the priest visited him for the last time.
But as I said, God knows. We don’t. The Seal of Confession — remember?
I didn’t say that the memorial Mass was a Requiem Mass. It’s just a simple Daily Mass.
You didn’t say anything about daily Masses. Both Bugler and Kennedy received Requiem Masses in the archdiocese of Sean O’Malley’s Boston.
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