cemeteries

Ira Rifkin offers Jewish (and Buddhist) thoughts as he lives with the ashes of his son

Ira Rifkin offers Jewish (and Buddhist) thoughts as he lives with the ashes of his son

I shared the following story a year ago, but I thought of it again when reading a stunning piece in the Forward by my GetReligion colleague Ira Rifkin. The headline there is simple, but unforgettable: “The day my son’s ashes arrived in the mail.

Journalists who cover the religion beat know that it includes everything from national politics to local-church politics, from sports to the arts, from fights over ancient doctrines to the latest trends in digital worship. But it’s important to remember the degree to which religious rites, traditions, doubts and questions help define many of the gateway moments in human life.

Before I share a few passages from Ira’s must-read essay, let me return to something that happened in the early 1980s when I was working for the now-deceased Charlotte News. I was writing a story about the last local church that was resisting the use of a hymnal prepared for the merger that created the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

It was a battle between the “red book” and the modernized “green book.” Here is a flashback:

At this Charlotte church, I met with an older man who led the fight to retain the “red book.” He had a long list of reasons — historical and theological — for why the old hymnal and prayer book was superior to the new. …

When the interview was over, we walked the center aisle toward the foyer and main exit. At the last pew, he stopped and picked up a battered red hymnal. Tears began running down his cheeks.

“I married my wife with this book,” he said. “Our children were baptized with this book. I buried my wife with this book. … They are not going to take it away from me.”

This man was wrestling with issues that transcended logic. He was dealing with the basic building blocks of his own life and faith, his past and his present. This was an issue that involved both head and heart.

This brings us to overture of Ira’s piece for the Forward:

The ashes came to my home in Maryland from Southern California, shipped via special delivery by the aptly named funeral home Ashes to Ashes. They arrived encased in a rectangular, polished, dark wood box about the size of a loaf of artisan bread. I immediately opened it to make sure it was not empty. It was not.


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In Chicagoland, a tombstone for Catholic mom who 'supported priest rapist victims' sparks dispute

In the Chicago area, the family of a deceased Catholic mother is fighting with the diocese that owns the cemetery where she is buried. The matter in dispute: the wording on the woman's tombstone.

That certainly sounds newsworthy to me, so it's not surprising that the Chicago Tribune jumped on the story.

This is a case where precise language is needed to explain the positions of both sides, and the Tribune provides it.

The lede lays out the basic facts:

Marguerite Ridgeway was a fervent Catholic until her faith was shaken when church sex abuse scandals came to light, particularly a decades-old trauma recounted by her daughter-in-law.
Now Ridgeway’s son wants to install a marker at his late mother’s gravesite in Wheaton bearing the inscription “She supported priest rapist victims.”
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet, which owns Assumption Cemetery, has objected to what it calls the “explicit language” of the epitaph.
Ridgeway’s son, Jack Ruhl, of Kalamazoo, Mich., recently sent a rendering of the planned marker to the cemetery, along with a $350 check to cover the installation fee.
“I ask that you do not dishonor the memory of my mother by further delay in installation of her grave marker,” he said in an email to officials with the diocese earlier this month.
An attorney for the diocese in an Oct. 6 letter proposed removing the word “rapist” and substituting softer language, such as “She supported clergy sex abuse victims,” or “She supported victims of clergy sex abuse.”
The letter described the word rapist as “graphic, offensive and shocking to the senses.”

Keep reading, and the story identifies the attorney and offers additional insight on the diocese's official position:


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Los Angeles Times skips obvious 'ghost' in pet cemetery story

Losing a pet is often — if not always — a sad and traumatic experience. Over the past 20 years, my wife and I have shared out home with a total of five cats, three of whom have passed away, the most recent in March 2013. It’s never easy to lose a companion animal.


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