Priest preaches at funeral, world falls on his head

I am confused. I thought people who committed suicide don’t get a Catholic burial. Has it changed?

[Yes, according to the circumstances.]

Although it is true that nothing in the Church’s Canon Law nor liturgical norms suggests treating a funeral as a “celebration of life,” there is this in Sing to the Lord, the USCCB’s document on music in the liturgy: “244. The Church’s funeral rites offer thanksgiving to God for the gift of life that has been returned to him.”

Yes, that stupid statement was approved by the US bishops.

Of course, hardly anyone has read Sing to the Lord, so that’s not where people get the wacky “celebration of life” idea from. It’s poor catechesis and our culture’s general discomfort with death and with sin and with thinking about the possibility of eternal damnation.

I have been tempted to suicide on several occasions. At such times the thought of damning myself definitively was all that prevented me. At the root of contempleting suicide is a person’s desire to escape Hell, not enter it eternally.

How the diocese has wasted this opportunity to help the vulnerable: to give them some pause before they try to kill themselves. A “celebration of life” of a suicide is not what someone tempted to that sin needs to see.

I too pray for the young man and his family and the priest, but especially for anyone living whose temptation to suicide is not lessened by its destigmatization.