The worst one I ever did was back-to-back burials of a mother and daughter. The mother had shot her 19-year-old daughter and then killed herself because the child support was about to run out and she had no way to pay for the girl to go to college. The ex-husband (since remarried) asked that the funerals be offered separately. But there was no mistaking the pall hanging over everyone. I don't think I've been to one that was sadder or seemed more senseless.

On the bright side, I live in South Carolina, where college football is the semi-unofficial established religion. A prominent and well-to-do physician who died a few years ago was a huge fan, and they rolled his casket down the aisle of the First Baptist Church to the recorded strains of "Also Sprach Zarathrustra." I kid you not. The reason for this is that the U of SC football team uses said music as its grand entrance for home games.

That one made me glad he wasn't Catholic. And clearly no one had Nietzsche's work about Zarathrustra, whom he characterized as "the first immoralist."

Yep. Thank God I'm Catholic. At least none of the pastors I've ever worked for would allow that sort of buffoonery.

(The Artist formerly known as Yurodivi)

I work in a relatively aging community, so I play somewhere on the order of 40 funerals a year. It's not that you get callous; it's just part of the job. Frequently, I don't even know the name of the deceased before the funeral starts.

Imagine getting ready to sing the Saints of God at the end of Mass and not knowing whether to sing "Saints of God, come to (Oh no! His or her?) aid."

It happened once. And only once.

'Their' is not, in spite of common current usage, the appropriate pronoun to use in reference to a singular subject, thing or person. It is glaringly inapt, and is, its ubiquity notwithstanding, an amusing curiosity of speech of those who live in constant fear of offending chic gender consciousness.

Use of the singular "their" has a pedigree in written and spoken English going back at least to Shakespeare. It's not incorrect, only informal- which makes it inappropriate for liturgical English, but very handy for board game instructions (player one starts their turn by rolling the dice...).

Also, much like FaceBook's announcements that "Mellisa has changed their relationship status," it is glaringly inept (and inapt) when the speaker/writer should very well know the gender of the antecedent.

Call me sexist (and many people have!), but I use "his" as a gender-unspecified pronoun. "Player one starts his turn..."

Call me sexist (and many people have!), but I use "his" as a gender-unspecified pronoun. "Player one starts his turn..."

I as well, and it is certainly because i am sexist.
Man/He/His denotes your average, everyday, plain, ordinary ol' slice of humanity; and connotes ones lack of sufficient interest in the subject to even learn any details.

Woman/She/Hers?

Think of us as the Extraordinary Form, if you will ;oP

(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)

We all bow to Shakespeare; but Shakespearean pedigree aside, I am continually amazed when someone uses this glaringly enept locution with a straight face and no clue as to the non-sense of it. It would seem that anyone, considering the climate in which we live, could use either a masculine or a feminine form when 'singularly' appropropriate. I do, indeed, wonder every time I hear it why people don't laugh or giggle at the mis-use of 'their'; but, oddly, they never do.

As often happens, we have here another tangent on a topic that started out differentlly. So, call it a story about the funeral of literate English - except that it isn't funny. It isn't possible to read or hear something like 'player one starts their turn by...' without assuming the illiteracy or ignorance of the writer or speaker.

Let me weigh in for inclusive language: "Men" can mean both sexes or just males; "women" necessarily means just females. Also for tradition: Using "she" to mean either sex is jarring and unhistoric. Also, while we're at it, for accuracy: People have sex, words have gender.

In my experience, Spanish liturgical and biblical texts do use "los hombres" inclusively (a los hombres que ama el Señor; los hombres son unos mentirosos; etc.)

"Su" has merely dropped its second syllable on the way from Rome to Spain. The syllable still comes through in the intensive forms "suyo, suya, suyos, suyas".

My inability to type coherently aside, I'm a bit of a grammar geek, as well as a strict enforcer of concepts such as the Oxford comma.

However, I have to disagree with the Grammar Puritans who claim that the "singular they" is simply incorrect, inept, inapt, inelegant, inappropriate, or otherwise intolerable.
As the issue continues to be debated among professional grammarians (several prominent style guides have neutral or favorable positions on the matter), and the (as CMS states) "venerable use by such writers as Addison, Austen, Chesterfield, Fielding, Ruskin, Scott, and Shakespeare," it is clear that one need not be an uneducated hack in order to consider the singular they a useful and reasonable construction.

Also, not all uses of the non-gender-specific "she" are intended to "make a statement," as it were. Many writers simply shift from "he" to "she" in order to avoid both the inherent sexism of male-as-neutral and the inelegance (in the extreme) of "he/she" constructions. When done well, this is hardly noticeable. When done poorly, this sticks out like a sore thumb, giving both Grammar- and Gender- traditionalists fodder for their arguments. Obviously, a female pronoun used deliberately for a traditionally male antecedent (God, priest) is intended to make a statement, but "player one begins her turn" seems an unlikely protest.

