Minutiae

Fr dear Fr: What is the status of flowers at a funeral, can flowers be put on the coffin during the service at such times as is the GB custom, and why do priests object to flowers so much anyway at such times?

Flowers - than which no greater thought can be thunk, if one is a British believer like ourselves. Yes flowers are lovely and it seems inconceivable that anyone would object to this great British tradition especially at funerals, but a word of caution, the priests concerned may not be objecting to flowers as such on these occasions, as per funerals or weddings or whichever, they may be objecting because the flowers are still too gay for the liturgical season, some object because they are gay themselves and do not wish to be outed so publicly by their women workers and floral flower ladies, but it is just as likely and indeed even more so that the priests concerned are only following stern and firm guidance from the bishops in conference, namely after Armagh 2002, that flowers do not go on the coffin during the actual funeral service proper.

There is a place in the Funeral Rites Rubrics for something else to occur - After the reception of the coffin into the church at the narthex, when the priest or deacon or bishop has intoned the welcome or Wilkommen Formulae, and the coffin has been blessed with holy water from the Aspergulum, only then once the coffin has processed up the aisle and been placed in position to the tune or the intonation of the Lord’s My Shepherd Psalm, then and only then can certain approved and approvable Christian Symbols like a bible and a cross be placed on the coffin out of respect for the dead but also out of respect for the presence of the Holy Spirit at such times in the body of the Christian especially if they have communicated recently in Holy Communion with the Eucharistic Lord and received the sanctifying grace or uncreated energies of the Spirit, to follow the new guidance of Fr Lonergan.

This is why flowers are not appropriate upon the capitis of the coffin at the Funeral Service, during the Funeral Service, nor even after the Funeral Service, whilst the coffin remains in church.