Bishop Paprocki Confronts the Secularisation of Catholic Funerals
New funeral norms in the Diocese of Springfield restore the proper sequence of the rites, restrict eulogies and require reverent burial of cremated remains. Bishop Thomas Paprocki is correcting genuine abuses. Yet those abuses became possible because Catholics were gradually encouraged to regard the funeral as a celebration of an accomplished life rather than an act of intercession for a soul awaiting judgement.
On 1 July, the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois began enforcing revised regulations for Catholic funerals. There will be no visitation in the body of the church immediately before the funeral liturgy. Family members and friends will no longer deliver eulogies during it. Cremated remains are to be interred promptly, kept intact and treated with the reverence due to the mortal remains of a Christian.
Bishop Thomas John Paprocki presented the reforms in a six-minute diocesan video, explaining that “some irregular practices” had entered local funeral observances and that the revised norms were intended to bring them back into conformity with the Church’s Order of Christian Funerals.
The measures are restrained, practical and overdue. Their importance lies in what they expose. A Catholic funeral can retain its vestments, readings and ceremonial outline while its governing purpose is quietly altered. The altar remains, but the deceased becomes the centre. Prayer for mercy gives way to confident declarations that the dead are already in heaven. The homily becomes biography, the sanctuary a platform for family tributes, and burial a matter of personal preference detached from any serious doctrine of the body.
Bishop Paprocki is attempting to reverse that process.
The Order of the Rites
The modern Roman funeral rite ordinarily unfolds in three principal stages: the Vigil for the Deceased, the Funeral Liturgy and the Rite of Committal. Each has its own purpose. The Vigil gathers the mourners in prayer; the funeral liturgy offers the Church’s public worship and, ordinarily, the Eucharistic Sacrifice; the committal accompanies the body to its place of burial.
These rites are connected, but they are not interchangeable. Nor were they designed as optional components to be compressed or rearranged entirely according to cost, convenience or the timetable of the funeral director.
In Springfield, the practice had developed of holding several hours of visitation in the church immediately before the Funeral Mass. Bishop Paprocki calls this a “liturgical anomaly”. Under the new norms, visitation will no longer be permitted within the worship space on the day of the funeral. Where a church possesses a suitable narthex, a gathering may take place there; otherwise it belongs at the funeral home or another appropriate location.
The bishop’s insistence that the Vigil should normally occur on the previous evening reflects the proper sequence he wishes to restore. Even where no public visitation is arranged, he asks that the Vigil prayers be offered by the priest or deacon, preferably with members of the immediate family.
Care is needed here. The Catholic wake has assumed different forms according to period and place, and the post-conciliar Order of Christian Funerals itself describes the Vigil as taking place during the period before the funeral rather than imposing a universal canonical requirement that it must always occur after nightfall. Paprocki’s local regulation should therefore be understood as a diocesan application of the rite’s intended order, not as proof that every morning visitation has been intrinsically contrary to Catholic tradition.
His larger judgement is nevertheless sound. When visitation expands into the church and occupies the hours immediately before Mass, the sacred building can begin to function as an economical extension of the funeral parlour. The practical arrangement then reshapes the rite. Conversation, reminiscence and social gathering dominate the atmosphere; the Funeral Mass follows as the concluding ceremony attached to them.
A church is not merely a larger and more attractive venue. It is a consecrated place ordered to divine worship. The coffin is received there because the deceased is brought before the altar of God and commended to the prayer of the Church. That distinction deserves to be visible.
The Diocese of Youngstown reached a similar conclusion in October 2025. Bishop David Bonnar decreed that, from 1 December, funeral visitation would no longer be permitted in diocesan churches or associated facilities, except in the customary case of a deceased priest or religious. He cited both the sacred purpose of the church building and the need for a consistent diocesan practice.
Such measures will inconvenience some families. They may also increase the pressure upon funeral homes. Pastoral prudence is therefore necessary, especially in rural parishes and poorer communities where facilities are limited. Yet convenience cannot possess an unlimited power to reorganise worship. Once every liturgical distinction must yield to the easiest arrangement, the rite ceases to instruct the faithful and merely ratifies whatever custom has become normal.
