CV NEWS FEED // A priest with experience as a missionary in El Salvador recently wrote an op-ed on how he would have responded to the scandalous actions that took place during a funeral service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“If the nonsense at St. Patrick’s had happened on my watch, I think I would have stopped the whole carnival, turned off the microphones and lights, and called the cops,” Monsignor Richard Antall wrote in a February 26 op-ed for Crisis Magazine.
On February 15, LGBT activists held a blasphemous funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City for Cecilia Gentili, a man who identified as a “transgender” woman. Many Catholics called for an apology from the activists because of the blasphemous and sacrilegious actions that transpired during the funeral.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan directed a Mass of Reparation to be celebrated two days after the funeral took place.
Dolan commended the funeral’s officiator Fr. Edward Dougherty for recognizing “the irreverence and disrespect” of those present and subsequently refusing to celebrate a Mass. In a last-minute decision, Dougherty shortened the funeral service to only include the Liturgy of the Word, and not the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
“I do not judge the decision-making at St. Patrick’s because, unless you are there in the moment, it is hard to know all the factors involved,” Antall wrote. “But I am tempted to think that some kind of ‘stop the nonsense’ move might have made things better.”
Antall is now a pastor in the Diocese of Cleveland. He recalled several incidents at a mission church in El Salvador, and explained how those incidents informed his reaction to the recent controversial funeral service.
The first incident occurred before he was official pastor at the mission church, when several women came to the church’s then-pastor requesting a funeral Mass.
“The funeral procession came to the church, and it was only then that the priest was informed that the dearly departed was the madam of one of the town’s bordellos,” he wrote. Everyone who came was “dressed appropriately for the funeral… But many of the faithful were shocked.”
“They found it hard to believe that such a scandalous figure would be given what they regarded as the luxury of a church funeral,” Antall continued:
However, the Church has had a tradition, unlike the Soviet Union pace Khrushchev, of burying even her enemies.
The attitude of the mourners at the funeral Mass was not irreverent or celebratory of an “iconic” victory over the Church. There was respect, even though hindsight suggests that a responso (just requiem prayers over the casket) might have been more appropriate in the circumstances.
Antall recalled a second “applicable” memory during his time as a pastor in El Salvador, in which he refused to celebrate a Mass that he thought would cause scandal.
Someone told Antall ahead of time “that the woman who sold ‘piedra’ in our town to the crack addicts had a daughter who was about to celebrate her quince and wanted a Mass,” he wrote. “Forearmed, I met with the woman and refused to celebrate the quinceañera. She didn’t understand this; she was willing to be very generous to the parish.”
Antall told the woman:
“Your money comes from addicts who get their money from robbery. It is too scandalous. I can’t do it.”
The woman eventually relented when she saw Antall would not change his mind. Three weeks later, to his “irritation”, Antall found out that the diocese’s cathedral had agreed to celebrate the Mass for the quinceañera.
“Cathedrals are a crossroads that see many ambiguous processions and ceremonies of unwitting ambivalence,” Antall wrote. “I would not accept some of the state funerals given at cathedrals, nor the celebrations of victory of pro-abortion politicians, but that, at least, is not on my conscience.”
Referencing a part of the February 15 funeral service in which the attendees prayed “Santa Cecilia,” Antall wrote, “The deceased, you remember, was male. The poor man was supposedly an atheist and a prostitute. He deserves our prayers, as do the mourners who made defiance out of their misery at the cathedral.”
“Their being mistaken about something so important makes me feel compassion for them more than anger,” he concluded:
Talk about sheep without a shepherd! Lost souls should be attended at all our parishes, but they should not be given the microphone with which to desperately, incoherently, and disrespectfully injure the Church trying to help them.
