The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [92]
* This journal later merged with The Casket. The result: Casket & Sunnyside.
* Sometime after publication, I met Francis Gladstone, a direct descendant of the erstwhile Prime Minister. When I asked him about his illustrious forebear’s comment, he became interested and wrote to scholars of his acquaintance at Oxford. Lengthy correspondence ensued, but no one was able to identify William Gladstone’s alleged statement. In the course of their research, one of their number did come up with the dying words of another Gladstone, Sir Joseph, the father of the Prime Minister, who died in Liverpool, aged eighty-seven. His last words—“Bring me my porridge”—while not earth-shattering, have at least the merit of being historically accurate.
14
The Nosy Clergy
“To the avaricious churchman there must be provided proof that a funeral investment does not deprive either the church or its pastor of revenue.” This extraordinary statement appeared in the National Funeral Service Journal for April 1961, together with the opinion that the three most important reasons for the mounting rash of criticism of funeral service are “religion, avarice, and a burning desire for social reform.”
The same idea is expressed a little more fully in another issue of the same magazine: “The minister is perhaps our most serious problem, but the one most easily solved. Most religious leaders avoid interference. There are some, however … who feel that they must protect their parishioners’ financial resources and direct them to a more ‘worthy’ cause. Some of these men, after finding more dimes than dollars in the collection plate, reach the point of frustration where they vent their unholy anger on the supposedly affluent funeral director.”
These are salvos fired in a rather one-sided battle which rages from time to time between some of the clergy and some sections of the funeral industry—one-sided because, while the funeral men are always ready with dukes up to go on the offensive, the average minister is generally unaware that war has been declared.
The issue boils down to this: The morticians resent the intrusion into their business of clergy who take it upon themselves to steer parishioners in the direction of moderation in choice of casket and other matters pertaining to the production of the funeral. Many of the clergy, for their part, deplore what they regard as the growing usurpation of their role as counselors in a time of grief and need, and the growing distortion of what they view as an extremely important, solemn religious rite.
Not infrequently, the controversy spills over into print. There is a considerable body of church literature on the subject: pamphlets, booklets, and ecclesiastical-magazine articles which explain the religious significance of the funeral as an expression of faith. These stress the importance of ministerial counsel at the time of death, the spiritual nature of the funeral service, the need to face realistically the facts of life and death, the advisability of giving some thought to the type of funeral desired before the need arises.
Sometimes the advice is taken a step further: “Consider the cost in the context of your stewardship. Thoughts of preservation of a body, coupled with the inflationary pressures of our time, have led some people to excessive expenditures for burial vaults and caskets. Yet, we know that the body shall return to the elements from which it came.… This means that we will be conservative in the purchase of casket, burial, and additional services, conserving frequently limited funds to meet the needs of the living. Let us recognize that ordinarily this would also be the desire of the deceased.…”
From the funeral director’s point of view, these are fighting words; bad enough on paper, but when followed up by the corporeal presence of a clergyman with the family at the crucial moment of the selection of a