Why a Non-Religious Funeral Service and Burial?

 
The Roman Catholic Mass is the Church's supreme act of worship to God.
 
The Roman Catholic Church performs the funeral mass or Requiem Mass for the person who has died.
 
The Mass is about forging a Catholic community united by the power of the Mass and the doctrine of the Church. It is a public act and about the Catholic community and not the general community. That is why the Church says a person who denies what he knows is the teaching of the Church should not present himself for communion for it is an insult to the sacrament and the community and shows bad example.
 
You should not have a Catholic funeral if you do not believe in the teaching of the Church.
 
By definition, the Mass is not intended to honour the deceased so much as it is God. Or is the deceased respected at all? The deceased is in the background.
 
Jesus' teaching is that we must love God without reserve and our neighbour because God commands it. In other words, I only love you because God tells me to. Your great qualities have nothing to do with it. In the light of such teaching, the funeral is really about using the deceased to please God. It is not about the person in reality.
 
The very notion of putting God first is disgraceful and especially when he cannot be hurt. Better to love a random suffering baby with all your heart and not him.
 
The Mass will leave no room for centring on the dead person instead of Jesus. The eulogy will be about the deceased's good works but only in the sense that it is thought that God worked through her or him. The person's favourite songs will not be played unless they are religious in tone. The readings from a Bible that may have had no significance for the deceased will be read instead of anything that really had importance for him or her. Then there is the problem that most of the ceremony is about worshipping the Catholic version of God. It will say nothing about morality or personal development - it will just be a pile of hidebound theology.
 
And the Mass praises a man who allegedly sacrificed his life for God thinking it could save sinners. That is fanaticism.
 
And the Mass is offered on the presumption that the deceased may need prayers to help get him out of the suffering of purgatory that he faces for his sins. It accuses the person of having intended to break the law of God. People who believe God does not make law or does not exist cannot intend to sin. They cannot sin. Saying anybody is a sinner or implying it is as much hate speech as implying without proof that they committed a crime. Sin is a crime against God. If there is no God, hurting others wilfully is wrong but it is not a crime or sin.
 
Also, the Mass would make no sense if we don't need a saviour and all will go to Heaven. Jesus allegedly coming to die for our sins and to have this sacrifice commemorated and made present at the Mass would imply that our sins are bad enough to ban us from Heaven. Jesus supposedly took our punishment to let us go free and live for God. The Mass then is implicitly insulting. The Mass implicitly rejects any tendency to just take it for granted that the dead person is in Heaven or will go there. Bluntly, it represents the notion and expresses the notion that the person might be suffering in Hell forever for their sins. The Mass is intended to comfort but this comfort should be useless. Nobody who is thinking straight or mature would seek comfort from a faith that suggests the person could be in Hell. The suggestion if not made is implied. The implying suggests that the faith is being manipulative.
 
And the Mass presupposes that Jesus is alive and raised from the dead - this doctrine is the core of the faith not love. Dogma matters more to Catholicism than doing good. Commonsense says that if a person helps the poor it does not matter what they think of Jesus' alleged resurrection.
 
The prime reason so many Catholic funerals take place is just because they are available. The knowledgeable and self-respecting person will have a better reason than that for letting his or her Catholic funeral be the option.
 
The Requiem Mass is sickly sweet hypocrisy.
 
My comments online
 
People need to ask some questions.

If you are planning your funeral and you are not a believer in Catholicism though you are of Catholic background then how do you get a funeral that will reflect your beliefs?

Do you really want a religion doing the funeral that has potentially harmful doctrines? A religion that says God sends people to purgatory to atone for their sin but which he will not allow to help themselves? No truly good God would ban the holy souls from helping themselves forcing them to depend on others to pray for them. It is obvious that the doctrine is emotional blackmail to make sure people are pressured to have Catholic funerals. Now the Church has reaffirmed its doctrine that ashes need to go to holy places so that people may pray for the dead. God ignores a holy soul in purgatory if she prays for the holy soul next to her but he listens to some profligate on earth praying for her. That is bizarre and nasty and twisted.

I cannot encourage Catholic funerals because there are serious ethical issues with Catholic doctrine not just the ethical doctrines.
 
The fact of the matter is that in this country that if you are Catholic by background and labelled as one but are not a believing Catholic that family members as representing the Church will try to force a Catholic funeral on you. This media friendly pope signed that decree on cremation which simply amounts to the Church not minding its own business and you complain that people are hating the Church? Is it any wonder? If somebody gets something out of having the ashes at home let them do it. Grieving is a very personal matter. Go and complain to the pope about the hate in the Bible and Jesus' vitriol against Jewish leaders who were not even touching him in Matthew 23.

 
Conclusion
 
People should have the sense to have a non-religious funeral organised for themselves. It would give the relatives full freedom to introduce whatever they really want into the funeral. It would make the funeral about the person not Catholic theology.