Q: Trusting you are well…and finding American politics as compelling as me?!
If there is no body present at a ‘funeral’, is it a Requiem Mass or a Memorial Mass that’s celebrated.
Increasingly in Australia families are having a so called celebration of life after the body has been cremated/interred.
Thanks as always for your insights.
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A: Here’s a previous post that doesn’t directly answer your question but presents the pertinent principles: https://paulturner.org/memorial-mass/
Without a body present, you would celebrate a Mass for the Dead from the Missal, rather than the texts from the Order of Christian Funerals.
The introduction to the Ordo Exsequiarum, which you’ll find in the back of the OCF, says in #6 that a funeral Mass must be celebrated. I understand this to mean that when a funeral does not take place at mass, then a later Mass for the Dead substitutes as the funeral Mass.
Also in the US it’s customary to call a Mass for the Dead without the body present a Memorial Mass, but the missal and OCF never use that term. By “Requiem Mass” I presume you mean a funeral Mass, but your scenario is more accurately a Mass for the Dead.
The expression “celebration of life” is popular here in the US too. But the Catholic liturgical books do not use that term. The words of a Catholic funeral Mass do not look back to celebrate a person’s past life, as wonderful as it may have been, but rather they look forward and pray for God’s mercy in hopes that the person may be accepted into heaven.
Similarly, we sometimes see funeral Mass programs calling the service “Mass of the Resurrection.” But that’s what Easter is. This is a funeral Mass, which does not presume resurrection, but prays for it.
American politics are always compelling. I’m glad we can provide some occasional entertainment for our friends in the southern hemisphere.