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?

If it’s not the done thing where you live or in your culture, then it was disrespectful of your relative.

However, social norms are not the same worldwide. There are countries and cultures where it is a social norm to take memento photographs of open coffins and where it would not be considered disrespectful at all.

(It was actually very, very normal here in the UK up until the early 1900s too. People used to hire photographers to come and photograph their dead family members. Sometimes in their coffin, sometimes in the death bed itself, and sometimes literally posed on a chair, dressed and propped up. In many such photos, the corpse is posed with family members, especially when it’s a child. I’ve seen a late Victorian death portrait of a child standing beside a chair on which sits the dead body of his identical twin.)

Is it not more disrespectful to go against the wishes of the deceased if they chose a cremation? My parents had funeral plans ( dad has died , mum has dementia)
DH and I have funeral plans .
Our DC know our wishes

I think it depends upon intent. Taking a picture at the site of a major disaster like 9/11 or Auschwitz isn’t itself disrespectful but if you’re grinning and taking a selfie there it is. Similarly there are ways to respect the dead and ways to disrespect them but taking a photo isn’t automatically bad

I would imagine ( just a guess here ) the Swiss Guard have been told to respect peoples grief.

@TheTigerWhoCameToBrunch

Catholics are allowed now by canon law to be cremated.
They are not allowed to keep the ashes at home or in a crematorium.
The ages must be buried in consecrated ground

@DrPrunesqualer It’s extremely rare in the UK to have the body at home.

No it’s not.

The Uk is not England. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

But he’s on the telly where everyone can see him anyway

To the poster who thought that as a catholic, it is desecration of the body to be cremated. I am catholic and wish to be cremated and I knew quite a few catholics who were cremated.
What I find disrespectful is a body rotting away in the ground as worm food ,and a neglected grave is one of the saddest things to see.
Each to their own.

@ItGhoul thank you, it’s interesting to read about. In my instance, it’s not the cultural or societal norm. I think people need to grieve in their own way, regardless of norms, but in my particular instance it was very sickening and felt violating. I know family members who’ve wanted to bring the body home to spend time with it. Totally understandable, but too frowned upon where I am unfortunately.

And if a scandal breaks that she wasn’t actually in the coffin, I will not be at all surprised, with all the lying and deception of Her Majesty’s government. Incidentally, someone I knew who queued to file past the coffin had something confiscated by security, which was… hand sanitiser! Moments after Her Majesty’s government was preaching at us to use it all the time.

Ah no, it is beautiful to return to the earth

OK
Its extremely rare everywhere for Catholics
Its not not allowed, it’s just extremely rare

Extremely rare doesn’t mean never
Its just not the norm anymore.

It’s accepted in canon law now so 🤷‍♀️ It’s all fine from a religious point of view too

I feel the same.I saw my husband die after months of suffering.From the moment he took his last breath I knew his soul had flown out of him, something was not there any more, just an empty worn out suit of clothes which was his mortal remains.After an hour when the nurses had washed him, we returned to his room to collect his belongings.What was now lying on the bed was not my husband but an empty shell.We then went home to grieve.The undertaker rang me the following day to ask if I would like to have him in his usual clothes.My son and I took a set of his clothes to the funeral parlour, I was asked if I would like to go and dress him, I declined saying I did not wish to see him as a dead body.We left the clothes for the undertakers to do it.
I was a nurse all my working life so was no stranger to dead bodies, to me it was always the same, at the moment of death the body changes in appearances the part that was that person has gone out of it.That part is the soul.The soul is the invisible part of you, the immortal part that does not die.As a catholic I pray it goes back to God.

As a Catholic we always open the windows at the point of death ( just prior ) so the soul can do that.

No idea if that’s just an old Irish Catholic thing although I do know French friends do the same.

I once attended a Seventh Day Adventist funeral.
People queued up to take photos of the gentleman in his open casket.
I did not partake but clearly this was culturally permitted.
It was a truly beautiful celebration of life, with gospel singing and rejoicing prayers.

My mam passed in July from dementia and I went to funeral home to see her and she looked very peaceful but I did not want to see her again and last seen her day before funeral but with coffin closed . My father at end of life and wants pure cremation which I’m very grateful for as found it very upsetting with mam as I think funeral homes so lonely and sad . Myself I will be having pure cremation myself. I understand we all handle grief in our own ways

My family is Irish Catholic, some of them very devout, cremation is not the taboo it once was, the funeral mass takes place in the church then people are cremated soon after. Until very recently there was only one crematorium in all of NI so possibly more burials just because crematorium slots have been difficult to obtain quickly (most funerals here take place within 2-5 days and I have seen people take photos of the deceased although I haven’t myself).

It's a nurse thing too.

I would bet many of the people taking photos were not doing it for cultural reasons

Catholics (I was raised one) are really into death and dead bodies etc. it's just what they do. I remember going to wakes in people's houses as a wee girl and the body was always there (along with the whisky and maudlin songs). It's kind of a death cult really - the key holy image is dead Jesus on the cross, all blood, nails, thorns and the spear. The stations of the cross (pictures around the church that you visit in order and pray at) are violent and bloody, lots of Catholics have a picture in their home of Jesus opening up his chest and showing guests his sacred heart. Taking pictures of a fully clothed, clean guy with no obvious marks of violence on him in a nice pretty lined coffin is fairly mild in comparison.

I took a selfie with my very dead sister…she’d laugh about it and find it highly amusing (I told her I was going to do it and she dared me to..last wishes and all that)

no one has ever seen it apart from me 🤷‍♀️

I’m sure my mum has a photo of her mum

Not sure I find it disrespectful at all - it’s very cultural

I wish I had a picture of my beloved, he looked so peaceful. Completely transformed. I have one of me holding his hand and it’s comforting.

That's pretty normal at an Irish funeral. Open coffin in the centre, family lined up around the wall, people walk in, look at, and frequently touch, the body. They might, if they are religious, say a little prayer. They then go and offer condolences to the family. You could be queuing for ages at a big funeral. I was at one recently for a young person and I'd say I queued for an hour.

People would only touch the body if they knew them. If you don't know the deceased, you wouldn't usually stop at the body but would go straight to the family.

It's certainly not rare everywhere for catholics to have the body at home. Last two funerals I was at (Irish, catholic) were at home.

No idea what's the norm for catholics in GB.