All Are Welcome - REALLY!?

It is 2nd June 2007 and the big day at St James Reading: the first ordination in the church for over 25 years. The weather is wonderful, the church is full and a long procession of priests and altar servers heads up the aisle as the intensively rehearsed choir leads the opening hymn "All are welcome". Marty Haugen's hymn summaries the open inclusive church's attitude to members and non-members alike. Our new priest, Father P.J. Smith, had free rein to choose just about any music he wanted for his ordination and this hymn obviously proclaimed his approach.

Who could possibly disagree with such sentiments? Scripture and the sayings of Jesus are full of words of invitation, any number of which are selectively meshed into modern hymns. I have yet to see "Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire..." versified and set to a catchy tune. So why do I feel uneasy at some of the people who are welcomed in?

A recent "Reading Post" headline bizarrely highlighted some of the problems. You see some very strange things in the British press, but this really caught my eye. "A new Hell's Angel in Heaven." A 42 year motor cyclist had been killed in a crash and his funeral was held at Christ the King Church, 4 miles south of St James - the very church where Father P.J. had been ordained deacon in 2006. The main reason for the front page coverage in our local rag was the 400 motorcyclists from all over Britain, other parts of Europe and even California who turned up at the funeral. They then formed part of the huge procession bisecting the town en route to the crematorium on the north side of town. Thank God I wasn't driving round town at that time.

Needless to say, the Hell's Angels fraternity were very prominent in this band. The photographs reminded me of P. J. O'Rourke's observation on the saddest sight he had seen recently - a hippy with a walking frame and a hearing aid. All these Hell's Angels, with their graying hair and beards and pot bellies, should have grown out of this 30 years ago, but will doubtless carry on riding until Alzheimer carries them off. The priest who conducted the funeral referred to the deceased's devotion to the motor bike fraternity, but did not comment on how a proclaimed Hell's Angel might have any problems getting through the Pearly Gates.

Another smaller report in the Post summarized the life of a local elderly business man whose funeral was held at St John Bosco on the east side of town. Prominent among his interests was his enthusiastic support for the local Freemasons, but this is obviously no barrier to a Catholic funeral any more. His own son described him as a "proud Freemason" who had recruited him into the Craft.

Much of the gruesome mawkishness and sentimentality evident at Princess Diana's funeral permeates modern funerals. The salvation (and sometimes the canonization) of the deceased is taken as a given. Plainly any connection between conduct and sanctity is irrelevant. The luckless Anglican clergy have a particularly heavy burden to carry, as they are legally obliged to conduct the funeral of anyone who dies in their parish, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof. This was particularly obvious in the case of Diana, whose religious status was confused to say the least. As for her trumpeted saintliness....her life would have provided ammunition for a regiment of Devil's Advocates.

The young man stabbed to death in St Mary's Butts in May received a lavish send-off at the ancient St Mary's Church, only 50 yards from where he was stabbed. Call me a rancid old cynic, but this looked like a really good gangsta funeral. The unfortunate Anglican vicar who presided over the service had to tolerate the family parading with a poster which proclaimed "Fallen Soldier" on one side. This is a favorite title on Facebook and other teen-social websites when mourning the brutal death of a gangsta. It is a grotesque insult to any genuine fallen soldier, but most modern people, remote from the realities of warfare, have as little understanding of genuine heroism as they have of genuine sanctity. From the lamentations and tributes in the "Post", you would never guess that he died as a result of a squalid fight between two drugs gangs.

As the brilliant funeral director Barry Albin-Dyer noted when a crook phoned from inside prison to arrange his father's funeral in London, no expense was too much - including a horse drawn hearse. Sure enough, the funeral at St. Mary's featured a white hearse drawn by two beautiful white horses. Again, the ancient symbolism of white, signifying innocence, holiness or purity has long vanished, along with the ancient symbolism of black or purple for death and sorrow. Barry Albin-Dyer is very strong on this tradition of black and explained its significance in a recent TV documentary (with a tongue-in-cheek soundtrack playing Johnny Cash's "Man in black"). But our local funeral homes have all but abandoned their splendid black Vanden Plas and Daimler hearses and our deceased are now carried to the cemeteries in metallic silver stretch Fords or Volvos. By the time I go, they'll probably transport me in a pink or powder blue Hyundai.

I doubt that our local Catholic clergy would have been any more selective than the vicar at St Mary's if asked to do a gangsta funeral. I went to Mass at Our Lady of Peace on the east side of town recently and the newsletter contained the usual request "please pray for the following deceased whose anniversaries occur round this time....". Sure enough, one of the names listed was John Nottingham, a colleague of mine who died in 1978. I was instantly transported 30 years back to this funeral, which was conducted at Our Lady of Peace by Father "Flash" Flanagan (The nickname was a result of his high-speed Mass recitals). This funeral was a mercifully more sedate pace.

What made even religiously ignorant bystanders blink was the fact that John was an Anglican. You could hardly plead emergency or remoteness from Anglican clergy in a town with numerous Anglican churches. I vaguely assumed that a Catholic funeral was a privilege reserved for a Catholic, however flawed or lapsed.

As I noted in an earlier blog on weddings, such funerals are a clear signal to huge numbers of religiously ignorant people that formerly essential points of Catholic teaching are now minimized or ignored. Plainly priests do not want to offend potential churchgoers when congregations are dropping like cinema audiences in the 1950s. Funerals and weddings are among the few occasions when the unchurched ever see any religious activity. Funerals are an even worse quagmire than weddings for the clergy, with an opportunity to offend as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. But in their almost palpable desperation to fill the pews they are removing some of the most important reasons for anyone to come to church as active, believing worshipers.


Many years ago, the wickedly funny Malcolm Muggeridge observed that no-one, from the Pope to Mao-tse-Tung, could say that he was NOT an Anglican. The boundaries of Anglicanism had become so wide that they had practically dissolved. A cruel cartoon in "Private Eye" summed up the Anglican situation at the recent Lambeth Conference, with the Archbishop of Canterbury declaring: "We are divided on whether to have a schism or not". "Schism" implied some sort of clear dividing line which cannot be fudged by endless smooth diplomacy and soft words. Some are included, some are excluded and all are definitely NOT equally welcome in a given place. As the Anglicans are being forced into formally recognizing the undeniable de facto schisms they have endured for decades, sooner or later Catholic clergy are going to be forced to draw boundaries and exclude those who have excluded themselves by their publicly scandalous lifestyles.