The Eulogy Displaces the Suffrage
Paprocki’s second reform concerns words spoken about the deceased. The modern funeral eulogy commonly offers anecdotes, achievements, favourite sayings and assurances that the departed is now reunited with relatives, playing golf, drinking whisky, watching over the family or otherwise continuing an idealised version of earthly life.
Some of these memories are affectionate and harmless in themselves. They may rightly be shared at the wake, funeral meal or family gathering. The difficulty arises when they are inserted into the liturgy and become its emotional centre.
The bishop observes that the eulogy makes the person praised “the main focus of attention”. His revised policy permits the priest or deacon to refer to the deceased’s Christian life, but proposed words of remembrance must be submitted at least three days beforehand. Relatives and friends will not themselves speak during the funeral liturgy. Paprocki cites the risk of inappropriate remarks and the painful spectacle of a grieving person becoming unable to continue.
These are sensible practical reasons. The theological reason is stronger.
A Catholic funeral is offered for the dead, not as though the Church were canonising them, but because the departed may require purification and the assistance of the Church’s suffrages. The Order of Christian Funerals, even in its modern form, states that the Church “commends the dead to God’s merciful love and pleads for the forgiveness of their sins”. It teaches that the dead “benefit from their prayers and intercession”, especially through the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
That doctrine is plainly incompatible with the routine declaration that the deceased is already enjoying heaven. Christian hope is not presumption. The Church may have moral confidence in the salvation of a holy soul, but she does not ordinarily anticipate the judgement of God. She prays because prayer may be needed.
The scriptural foundation is equally direct. Judas Machabeus sent an offering to Jerusalem for an expiatory sacrifice on behalf of the fallen, acting “well and religiously concerning the resurrection”, for “it is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins”. The practice presupposes both judgement and mercy: judgement, because sins have consequences beyond death; mercy, because the prayers and sacrifices of the living may assist those who die in God’s friendship but still require purification.
The traditional Roman Requiem expressed this without embarrassment. Its texts did not deny Christian hope, but neither did they exchange supplication for congratulation. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord. Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna. Deliver me, O Lord, from everlasting death. The Dies Irae placed death beneath the terrible majesty of the judgement seat while directing the sinner towards the mercy of the Redeemer.
The older rite understood that grief does not require euphemism. The bereaved are consoled by the promise of Christ, the sacrifice of the altar and the prayers of the Church, not by an improvised canonisation.
The post-conciliar funeral books still contain prayers for forgiveness and purification, but their practical celebration has often softened these elements almost beyond recognition. White vestments, resurrection hymns, canonising homilies and repeated references to a “celebration of life” can create an atmosphere in which intercession appears unnecessary or even tactless. The prayers ask mercy for the dead while the spoken commentary assures everyone that mercy has already completed its work.
Paprocki’s restriction of eulogies therefore addresses more than the danger of an embarrassing speech. It protects the proper object of the rite.
The Body Is Not a Keepsake
The Springfield policy also reaffirms the Church’s preference for burial of the body. Cremation is permitted when chosen for reasons compatible with Christian faith, but it is not placed on an identical symbolic plane with burial.
The Church’s preference has doctrinal roots. The body is not a shell discarded by the authentic person. It formed part of the human being sanctified in Baptism, nourished by the Holy Eucharist and destined for resurrection. Burial follows the pattern of Christ’s own burial and expresses the repose of the body while it awaits the last day.
In 2016, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explained that burial remains “the most fitting way to express faith and hope in the resurrection of the body”. Where cremation occurs, the ashes are ordinarily to be preserved in a sacred place. Scattering, division among relatives and manufacture into keepsakes were rejected because they can express an inadequate or positively erroneous understanding of death and the human person.
The abuses are no longer theoretical. Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester issued a decree on 5 May 2026 after encountering what his diocese described as increasingly casual treatment of cremated remains. Examples included ashes stored in inappropriate containers, divided among family members, incorporated into jewellery or scattered upon land or water. His decree required proper interment in a grave, mausoleum or columbarium and prohibited such practices.
Paprocki similarly asks that cremated remains be interred within thirty days and not divided or deposited in more than one place.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith did issue a qualified response in December 2023 allowing, in certain circumstances and with ecclesiastical permission, a minimal portion of ashes to be retained in a place significant to the history of the deceased. That concession did not create a general right to distribute remains among relatives. The principal portion must still be preserved together in a sacred place, while any exception remains subject to judgement by competent ecclesiastical authority.
