A Changing Way of Death

One of the most memorable things about the funeral of Dwight David Eisenhower (see THE NATION) was its quiet dignity. The brief Biblical service and the confident hymns bespoke the man who had chosen them before his death; like him, they were modest, realistic and hopeful. Yet, in a nation whose overblown funeral rites were once the proper subject of mockery in Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death, such a straightforward farewell is no longer the exception. Christian funerals in the U.S. are changing, and they now tend to emphasize the simple, yet triumphant qualities that characterized the Eisenhower rites.

The change makes sound religious sense. To the believing Christian, death is a moment not of annihilation but of resurrection, when a soul's turbulent earthly journey comes to a happy end in eternal life. American Protestant funeral rites traditionally reflected this belief in such comfortable old favorites as the 23rd Psalm ("The Lord is my Shepherd") and the promises of Jesus ("I am the Resurrection and the Life"), at least until the more unctuous funeral-parlor euphemisms began to avoid any confrontation at all with the idea of death. Roman Catholic rites, on the other hand, were infected by a grim medieval preoccupation with sin and punishment; any confidence or joy in the resurrection hardly seemed to exist.

Now the most visible changes in the mood of funerals are being made by Catholics. Charged by a decree of the Second Vatican Council to put greater emphasis on "the paschal character of Christian death," more and more bishops are allowing an experimental "white funeral," a service as different from the old requiem Mass as Easter is from Good Friday. Dressed in white vestments instead of the traditional black, the priest meets the coffin at the church door, recalling the rite of baptism that ties the Christian to Jesus. "If in union with Christ we have imitated his death," declares the priest, quoting St. Paul, "we shall also imitate him in his Resurrection." During the service, a white pall covers the coffin to symbolize eternal life; a paschal candle flickering at the foot of the coffin symbolizes the Risen Christ. Gone is the chilling but beautiful hymn of the old Latin services --the Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath"). In its place may be the 23rd or 121st Psalm ("I lift my eyes unto the hills") or joyful hymns ending in an alleluia. The homily is modest and uplifting. "We stress that life is not ended but merely changed," says Monsignor James J. Madden of Richmond, Texas.

Part of Existence. While Catholics are moving away from a tradition of guilt and grief, U.S. Protestants are trying to retreat from the excesses of funeral-parlor escapism. The Southern California-Arizona Conference of the United Methodist Church has told ministers to urge burial from a church rather than a mortuary, to recommend a minimum of ceremony, and to expect no remuneration for presiding. In Detroit, the Rev. Dr. Jack Rollings of Metropolitan Baptist Tabernacle has set a limit of 15 minutes on his eulogies. "I remember a time," he says, "when if you didn't speak for 30 minutes, it meant you didn't care for the deceased." Episcopal Canon Howard Johnson of Alhambra, Calif., insists that caskets should be closed--"not because we are afraid to look at a dead body, but to save the cost of cosmetology."

At times, the new simplicity of funerals seems to verge on an almost mechanical austerity, in which the spiritual has little or no place. Not surprisingly, some undertakers are disturbed about the rising frequency of what they disdainfully dub the "run-in" or "disposal" funeral: the briefest memorial service, no embalming, just a quick transfer of the body to the crematorium. Obviously, the problem for the Christian is to strike a balance in which death can be faced as the mystery it is, with neither false confidence nor excessive grief. Ideally, says the Rev. Dr. Albert J. Penner, president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, death should be accepted as "a natural part of existence, part of the bargain we make with life at birth."

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