There is a pastoral economy of bereavement.

A week occupied with the death of friends reminds me. I meant to blog about funerals in the parish.

Since April last year, until last week, I had not conducted a single funeral in the parish. I did not notice at first that they had ceased, for a series of things meant I myself was out of circulation, so to speak, for a long time. In the summer of 2009 I broke an arm and was not available; by the time the cast was off, it was August and holidays - we went off to the boat to resume the rebuilding. So although through May and June there were no funerals, it did not at once strike me as odd. This is a small parish and there have often been periods of a few weeks when no one died - or at least if they did they were probably Methodist, Sikh or Hindu; Muslim or Roman Catholic. We have lots of folk of all faiths and denominations. Meanwhile, in August the Church doors were burnt down, and had to be blocked off pending restoration. That meant we had to tell funeral directors the Church here was not easily available for funeral services.

So it was not until November-December that I realised there might be something fishy going on; for of a sudden it dawned on me that despite all the reasons why the absence of funerals had not been surprising - it had now gone on for just a bit too long. Even here, there ought to have been about one funeral every two weeks. But none appeared. There simply had to be someone else doing the funerals when a person died in my parish.

Does it seem strange that I wonder where 'my' funerals had gone?

You have to remember that the Anglican parson is the only person obliged to conduct funerals. Folk in other denominations and faiths deal primarily with their own congregations. They may of course from time to time conduct funerals for others, but if they do it is a matter of choice. But for the Vicar it is not: if a person dies who resides in the parish, or when passing through it, their family have a right to require him or her to conduct the person's funeral. It does not matter whether the deceased was Christian, church member, agnostic, atheist, or whatever - by law in England the Vicar cannot refuse. It is possible that the right of burial might be minimal - that the Vicar may be obliged to do no more than read the Prayer Book service at the graveside.... yet nonetheless, there is a right and an obligation which does not affect any other kind of minister of religion.

So, others will tend to be concerned only with their own congregations, and the Vicar is the only one who cannot refuse. Therefore, by convention, if a person dies who had no connection with any church, the funeral director approaches the Vicar.

That is the background. Our practice means that we engage pastorally with the family of the deceased - and treat them as if they were our own congregation, even when they are not. They get time (indeed, I spend more time with folk who never come near a church than I do with my own congregation!), counselling, bereavement care, help in planning an appropriate funeral - and so on. This they get from a properly trained, experienced, CRB checked, accountable Minister. One, at that, who will be there for them not just at the time of the death, but long afterwards too, if that is what they need (and it usually is).

Now, the Vicar is also someone who has no financial interest in the proceedings. It does not matter to me whether I conduct 20 funerals a year, or fifty or none - to me it is all one. So he tends to be the only one involved who can put the pastoral needs of a family entirely above the requirements of business efficiency.

But what if someone else, who is not the Vicar, sets up as a Minister and offers his or her services to funeral directors? That does happen. It is not illegal, though it may be inappropriate and ill-advised. But funeral directors have sometimes found it very convenient. When they call the Vicar, they are often adding another variable to an already complicated process. Despite the joke about only working on Sundays, he usually has many calls on his time, and cannot always rearrange them to suit a funeral director who is already juggling the availability of a cemetery or crematorium; who must make the best economic use of cars and staff; who has already decided with the family when they want a service to be, and so on. The Vicar may think that the family need more time, or he may need a service to be on Thursday not Wednesday... and so on. A freely available free-lance 'minister' who can suit everyone - especially in the sense that s/he can be treated as just another agent employed by the undertaker - has sometimes seemed a better option.

Worse, the Vicar has the right to decide the form of the service. In practice of course, one does this with the family... but often it means a service which will not easily fit with the Funeral director's preferences or needs. With the best will in the world, economic factors have to influence business: what really suits some Funeral directors best is likely to be a service whose details can be arranged in one visit, will take no more than 20 minutes at the Crematorium and have the mourners away back home ASAP - not a Requiem in church taking over an hour, followed by committal or burial somewhere else. The sort of independence which the Vicar has does not fit well into a framework where increasingly Funeral Directors seek, not to act as the agent of a family negotiating with a number of service-providers and co-ordinating things, but rather to act as the ones directing what the other agencies involved will do. The tendency was always inevitable, for they are the ones who must live with 'private enterprise' pressure.

I am not for a moment suggesting that all funeral directors are becoming control freaks. In my experience, most really do try to take all the other needs into account, and try very hard not to be driven only by economics. But economics do have to be acknowledged, and it has not been unknown in some place and at some times, that a funeral director has found it convenient to have a tame freelance sort of independent minister on tap to arrange convenient services. As one director said to me a while ago,"the church has lost most of the weddings already, and if its not careful it will lose the funerals as well."

But such a free-lance minister might well be merely self-appointed; might sometimes be one who has left or been asked or obliged to leave the ministry of one of the conventional churches; a person accountable to no one, probably not CRB checked..... whose merit is simply that they can be easily available when the Vicar can't be. Sort of 21st century wandering evangelists, Hedge priests. Worst of all, someone just making living out of funerals, to fund 'ministry' in some supposedly Christian fringe group. There are many now, for such groups proliferate to fill the vacuum when men desert true religion, and prefer entertainment to worship.

So I am concerned.
If someone else has set up doing 'my' funerals, I want to know. Not because of finance, though it is difficult for our church to be obliged to provide the pastoral resources but have a funeral director and hedge priest siphoning off the funerals we have accepted the obligation to provide for: but because of what is happening to my folk.

Yes, who is using funerals as a handy means of support, while we are the ones obliged to provide resources and take responsibility for many other things? But more important, what religious nonsense are my folk being taught instead of the Christian faith? And how are they being looked after, long-term? Who may be using the occasion of grief to influence them, and how?