It's okay if anyone disagrees with me, they are probably just a sexist man.
(Yes, yes. That was a pronoun agreement joke, not my actual opinion.)

My actual opinion is:
-In informal writing, the singular they is acceptable.
-In formal writing, the singular they is inadvisable; rewriting for avoidance is the best route, especially if the author (or the intended audience) has issues with gendered pronouns.
-In any type of writing, the generic masculine, while not incorrect, may be inadvisable. This depends largely on the potential audience, and whether the author cares about causing offense.
-In any type of writing, the generic feminine, while not incorrect, may be inadvisable. This depends largely on the potential audience, and whether the author cares about causing offense.
-The most egregious error is the mixing of different uses within one work, such as when an author can't make up their mind, and so scatters his or her writing with several different pronouns types, making him look like she is an idiot.
-In Liturgy (ah, here we go), the singular they is never acceptable. If there is someone in a casket, please find out their gender before praying for them. Otherwise, it shouldn't even come up as an option, because no priest should be writing his own prayers.

Using 'he' or 'she' in a generic sense is acceptable. At least one or the other makes grammatical sense. However, it IS un-reasonable to give the use of 'their' anything other than, in Adam's words, uneducated hack status. Even if it is sanctioned by some prominent moderne grammarians, who, as a class, rather enjoy being unexpected iconoclasts. The use of 'their' in reference to a singular subject belongs in the same category as 'she don't', 'they is', 'ain't' and other ill-learned horrors. The most charitable construction to put on it is that the speaker is terrified of saying 'he' or 'she' - most probably 'he'.

I use "he" when I mean a person of either sex. Let those be offended who tend to be offended. May their houses be turned into dunghills - I always loved that statement from the KJV.

I think the greatest offense, is that so many of us are willing to tolerate political correctness. Now we have women "priests" in some churches. Nonsense. The generic "he" is the standard English I grew up with and "priest" is a word describing ordained males. Now do I care what other churches choose to ordain? No! But I do object to botching up a perfectly good and beautiful language for political correctness. Political correctness started, as I remember, in academic circles. It should have been left in that crazy, absurd world detached from reality. I also believe we have far too many people who have made careers, sometimes profitable ones, out of being offended. Why we humor them is beyond me.

Liturgical language, as you state, should not be informal. It seems to me that the new missal is an attempt to correct the informality of the current missal. Many have complained about the new translation, to be sure. I am looking forward to it.

Yes, yes.
Enough with the grammar geekery.
I want to hear funny funeral stories.

This wasn't a funeral, but yesterday I was playing the organ at the (normally) Folk Mass, and while I was playing the Gloria, an enormous cockroach came ambling around the corner of the console. (Not Kafka-sized, but still big.) So what could I do? The folk choir were pointing and laughing, but I just kept on playing. He kept on ambling around on the right-hand side of the cabinet. Then, after the Gloria was over, he flew away.

So after Mass, one of the ushers comes over and says, "Hey -- next time you play dis Mass, leave yer pets at home!"

I agree with Adam on context: it really does depend on the readership. These days the writer must keep his audience constantly in mind, and be adept at adapting language in a manner that communicates best. That's the point of plain old language, after all. Liturgical language is a completely different issue.

Thanks Jeffrey!

And you'll be glad to know that I was not offended in the least by your (obviously sexist and backward-thinking) assumption that the generic writer of your statement must be male :)

And Liturgical Language is ALWAYS a different issue! If only everyone could understand this.
Yes, we'd still have translation disagreements. Yes, we could still argue about the "qui" clause if we were geeky enough to enjoy the argument. But at least we'd be able to say, "Whatever else it should be, it shouldn't be the way I talk to my friends on FaceBook."
Ah, well.


Cockroach story is... awesome.
Maybe (since we're already off topic) we could expand to ridiculous and awful things that have happened to us at Mass. (Excluded is all discussion of bad, but common, liturgical choices. You can include the truly weird, though- like puppets and robots.)

Um...

As an altar server, in my youth, I started a fire in the sacristy in the middle of Midnight Mass. The deacon noticed, and saved the day.
The next Easter Vigil, to redeem myself, I put out a fire that started when a flower arrangement got too close to a candle.

We had a string of holy fire disasters at a couple of Easter Vigils. The first year, a young teen male was sent down from the choir loft to bring a lighted candle back to the choir. So far so good, you may think, but he has a severe case of ADD. On his way back, a parishioner held out her candle to be lighted. Our young man made it back to the choir loft 15 minutes later. Once distracted, he stayed downstairs to light every one's candle.

