What’s the alternative to a church funeral?
Posted on | May 27, 2009 | 64 Comments
This is something I touched on in the comments on yesterday’s post.
Given that many people will now want nothing to do with the church in this country what is the alternative to a church funeral?
You can choose to get married in a registry office or a non-denominational church, you can avoid mass, holy events and everything else, but when you die there doesn’t seem to be any option but to get wheeled into a church in a box and have some priest who never knew you say the same bland things he says about everybody who’s wheeled into his church.
Can you just do the funeral home, a few words from a family member or someone who knew you well, and then the graveyard?
Are graveyards religious? Does the church own the land?
Quite happy to be enlightened here.
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64 Responses to “What’s the alternative to a church funeral?”
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May 27th, 2009 @ 9:57 am
I think that the crematorium in Mt. Jerome caters for non-denominational funerals.
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:04 am
While I believe Mt. Jerome may cater for non-denominational cremations I’m pretty sure that the place you go to say your last goodbyes before the coffin disappears behind the curtain is a chapel. Is it possible to have a non-denominational chapel?
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:16 am
Whilst I am not a member, I know that the Humanist Society do funerals
http://www.humanism.ie/website/index.php
I came across the concept a long time ago, through the blog of a humanist funeral celebrant in Britain
http://realefun.blogspot.com/
The links on her blog will refer to other types of solutions, and her archives have stories about her work.
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:19 am
Interesting, cheers.
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:36 am
And the graveyards do indeed belong to the church – consecrated ground. Which is why, years ago, unbaptised babies were buried outside the walls of graveyards because they weren’t deemed cleansed of original sin for buriel within consecrated ground. Poor little things…
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:36 am
I conducted a funeral ‘service’ for my friend, Maureen, when she died last year. The funeral directors weren’t very helpful but arranged the crematorium bit, and said you’ve 20 minuts. The thing is I make tv news programmes for a living and 20 minutes is about right, so I ‘scripted’ the whole thing like a tv running order and everything worked out fine. The coffin was wheeled into the ‘church’ and a photo of Maureen placed on top. Friends entered to Elgar’s Nimrod from the Enigma Variations… sad music and appropriate as my friend came from Elgar’s home town. I wrote and read an oration about her life and interests (jokes are good) and got other friends – including an eight year old (who read beautifully) to read some poems. One of them was a funny one about death by Joyce Grenville. My friend’s brother picked a song by Rod Stewart, but luckily he left the disc in the player at home, so we only had an empty box! My otherwise tasteful funeral finished up with Shaun Davy’s May We Never Say Goodbye which was written for the Special Olympics and as it was playing the curtains closed on the coffin. Not a dry eye in the house.
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:38 am
“Given that many people will now want nothing to do with the church in this country what is the alternative to a church funeral?”
Pfft, Vox Populi suggests outrage but folk will still attend. I think you’re way off the mark if you think people will abandon the insitution on account of this. As I heard one old woman on the radio the other day wittering on, ‘oh yes it’s terrible, but I won’t tun my back on my church.’ Forked tongues are flexible and people want traditions to be upheld, kids in white frocks, church weddings with all the trimmings, dousing babies in water and a piss up after, cognitive dissonance will take care of it all, you wait and see.
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:38 am
Ah yes, unbaptised babies, the most evil of them all.
Janet – that’s kind of what I’m talking about, very much the exception rather than the rule I’d have thought.
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:42 am
My dad has mentioned being burned on a boat, viking style, with all his precious belongings to the sounds of Thelonius Monk.
his bongos.
his aquarium.
his telescope.
Hopefully we will have enough paraffin…
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:46 am
I have no idea how things are done in Ireland regarding this matter. My mom passed away a few years ago and we had her memorial conducted at the funeral home. In Canada the whole service can be done in a funeral home there is no need to involve the church at any level in something that is a private family function. Did I mention that I have a huge hate for the Catholic church? I do. People in Ireland should burn down every church and parochial house in mho
May 27th, 2009 @ 10:52 am
“Given that many people will now want nothing to do with the church in this country what is the alternative to a church funeral?”
