Putting the Nail in the (Pope’s) Coffin

A few weeks ago, a seemingly harmless change was announced. At Pope Francis’ request, a revised Order of Funerals for Roman Pontiffs was adopted. Among other things, the ritual of three coffins, practiced in the church since the eleventh century, has been replaced. I cannot help but be disappointed whenever a long-standing tradition is “modernized,” but I was especially struck with the reasoning behind the change. 

“The renewed rite,” declared the master of papal ceremonies, Archbishop Diego Ravelli, “needed to emphasize even more that the funeral of the Roman pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world.” Moreover, Ravelli reported that Pope Francis believed that the rites needed to be adapted in order to “better express the faith of the Church in the risen Christ.”

Once again, the Church—to keep up an appearance of humility—has done away with an ancient ritual. From a certain point of view, I can’t blame them. Look up the symbolic meaning of the three coffins and what turns up are rants such as this one from the Center for Inquiry: 

The first box was made of cypress and, along with the pope’s body, contained bags of gold, silver, and copper coins. The cypress symbolizes humility—you know, of the guy who’s being buried in 3 caskets as a part of a multi-million dollar funeral.

I half wonder if someone at the Vatican didn’t read this exact article. The two loudest complaints are of extravagance and impracticality. The new coffin has been stripped of all of its riches. It’s a single, practical, wooden coffin lined with zinc—a cheap metal commonly used to aid the longevity of the corpse.  The new coffin has been stripped of all of its riches. It’s a single, practical, wooden coffin lined with zinc—a cheap metal commonly used to aid the longevity of the corpse. Tweet This

As annoying as it is to see the symbolism go, you can’t help but understand why Pope Francis would want to cut down on the perceived excess of his funeral. Critics look at a papal funeral and instead of seeing a Church community celebrating a beloved father, they see a rich dead man who overspent on a funeral he wouldn’t even be there for. To be honest, if I was Francis, I wouldn’t want the fancy coffin either. 

Our culture has acquired a gnostic hatred of earthly beauty. It shows in our architecture, our clothes, our food, and in Francis’ new funeral. We cannot believe that anything that comes from riches can be good. There are always “better ways to spend our money” than on the foolish excesses of beauty. In the medieval world that created the soon-to-be-forgotten papal funeral rite, though, this was not so. C.S. Lewis sums up the difference in his Discarded Image. 

Luxury and material splendour in the modern world need be connected with nothing but money…But what a medieval man saw in royal courts…was not so. The architecture, arms, crowns, clothes, horses, and music were nearly all beautiful. They were all symbolic or significant—of sanctity, authority, valour, nobel lineage or, at the very worst, of power… They could therefore be ingenuously admired without degradation for the admirer.

While the medieval saw a human representation of divine things in the rich symbolism of their papal funeral, the modern sees only vast sums of dirty money. Perhaps this is because we think a great deal about money. Judas, the treasurer of the apostles, thought a great deal about money, and so he only saw three hundred denarii—almost a year’s wages—wasted when Mary bathed the feet of Jesus in oil (John 12:4-8). The fact is that there is something truly good about beautiful things—even if they cost money. Chesterton comments on much the same phenomena in Orthodoxy:

The modern man thought Becket’s robes too rich… Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold. It is at least better than the manner of the modern millionaire, who has the black and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold next his heart.

Does it somehow make a humble pope prideful to be buried with symbolic riches? Or does it somehow make a prideful pope—as some say Francis is—humbler to be buried in a single wooden coffin? If humility consisted in how cheaply one is buried, then Jesus ought to have been buried in a cardboard box. But he was not buried in a cardboard box, he was buried in a rich man’s tomb. 

The fact is, exteriors have meaning. We benefit by richly decorated basilicas and well-crafted vestments. There is something lost when we worship in a concrete cube or the priest fastens his chasuble with a dirty strip of Velcro. I’m not saying that Pope Francis is necessarily wrong for wanting a less glamorous funeral. But the pope should weigh the positives of good PR against the consequence: cheapening one more beautiful thing. 

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]