The following year, the winds were howling and snow was flying outside. The holy fire was brought inside the church. Unfortunately, the ushers walked away and left it in the nave to burn itself out. Since all the smoke rose to the loft, the choir was nearly asphyxiated. Afterwards, there was an oily film on everything.

The next year, the ushers took the fire outside after lighting - yes, the weather was horrid again. Somehow, they managed to set the mulch on fire in the plant beds in front of the church. Our ushers do tend to be special needs people, for some reason.

After several years of disasters, the pastor decided to use a tray of votive candles instead of wood. Things have been better since then. Of course I didn't mention the combination action freezing on the 60-year-old organ console. It locked everything up on the console, nothing worked, and I could smell the ancient magnet switches overheating. I have learned to always keep pliers and screwdrivers within reach.

Here's a non-funeral whopper for you:

Freshman year of college, the chapel choir decided to sing O'Connor's "Jesus the Lord" (.....let all creation bend THE kneeeeee), with choir on the refrain and cantored verses. Verse 2 contains a line, "But emptied Himself, became a slave." Verse 3, directly below, contains a line "Accepting His death, death on a tree!" The last word falls musically on a big flourish, a dramatic, forte high note, followed by a measure of rest. The poor cantor somehow got scrambled. "But emptied Himself, became A TREEEEEEEE!...(measure of rest, filled with appalled silence)....(the choir timidly enters:) Jesus?? The Lord?"

Many years ago I was playing for Midnight Mass at a Catholic Chapel on a US Air Force base. It was right after the first Gulf War, and the Chaplain had just gotten back. Father did the incense as suggested, then gave it to the altar server, and she put it by an open window for the smoke to go out. So far, so good, right?

Well, the Chaplain had had some sort of conversion experience in the desert, and as soon as he started in talking about it during the homily, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and the longer he talked, the worse it got. Finally he said he was going to play a song that had been a great comfort to him. Those of you who were around can probably guess what it was.

So over the loudspeakers comes the [not-so-] divine Miss M singing, "From a Distance," whose moral is, "God doesn't care what happens to you or anybody else." And just as she got to the bridge, the wind shifted, and the incense started to blow INTO the chapel. Within 30 seconds, the chapel was completely filled with blue-gray, fragrant smoke - it was like a tear gas attack, but ten times as awesome.

I think the moral of this story is clear.

1) Yep - God is definitely watching us.

2) He doesn't approve of recorded music at Mass.

Someone said let's go back to funeral stories. Don't know if this one is true but it very well could be. Anything can and does happen at funerals.

This lady was arranging her husband's funeral. She was naturally a jittery, nervous sort and was really at wits' end trying to sort everything out. When the funeral director asked her about music, she said all she wanted was a male trio singing "Jingle bells". The director says, "Jingle bells?" Yes, she assured him, it was her husband's favorite song and he always said he wanted it at his funeral.

So the funeral happens and at a specified moment the song begins. Whereupon the widow says, in a voice heard throughout the chapel, "Damn! I meant "Golden bells.""

...So the funeral happens and at a specified moment the song begins. Whereupon the widow says, in a voice heard throughout the chapel, "Damn! I meant "Golden bells.""...

This was really funny... I'm very glad I wasn't sipping coffee when I read it. I'm not sure my computer would have survived...

Oh, Charles. That's a great song! Not appropriate for a Catholic funeral, but great nevertheless. I have a friend who's done the research, and I think he told me it's been recorded something like 500+ times. Talk about longevity!

Having spent my life in East Tennessee, I know the "Golden Bells" song, the Garden song - "I Come to the Garden Alone," and "I'll Fly Away." One of my aunts took me to church with her when I was a child, and they sang from shape-note hymnals. All that stuff was in there.

My High School choir director told me that he attended the funeral of a church MD (Southern Black Gospel Protestant). The lady had dropped-dead upon lifting her fingers from the organ on the final chord of the last song of another funeral. Dozens upon dozens of eulogized in the same format: "I remember, when I was 6 years old- Sister Lucy taught me my first song... And it went a little something like this..."

He swears that there was a procession to go up and have "a final look" on sister Lucy in the casket- and that the vast majority of mourners had cameras to capture said "final look."

Beat this:

I once played the organ for the funeral of the departed head of the New England branch of Hell's Angels. You could hear the procession of a thousand Harley's a mile away. After they arrived I began playing preludes but began to wonder why incense was burning before the actual Mass began; a little latter I noticed some irregularities in my playing which became progressively worse. Curiously, the worse I got the less I cared. Only later did I realize that smoke from the narthex had drifted into the loft thus causing me to be stoned silly.

I also have done my share of mafioso funerals but will save those for another time. Let's just say that if they request "Gentle Woman" I play "Gentle Woman."