Requiem for a requiem

I am the one who is arranging the details for my mother's funeral Mass. It has been a dispiriting process.

I am not surprised, though. Having endured both my uncle's and my dad's funerals, I was aware of what the typical Catholic Mass for the dead has devolved into: wordiness, triviality, Protestantized sentimentalism.

There will be no Dies Irae, no Agnus Dei. No In Paradisum. Nothing to link her passing with the passing of her ancestors for over a thousand years. At least the musical options given to me will allow me to spare us all the horrors of Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art. 

The parish musician --it's just her and her guitar-- is a very sweet woman in her 40's.  When I asked for traditional Catholic music, she brightly suggested lounge-act style compositions from the 1970's. She has no idea of what she does not know.

As with so much of the End of the West, the vandalizing came not from strangers, but from insiders.

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