A Generational Disconnect?

Over the past couple of years, I've had a bunch of parishioners die. That's the reality in an aging congregation. We've had "the new prayerbook" for 30 years now and, for the most part, people "get" the theological and practice shifts that are embodied in it. Sure, there are folks who choose to kneel during the post-Sanctus, and there probably always will be. What I've observed, however, doesn't have anything to do with rubrics per se.

In the past two years, 12 souls have entered new life. For all of them, their deaths were blessings that ended suffering and dysfunction. Of those 10, the surviving relatives who knew of their loved one's commitment to the parish didn't bother to contact the parish and didn't bury them from any church.

The "Concerning the Service" notes on page 268 say that "Baptized Christians are properly buried from the church." There is more to it, but this is actually enough.

What I don't get is the children/nephews/nieces not contacting the parish. In these cases, they were raised in this parish and know that their mom/dad/aunt/uncle had a particular fondness for the place.

Now, I've done enough funerals that I'm really not looking to add to my coup stick, so that's not my motivation for bringing this up. (I have done more than twice as many funerals as baptisms and marriages combined.) Our Burial Offices are some of the best liturgical and theological rites around. They get it right, it's not too much, it's not too little. They make it very clear that 1) funerals are Easter Events (thanks to +Hays Rockwell for that one) and 2) that they are for those who remain anchored in this place.

When the church gets left out of the final rites, it seems to me that a few things happen.

1. In the particular instances I know of, the wishes of the parishioner seem to have been ignored. One of mine actually had funeral plans on file.
2. The community that has been a part of the departed's life is robbed of the opportunity to simultaneously say 'goodbye' to their friend and welcome their friend into his/her new life with God. 
3. The church is robbed of its role in caring for its members from baptism to the grave. As pastors, that's what we've signed up for. 
4. I know its minor, but, when the church doesn't know about them, then the parish registers don't get updated. These are always a problem, anyway, but this behavior just exacerbates an already out-of-control situation.

I think its the first in the list that bothers me the most. Whether there was no conversation about what was to happen or whether the family chose to ignore those wishes, I don't know. Perhaps it is because the survivors aren't attending church anymore, perhaps that's why they don't seem to understand that their relative's parish was really important to them.

I can't say what the problem really is, nor can I offer a solution. My only suggestion is that individually, each of us makes sure that our relatives know what is to happen to us. Of course, saying this in this forum won't help most of my parishioners because they don't do email much less read the rantings of their parish priest.

Is violence endemic to us?

Since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, there has been much media, social, political, and religious attention focused on gun control.  I can’t count the number of voices calling for stricter regulations and tighter controls. There are at least an equal number who want to maintain the status quo. The rhetoric has been deafening.

What strikes me as odd is that we didn’t have similarly boisterous outcries following Columbine, Gabrielle Giffords, or the Aurora Theatre shootings. Perhaps that’s because there were so many children who were innocent victims.  I suppose the reasons are unimportant, but I think the conversation is very important.  I’m afraid the conversation won’t be addressing the real problem.  I think Porky Pine, speaking to Pogo Possum captured it perfectly:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

French Literature professor and literary critic René Girard made a profound discovery.  While looking for what made a truly great novel, he observed that conflict relationships always seemed to include a third-party. This most often is an object, a thing, and it is the source of the conflict.  He suggests that all of our desires, what we want, are derived from someone else.  We “borrow” them.  He called this “mimetic desire”.  Mimesis, from which the word ‘mime’ is derived, is imitation, mimicry, or representation.  This leads to mimetic rivalry: one party has something (Girard calls it the ‘mediator’) that the other desires.  It manifests itself in many ways. Perhaps the easiest to see is ‘the desire to have what someone else has.’  Advertising seems to be oriented toward convincing us that we really want to possess the newest product.

From here, it is a short jump to violence as a method of acquiring the mediator.  If you think about novels you’ve read, you can probably already identify some examples of this.

The last concept he identified is the ‘scapegoat mechanism’. This, he holds, as foundational to sacrifice and human culture itself. He sees religion as the development of a mechanism to combat mimetic rivalry.

A few examples from the Bible:

• Cain kills Abel because God preferred Abel’s offering over that of Cain.
• Jacob tricks Isaac into giving him Esau’s birthright. Rachel helped out in this one, so we have conspiracy.
• Joseph is cast into a pit by his brothers because he is Jacob’s favorite son.
•  The Apostles blame the Jews for Jesus’ crucifixion (Acts). This one is complicated: Mimetic rivalry is behind Jesus’ trial; the Apostles are scapegoating the Jews; in a theological view, Jesus is the scapegoat for humanity.

There are many, many more examples throughout the Bible.

With Girard's perspective in view, it would seem like violence is endemic to the human race. I think the question that remains is: Is there anything we can do to change this? I don't like being a pessimist, but I'm not hopeful. My lack of hope stems from a sense that we, as humans, don't spend a lot of time thinking on our motivations for the things we do. I'll not suggest that we give over too much to the reptilian brain we each possess, but it does seem like it at times. I know when I find myself getting angry, one of the last thoughts is "Why am I getting angry?" It probably ought to be one of the first thoughts. Maybe the first thought should be, "Is this how God would want me to behave?" Something about the second of the Great Commandments comes to mind.

What it’s really all about is our failure to live into the Kingdom of God, to live into our full stature as Children of God.  We keep forgetting or ignoring Jesus’ commandment to us: “Love one another as I have loved you.” It’s only what God has been after us to do since the beginning.  I wonder why it is that we can’t seem to do it.