Do religious funerals help people?

[Rye]

I was at a Funeral this morning and last Friday, two family friends died recently, the one today was only 50, left her two kids and husband, all quite touching and it made me hug my mum (something I heartily recommend to you all before it's too late, it's too easy to get used to them being there).

The funeral was in the local catholic church and it must've been more packed than it had been in years. Anyway, the priest himself didn't know Joyce, and his service was almost identical to the one I went to on Friday. Whenever he talked, it was 90-95% godvertising and 5% the person who had died, where it sounded like when Bush describes someone "they went to rivington and blackrod high school. They met their husband mark in such a place" etc.

So ultimately, I'm wondering does the religious service actually help people? I mean, I even get the impression that it's not the words or the concepts the preacher talks about that are helping people, even the religious. I really suspect it's just the sense of going through the ritual that helps religious people when they go to these things, with the ritual words themselves being largely irrelevent. Would this be accurate?

I hope that there's a shift as time goes on, the part where her daughter read out a poem about her mum was easily the most powerful thing there, I hope the services become more about that sort of stuff than the impression of a cookie-cutter response/advertisement I get from the clergy at these two recent funerals.

[Frank Hipper]

I can't speak for the religious, but a preacher going on in a familiar terms about a person they never met, and only know through a few questions asked by rote before a funeral makes me ill.

"John Doe was a wonderful person, and had a deep and personal relationship with Jesus Christ..." I've heard that said at more than one atheist friend's funeral, it's vomitous.

The best was:
"Now, I want you to imagine Ronnie reading the 23rd Psalm for himself out of the Bible"... and then 2000 people break out into hysterical laughter.
Best funeral I've ever been to, and he would have loved it.
When the preacher is compelled to bark out "Show some reverance!", you know it's an event.

[Vampiress_Miyu]

Yeah.... religious funerals can be really impersonal like that.... I've only been to two, myself... both of my grandfathers. >.<

[Feil]

Religious services help people. Clergymen are people. Money helps them.

There are good funerals and bad funerals. Many of the bad ones are religious funerals, but if they weren't blathering on about what a deep and personal relationship with Jesus Christ the guy had, they'd be running on about how great they were in some other way with just as little attention to the truth.

I want a Speaker for the Dead.

[rhoenix]

I want a Speaker for the Dead.

That was one concept from my sci-fi book collection that I really liked. To perform a speaking, one had to know the dead person's life, family, friends, successes, failures, hopes, fears, and all else. It was meant as a final tribute, a final honor, to the person's entire, and perfectly flawed life.

Honestly, I think the concept is a better one than I usually hear about going on at funerals.

[Imperial Overlord]

I can't speak for the religious, but a preacher going on in a familiar terms about a person they never met, and only know through a few questions asked by rote before a funeral makes me ill.

I'm with you there Frank.


I've been to only two religious funerals and in the first one the priest obviously barely new her and it sucked. The second one was much better and the rabbi clearly knew the person quite well and a lot of the talking was done by his family and it was much, much better.

[Jericho Kross]

Funerals don't do much for me and have had preachers who knew the person still did the "god is great and we should not challange him with science" crap for most of the the funeral[which in turn pissed me off since I knew the person very well].

[SCRawl]

My wife went to a (catholic) funeral for an uncle of hers about a year ago, and since they had the bishop (I think) in town they had him perform the service. The guy brought out the fire and fucking brimstone at a funeral. Do the grieving family members of the recently departed really need to hear that they (and he) are very likely headed for Hell?

This might not be the typical way religious funerals go, but this one didn't go over very well. I don't think anyone in attendance was very comforted.

[Darth Wong]

I've been to good funerals that were conducted by religious clergy, and I've also been to really offensive funerals that were conducted by religious clergy. There's certainly no guarantee that the preacher won't hijack the event to do a sales job.

[Howedar]

To echo everyone else, it certainly depends on a number of factors, primarily the religious person in charge.

I've been to some great ones and I've been to some stinkers.