I’m with FMC, this won’t make much of a difference to most people with “faith” anyway.
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:06 am
Fire her up to the tune of You Spin Me Right Round by Dead or Alive and then a free bar…
Scatter the ashes later in the atlantic…
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:09 am
My Aunt’s funeral was humanist, in Mount Jerome crematorium. The chapel is non-denominational. It was the best funeral I was ever at. Everyone that was there was walking out saying they were totally going that way.
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:10 am
Don’t get married
Simple as that
Who needs all that stress
There are 3 rings in life
Engagement ring
Marriage ring
And Suffering
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:17 am
bear, I’m married. No stress involved. Or suffering.
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:18 am
Give you body to science, Twenty.
They will take care of everything, and dump you up in Glasnevin when they are finished doing what they do best.
It also might help the world understand what makes you tick?
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:19 am
I offered, they ran away screaming.
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:25 am
I never understood why the church opposed cremation.
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:26 am
I don’t think people will turn their back on the church. You have to admit there are some religious people out there that do some good in the name of God. I don’t think you can write them all of as bad. Grant it they believe in imaginary friends types but that’s their prerogative. The likes of atheism and Richard Dakins preaching to people that they should not believe in God, how wrong it is and how people should be like him is a restrictive religion in itself. I mean he is not doing it for the good of humanity more like the good of his wallet. Until the evidence comes in people will still believe in God.
About the whole graveyard business, I thought they are consecrated grounds and you have to have been christened to be buried in a Catholic graveyard? Member poor old Tess from Tess of the d’Urbervilles she had to sneak into the graveyard at night and bury her baby herself because the priest wouldn’t let an unblessed soul into his graveyard. Is there particular graveyards for particular religions?
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:26 am
my friend was killed off her motorbike a few years ago she was english and had no time at all for organised religion so we went to the funeral home where we listened to ozzy ozbourne(her fav ) blasting out of outdoor speakers to the many people outside, went inside said goodbye to the coffin then went on the piss, the next day coffin was taken to dublin and burned and that was it, a celebration of a lovely person very simply done with no bullshit
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:27 am
I am being buried at sea, off the west coast of Scotland, in a wicker coffin. No religious bullshit all organised through a company in England.
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:28 am
Ah yes, unbaptised babies, the most evil of them all.
Been a big fuss over this here in Belfast
http://www.u.tv/news/Church-sorry-over-Milltown-Cemetery-lease/436c8885-853b-4ae2-b1fc-3cf2bcc1f06d
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:29 am
twenty, could always go and ask ron for a budweiser shandy or a cocktail. am sure you’d enjoy being buried in the cellar
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:30 am
But most people with “faith” are old people. Most of the younger generations have no faith.
For fuck sake don’t knock the 70 year old woman who still puts money in the church collection box. Many of these people have had very positive experiences with the church.
My mother is one of these women, she has extremely strong faith. One of the things I find odd about this is the fact that she never knew her real parents, she was born out of wedlock and was adopted by another family. Obviously she was put up for adoption because the church frowned on her parents not been married. But she doesn’t hold that against her religion.
She is as disgusted as anyone at what happened to the kids in those homes, but she refuses to tar all priests. She believes that she has been helped through some very, very difficult times
by her faith and also by the local priests. To her God is as real as anybody. It’s difficult to understand and easy to mock.
I hate the hipocrasy and bullshit that is involved in church cermonies, when the particpants never attend church and have no faith.
But some people have genuine faith and will continue to support the church
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:30 am
What’s got you thinking about your death, Twenty?
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:32 am
Not my death, just death in general, and how to avoid the church when it happens.
Porridge – heh
Peadar – your mother had you, no wonder she needs the solace of God.
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:33 am
I am being buried at sea, off the west coast of Scotland, in a wicker coffin. No religious bullshit all organised through a company in England.