The distinction is important because exceptions quickly become the new norm when presented without their conditions. Catholic discipline does not regard ashes as property to be apportioned according to sentiment. Reverence for the dead requires that the remains be gathered, identified and laid in a place of burial where prayer may be offered and memory preserved within the communion of the Church.
A necklace containing ashes may feel intimate. Scattering them at a favourite beach may appear poetic. Keeping an urn upon the mantelpiece may seem comforting. Yet each practice draws the dead back into the private possession of the living. Christian burial does something more difficult and more truthful. It entrusts the body to God, places it among the dead who await resurrection and acknowledges that love must now take the form of prayer.
Regulations Cannot Supply the Missing Doctrine
Springfield, Youngstown and Worcester are responding to related disorders: the conversion of churches into visitation halls, the intrusion of eulogies into the liturgy and the casual disposal of cremated remains. Their bishops deserve credit for acting where custom has departed from Catholic discipline.
Still, regulations alone will not recover the Catholic funeral.
These irregularities did not spread simply because families became disobedient. Many Catholics were never taught why the Church prays for the dead, why a funeral Mass is offered, why burial is preferred or why the priest cannot speak as though the deceased had certainly entered heaven. Parish practice often encouraged the language of celebration while avoiding the doctrines that made the funeral necessary.
For decades, sermons on the Four Last Things have been rare. Purgatory has been treated as an embarrassing survival. Indulgences and suffrages are scarcely explained. The possibility of judgement is displaced by general affirmations of divine kindness, as though mercy excluded justice or salvation followed automatically from death.
Funeral customs then develop according to the theology people actually hear.
Where death is treated chiefly as transition into a vaguely benevolent afterlife, the eulogy becomes more intelligible than the Requiem. Where the body has little theological significance, cremation and scattering seem neutral. Where the Church is understood principally as a community gathered to support the living, the church building naturally becomes available for whatever arrangement best serves the family.
The recovery must therefore begin before the funeral. Priests must preach again on judgement, particular and general; on purgatory as the merciful purification of the saved; on the Communion of Saints; on the efficacy of the Mass; on the resurrection of the flesh; and on the duty of the living to obtain prayers for their dead.
Catholics should be encouraged to make funeral arrangements while still in health: to request the Holy Sacrifice rather than a celebration of personality; to provide for Gregorian Masses or other suffrages where possible; to insist upon reverent burial; to ask relatives not to scatter ashes or replace prayer with confident declarations about heaven.
Bishop Paprocki has restored order to several points of diocesan practice. He has also, perhaps unintentionally, revealed the size of the work that remains. The decisive disorder is not that the visitation occurred in the wrong place or that a relative spoke too long. It is that the Catholic funeral has so often ceased to look like the Church pleading for the dead.
The greatest charity at the hour of death is not praise. It is prayer. The dead no longer need to hear what they achieved, how warmly they were loved or what stories their friends remember. They need the Sacrifice of Christ, the absolutions and supplications of the Church, and the faithful persistence of those who will continue to pray when the flowers have withered and the mourners have gone home.
Bishop Paprocki’s regulations deserve support because they return attention to that neglected duty. Their lasting success will depend upon whether the Church is willing to teach once more why the dead require it.
¹ Thomas John Paprocki, New diocesan funeral policies to take effect July 1, Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, 22 June 2026; Diocese of Springfield, revised diocesan funeral policy, effective 1 July 2026.
² Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, diocesan funeral policy and accompanying explanatory materials.
³ Diocese of Youngstown, Diocese Issues Decree on Funeral Visitation at Churches, 28 October 2025.
⁴ Order of Christian Funerals, General Introduction, nos. 4–6.
⁵ 2 Machabees 12:43–46 (Douay-Rheims).
⁶ Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ad resurgendum cum Christo, 15 August 2016.
⁷ Diocese of Worcester, Bishop Robert J. McManus, Decree on the Proper Disposition of Cremated Remains, 5 May 2026.
⁸ Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Response to Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi concerning the conservation of cremated remains, 9 December 2023.
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