to think taking photos of someone in a coffin is the height of disrespect?

[SnoozingFox]

Totally understand that for Catholics this is a very sad time and many of them wish to pay their respects by filing past the coffin in St Peter's.

SO many people in footage just shown on the news taking photos on their phones. I mean. WTF?

It seems distasteful to me, but when my husband died a colleague, who’d lost his wife similarly young a few years earlier, asked if I was having a funeral photographer. He’d had the service photographed by a professional, in the way one might have a wedding photographed. No open coffin though I don’t think. Even so, most odd to me but of course each to their own and I didn’t say want I actually thought!

https://funeralmemories.co.uk/funeral-photography/

In the 70s when I first visited families in rural France, it was very common to have framed photographs of loved ones in open caskets on prominent display in the house.

My partners mum (now full on dementia) is 100% Catholic italian who came over during the war and she has coffin photos of every single family member that has passed away - we found them all on her phones when going through her things, it's a cultural thing. Leave them alone.

I also have my stillborn on prominent display in my bedroom......is that bad taste?

I'm a Catholic and I find it a bit creepy , I shall be having a closed coffin at my funeral so nobody can be touching me or taking pictures.

My best friend died sadly a couple of years ago and she had an open casket and I’ll be honest - I didn’t go up to view her because I had this deranged thought she sit up and say ‘I win’ or pull a face at me.
Not very respectful I know but for that reason alone I didn’t and I actually know that’s why she did an open casket because she’d threatened me with it !!

I actually think the height of disrespect for a dead body is to shove it in a furnace and burn it.

For Catholics and the Orthodox Churches (i.e. the true church and not some pale imitation), cremation is a sin as it is the desecration of the body.

To me it’s weird. I could maybe understand if it was a loved one, but someone they don’t know is strange to me. What are they going to do with the photo? Each to their own though. I wouldn’t like anyone taking photos of me when I’m dead.

Absolutely not and I am so sorry for your loss.

I don’t personally like it but my parents are catholics and they had many a family funeral with the open casket in the living room when they were growing up. I think in Britain we have a different relationship with death, in a lot of cultures they have more of a celebration and maybe to these people taking photos is part of that.

I think every going past taking photos and stretching arms up above the crowd to get a good picture is very disrespectful. I can fully understand Catholics wanting to go and pay their respects but that can be done without photos.

It's bizarre - but I think queueing up to see a dead body is bizarre too.

Urgh

Yes, in some places 'extreme embalming' is a thing. The deceased are not in a coffin, they are on motorbikes or "playing" a piano.

Really? the last Catholic funeral I was at was followed by a cremation.

You wouldn't have coped well in the Victorian era then....

I don't see the harm whatsoever, everyone copes with grief in their own way.

I've seen this (not in reality but online)....I find it fascinating.

Yeah there was a programme on Netflix where somewhere in Asia they embalm their relatives then once a year, bring them out and clean them, dress them up nice and give them gifts. They spend time with them before they bury them again as well.

It was beyond weird when people queued for hours to look at the Queens corpse....

They didn’t, she had a closed coffin.

They only got to look at the coffin, the lid was on.

They've got to be disposed of in some way, a lot of us don't have money for a burial.

Queuing to look at a closed coffin would be even weirder!

So they queued to look at a wooden box? Even weirder!

Same difference anyway, so they went to look at her corpse in a box!

Also, it takes up space to bury someone