Do they sink the coffin or just let you float away?
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:35 am
Is there particular graveyards for particular religions?
Very much so – in fact the church insisted in an underground wall to separate the Catholic dead from the protestant dead in the 19th century when a combined city cemetry was planned for Belfast – though because of a row that Catholic section was never used
Before the cemetery opened, a nine-foot deep underground wall was meant to divide consecrated and non-consecrated
ground and separate the Catholic and Protestant sections of the new graveyard.
However, the ground was never used for Catholic burials because of a dispute between Belfast Corporation and Bishop Dorrian over who had ultimate burial rights for those buried in the Catholic section.
http://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/citycemetery/history.asp
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:38 am
Big fan of the Wicker Man, eh PP ? Great film thiough I didn’t like them burning the animals along with Woodward.
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:39 am
I am being buried at sea, off the west coast of Scotland, in a wicker coffin. No religious bullshit all organised through a company in England.
For fuck sake, that sort of pollution shouldn’t be allowed. It could be an environmental disaster, all that bullshit and toxic gas been allowed into the sea
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:46 am
Peadar – your mother had you, no wonder she needs the solace of God.
fuck up fuck face
May 27th, 2009 @ 11:49 am
get cremated and loaded into a big rocket and shot off into the sky like that guy who wrote fear and loathing..
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
I buried my parents in the wrong grave. Twice.
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:11 pm
eh, how?
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:18 pm
Got the plot number wrong when burying my mother. Went back to bury the old man, realised she was in the wrong grave. Dug her up, put them both in the other grave (both urns by the way). Then we got the grave properly marked out, concreted and new headstone.
Went to inspect the work, realised that the mother was in the right grave all along and they were now both in the wrong grave.
Had to dig them up and take them home for a while until we could get the new grave opened again and pop them back in.
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:24 pm
holemaster – so much for a final resting place. more of a final, final, oh for fucks sake, make up your mind resting place
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:43 pm
The coffin is weighted, and designed to rot alongside the corpse, Its all quite complex because they cannot use preservatives they have to ship me quickly to the location of my choice and then take me out and dump me. The idea is I go back and feed the fishes, but not in a cool Mafia way.
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:45 pm
Yeah and we and had them in Tesco bags for life while they were waiting to go back in.
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:47 pm
Has Ron a freezer Twenty ?
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0527/breaking8.html
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:52 pm
had them in Tesco bags
very middle class – Lidl not good enough ?
May 27th, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
Doesn’t really matter does it? You’re dead. I had myself cremated the last time.
May 27th, 2009 @ 1:01 pm
My friend died a couple of years ago and was an atheist. His friends and family stood up and talked about him and many friends played too as he was a brilliant musician. Ended up with some Frank Zappa and then some poems his kids had written for him were read out. His ashes were scattered at the crematorium afterwards.
May 27th, 2009 @ 1:11 pm
Like everything else during the celtic Tiger, some graveyards have been sold off and privatised.
Mt Jerome is owned by Rom Massey, the funeral director, and he also owns the crematorium.
As far as I know, you can have any type of ceremony you like in a crematorium, and the chuch in Mt Jerome is a seperate thing altogether.
May 27th, 2009 @ 1:12 pm
I’ve always said you can just put me out with the rubbish on Tuesday. But that’s probably not very practical.
May 27th, 2009 @ 1:14 pm
Green bin, of course, you can be recycled
May 27th, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
Brown bin surely?
May 27th, 2009 @ 1:20 pm
We don’t have a brown bin yet
May 27th, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
I’d like to be buried with a glass sign saying “Piss off, you archaeologist bastards”.
May 27th, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
We’ll gladly pay you on Tuesday for a low BMI body today.
May 27th, 2009 @ 4:16 pm
A serious comment? Hardly.
Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery was founded by Daniel OConnell et al. on the principle of “all religions and none” and continues this policy today. Check their website.
