By: Lizette Larson, October 24, 2025
In a plenary address at the 2019 Societas Liturgica gathering in Durham, UK (and subsequent publication in Studia Liturgica, 2020, vol. 50) Sr. Bénédicte Mariolle addressed some of the ritual and theological challenges of ‘church’ funerals in our shifting cultural settings. The relationship of the broader society with the church has shifted, of course, but perhaps more to the point in this topic, the relationship of ‘regular’ parishioners to funerals has also changed. Sr. Bénédicte writes
The current context has undergone what Danièle Hervieu-Léger calls the “exculturation” of Christianity, where the Christian references and the ritual cues no longer work as rites provided by an ecclesiastical institution in the way that they were still able to in the 1960s. What is more, in this new cultural reality characterized by globalization, the mixing of cultures and the flexibility of social relationships, the long-term memory which guaranteed the symbolic effectiveness of this rituality has evaporated. (Hervieu-Léger’s insights are from her 2003 book, Catholicisme, la fin d’un monde, Paris)
Adapting ritual, adapting written instructions in liturgical bulletins and adding verbal instructions throughout a liturgy are not new, particularly when the church gathers to bury or marry, ordain or even to baptize these days. We generally assume that there will be visitors unfamiliar with the liturgy who are drawn as family or friends to an occasional event. But the lack of familiarity with these liturgies may also be because these are occasional events even for parishioners who only rarely experience these ‘other’ liturgies and because of that are far less sure of ‘what comes next.’
Funerals have an additional pressure, however, and that is an external inculturation (outside of the church) which has taken place for years. Part of the reality in the United States (and elsewhere) is an inability to talk about death and what happens after death. But the rise of “Celebrations of Life” in many communities which have well-established funeral rites looking to the life to come (life in Christ and the continuing journey into that life) have surprisingly embraced these celebrations of a life. By their very nature, these occasions (really wakes or vigils or funeral lunches moved into the church and then into the primary ritual event) look to the life that has been – a warm (and sometimes almost canonizing) review of the dead person’s lifetime achievements. The phrase seems to have originated in 1984 with a speech given by then-President Ronald Reagan and applied to end-of-life observances in wider circles towards the end of the 1980s. To have celebrations of the life that was lived outside of faith circles makes sense, but to move them within Christian liturgies where a clear faith in the resurrection of the dead and eternal life in Christ through scripture and tradition seems confusing, misleading, and misguided.
The US Episcopal Church finally wrote in the introduction to the official supplement to funeral rites in 2007 that the primary work of the funeral is to commend the dead to God: “Through Christ’s breaking the bonds of death we are confident that we will be raised in him. ‘Celebrations of a life’ or personal anecdotes about the deceased, properly belong to the visitation or wake, or to a gathering after the burial. The sermon, in the burial liturgy, is a proclamation of the Gospel of the Resurrection.” (Enriching our Worship III, 2)
In addition to the unfamiliarity with funeral rites and cultural resistance to talking about death (and therefore resistance to the theology of eternal life), there is a growing pastoral phenomenon where the deceased person was known to be a faithful Christian to those around them, and that faith was often made known in their own request for a Christian funeral (sometimes with lots of details!) but no one else in the family is. The interesting pastoral situation arises when none of the family members have anything to do with church and either resist or simply do not understand what it is that the church does at the death of one of its own. Here the centrality of the eulogy (which is not technically a part of a funeral liturgy) becomes the ritual element most understandable to many people. Funeral preparations become a new form of basic catechesis, sometimes contested and at other times life-changing for those involved. The pastoral challenges of gently leading people into participating in a strange new world of liturgy while allowing space to mourn and engage form a version of what Hervieu-Léger calls above the “exculturation” of Christianity,” especially in light of the “new cultural reality characterized by globalization, the mixing of cultures and the flexibility of social relationships.”
All of this may seem an assortment of complaints about doing funerals in the 21st century, but there is another side to the honor of presiding at funeral liturgies these days, and that is directly related to this basic catechesis and conversation that occurs with family members when a beloved relative dies. Increasingly in the circles of people with whom I have these conversations, there are remembrances of a childhood spent in the church, and subsequently abandoned deliberately, or more often, something that slipped away in the busyness of life. The funeral planning has often turned into a tour of the church, places remembered, ritual gifts donated, and a re-introduction to an important part of their childhood. In some cases, the process of planning, of visiting, of listening, of touching and seeing rekindles a desire to perhaps be part of this again; funeral planning as reconciliation and evangelism… Most recently I was present as family members got out of their cars in the church parking lot to prepare for the funeral and met each other – for the first time. Today’s families are often scattered, and perhaps are part of families from different marriages who have literally never met, so that the funeral becomes a reunion and introduction in the midst of mourning and a fair bit of confusion. To see families sharing photos and stories and learning about each other after the funeral introduces a different level of conversion and new life – the dead effecting new beginnings and relationships in the gathering of their disconnected family and friends.
It seems this brave new world affords liturgy a increasingly important role in creating a unity in the midst of divisions, to pray as we believe and to invite others to that or back into that, knowing themselves once again as the children of God as well as the children of their faithful parents.
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