Stopping a funeral to enforce rules: 7-29-15

Back in the 1980s, I was serving on a regional Presbyterian committee charged with overseeing seminary students from our area.

One of those students once was questioned about whether there were any circumstances under which he might agree to baptize a still-born infant. In our theological tradition, baptism is not considered necessary for salvation and still-born babies are not baptized. There's no theological need for it.

The student said he wouldn't ever do such a baptism. But a member of our committee, a pastor who taught clinical pastoral education to seminary students at a hospital, chided him and told the seminarian that under certain circumstances, especially when the parents were in deep grief and wanted the baptism ritual done, he should bend the rules because it was the pastoral thing to do.

At the time, I thought this old pastor was just being a doctrinal softy, and I privately challenged him on it. But I was wrong. He was right. Sometimes theological rules must fall by the wayside as we minister to real needs to hurting people. (Jesus taught us that, but I apparently didn't learn it very well.)

I thought about all of that history the other day when I read this column about a priest in a Rochester, N.Y., suburb acting as if he also had not learned that lesson very well. This occurred at a Catholic funeral. As the column reports, "the priest abruptly canceled the service after bereaved relatives of the deceased wanted to deviate from the order of worship by having (a particular Bible) passage read."

First, of course, it's the priest's and family's responsibility to work these things out ahead of time. But even if this was a surprise sprung on the priest in the middle of the service, canceling the service and adding to the grief of those assembled clearly was not the right approach.

Following rules often is a good and right thing to do. The rules are there for good reasons, often. But if it means hurting people and not ministering to them in a pastoral way, the rules need to bend a bit.

I wish the priest in this case had learned what I eventually learned.

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LESS INDIVIDUAL, MORE SYSTEMIC RACISM IS THE PROBLEM

The New York Times, through "The Stone," a forum to discuss various issues, has been looking at racism. This latest piece is an interview with Joe Feagin, who has studied racism for decades, and includes his conclusion that simple prejudice is way less than half the problem. Rather, the more important part of the problem has to do with systemic racism within American structures, he says. I will be moderating a panel on racism at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 11, at Second Presbyterian Church in Kansas City (55th and Brookside) and hope to explore that idea with the four panelists. Hope you can join us.