May 27th, 2009 @ 4:47 pm
Depends where you live. Glasnevin cemetery in Dublin will facilitate non-religious burials, for instance, but as Roy Greenslade found out recently, there’s nowhere in Donegal to bury an atheist http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/foyle_and_west/7588035.stm
May 27th, 2009 @ 6:21 pm
My family has avoided cemeteries for two generations now. First there is the cremation, then a memorial in the home, followed by a trip on the ferry across the Sound to Seattle. The ship’s crew is notified, and they stop the ship in the channel. They let you walk to the edge and place the ashes into the water. After a pause when everyone gets to say good-bye, they sound the horn three times, and get underway again. It’s really quite nice, all things considered.
May 27th, 2009 @ 6:54 pm
Here’s the stuff. You can even buy a little booklet.
http://www.humanism.org.uk/ceremonies/humanist-funerals-memorials
My question is about a non religious wedding. It’s difficult to think of a grand enough place that’s not a church. Registry offices don’t have the same sense of gravitas.
May 28th, 2009 @ 6:25 am
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
If God doesn’t take you, the Devil must.
May 28th, 2009 @ 7:58 am
Will someone correct me if I’m wrong but I believe in England you can be buried in your back garden. Have to get it O.K.’ed by the council, of course, and mapped and registered but seems like a great idea.
Old Joke…
I’ll be buried in me shed with my arse sticking up out of the ground.
Somewhere to park the bike, you know.
May 28th, 2009 @ 12:25 pm
As far as I’m aware the local councils are responsible for the the cemeteries, not the church. This has been the case for a few years now, although there may be exceptions with the older graveyards.
May 28th, 2009 @ 5:23 pm
When I die. Please just throw my remains out with the trash. I wont care less.
If I have to go to a church then I want someone to plant a bomb in my coffin to go off when everyone has left so that I can take a church down with me.
May 29th, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
Good idea about the church!! I wanna be creamated to the sound of AC/DC HeatSeeker and then my ashes Fecked off the Blackcastle!!
May 31st, 2009 @ 9:43 am
When a relative, aged 85, of mine died two years ago, his instruction were simple and clear. Her was to be taken for cremation and his ashes interred. No ceremony, service, religious whatnot by a cleric who didn’t know him, etc., and no mourners at all (incl. wife of), because the couple both felt it was too traumatic for the surviving spouse to attend. My own parents were a bit aghast by this, but I think it is intelligent. If you see coverage of the late building magnet John Murphy’s funeral, it is quite a public ceremony for someone who was extremely private in life. I would completely go with the cremate route. I understand you can even go for cardboard coffins not wood, I mean what’s the point of spending thousands on a glorified bonfire?
June 1st, 2009 @ 1:22 pm
We lost my brother to skin cancer a couple of years ago, aged 31, and he requested a “green” burial. He’s at Herongate Wood (linked above) which is currently a field, but is becoming part of the bluebell wood it borders because along with bodies they are planting trees (we planted a damson he had bought for his wife). They have little stones too but they don’t stand up and spoil the view, they just lie flat on the ground.
The Herongate people organise everything themselves (no funeral directors etc) and you do whatever you wish. They have a building for services, but it’s not consecrated and we had our “service” outside on the grass. They helped us find someone to lead a non-religious service. I spoke, and some of his friends did too, then we wandered out to the field and had the burial there in the field. All unhurried, and with you in control. There should (and indeed may be) more such places.
June 3rd, 2009 @ 1:13 pm
http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2009/june/glue-soc-digger
June 16th, 2009 @ 11:24 am
http://www.cracked.com/article_16858_6-coolest-things-you-can-do-with-your-dead-body.html
September 9th, 2009 @ 4:10 pm
Where can you purchase a wicker coffin in Ireland?
The huge elabourate brass-handled wooden ones are so over the top!
January 2nd, 2010 @ 2:59 pm
yup at greencoffinsireland.ie or .com not sure lovely array of coffins..I’m going for a banana leaf or water hyacinth.look good I’m going to burn in that then scattered off sherkin Island.nice