Reflections on the Memorial Service for John McCain at the
National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Fr. Richard Cipolla
That the Memorial Service for John McCain was held at the
church in Washington, D.C. that is known as the National Cathedral, which is
Protestant Episcopal, is significant. That
magnificent church, built in fine imitation of the Gothic cathedrals of England
and of Europe, with its wonderful rood and rood screen, with its high altar
dressed appropriately with a lovely frontal, with its superb choir, its organ played
by someone who has heard of Widor and can play his music, its crucifer and
torch bearers who had been trained in how to carry the processional cross and
candles. All this and more.
Whatever we
may think of women who claim to be bishops and women who claim to be
priests: there was a dignity that imbued
that service, a dignity that made impossible the terrible sentimentality that
marks the contemporary Catholic funeral.
The words of the funeral service—no Mass, just the funeral service—were
declaimed well, in well versed English, without comment, just the words of
Christian faith.
Now this service was a Memorial Service, although in a
Christian building, nevertheless was in a real way a secular event. This is not to disparage the faith of John
McCain or his family. But looking at the
crowd present and their interaction before the service, there was little
evidence of understanding that they were in a place where one should be reverent. The way they were
speaking to each other before the service began showed their disregard or
cluelessness that they were in a special space.
But when the service began, they all behaved as if this were something
important, even if they believed nothing, they understood that this was a
solemn occasion. There were of course
examples of sentimentalized Christianity, most notably Renee Fleming singing
“Danny Boy”. Those who spoke about
McCain, the eulogists, understood that they were nreaching a sermon. The service ended with a final commendation
and the singing of “America the beautiful.” Perfect for what that was. A remembrance in a religious setting of a
special man, an imperfect man who understood both virility and love and acted
out both of those virtues as best he could.
The contrast between this service and what would have
happened if John McCain were Catholic is significant. Allowing for some recognition that such a
national occasional would demand some sense of decorum and formality, the
Catholic version of the McCain service, even if it were a Mass, would be quite
different in that it would reflect that liturgical sentimentality that has been
the mark of Catholic worship ever since the imposition of the Novus Ordo of
Mass by Pope Paul VI. Catholics have
lost the objectivity of the worship of God, that in the Mass they are in the
presence of the Wholly Other who is incomprehensible and yet pure Love. At a Catholic funeral Mass, Renee Fleming
would not only have sung “Danny Boy” but also the obligatory “Amazing Grace”,
the text of which is bad Catholic theology, to say the least. The eulogies, never part of the funeral Mass
and yet now the highlight for most people, would focus on anecdotes about the
deceased, often hoping to evoke laughter and forgetting about what death is
really all about in the Christian faith.
One could say that the eulogies at McCain’s service were not
specifically Christian or religious.
That is true. But this was not a funeral Mass. It was an act of
remembrance of a fine man, remembrance in the purely secular sense, and at
least the eulogies had intellectual content and were thought out.
At a Catholic funeral there would have been applause. Applause for “Danny Boy”, as if it were a
performance like at a concert. Applause
for things said in the eulogies that people liked to hear. Applause any time that the speaker was on the
verge of making the reality of the solemnity of the occasion too real and then
pulled back and said something funny. At
a Catholic funeral celebrated by a bishop, the latter would have presented some
silly image about the deceased now dancing a jig in heaven, again denying the
sure hope, not certainty, but the sure hope of eternal life in Christ that St.
Paul talks about, working one’s salvation out in fear and trembling. At a
Catholic funeral in an ordinary parish church the funeral Mass would be marked
by egregiously sentimental music, the wearing of white vestments as if the Mass
were a celebration of the deceased’s entrance into heaven, and the priest’s
best effort to make everyone forget what Christian faith means in the face of
death and to substitute that faith with a banal affirmation that everyone goes
to heaven. And no one would believe it
down deep.
The terrible sexual scandals of the past twenty years within
the clergy and the reprehensible behavior of the clergy that has still not come
fully to light are but a reflection of the lack of virility in our priests and
bishops. Virility is one of the marks of the person of Jesus Christ, of the
saints, and is the virtue to which all Catholics should aspire. The word “virility” comes from the Latin word
“vir” that means the man-hero and which is the same root for the English word
“virtue”. Not only men are called to virility, for some of the greatest of the
women saints of the Church were virile and showed great courage in the face of
adversity, especially when the clergy of the Church were the adversaries. Some years ago, I wrote an essay on the
“Devirilization of the Liturgy”. I am ever more convinced that the deeply
effeminate—not feminine—the deeply effeminate nature of the Mass promulgated by
Pope Paul VI lies at the very heart of the current severe problems within the
Church. I certainly wish that John
McCain had been Catholic and had the graceful blessing of a Requiem Mass. But I suspect that this virile man, at a typical
Novus Ordo funeral Mass, would have rapped from the coffin in protest at the
denial of his own sinfulness in the name of a sentimental understanding of the
mercy of God.
