I wish I understood the symbols young people use today to show respect or passion or interest. When all the 17 members of the Florida hockey team dyed their hair blond in memory of a teammate who was one of those massacred recently at their school, I still don’t know what to make of it. Certainly, the core of their action must be: We remember you, we remember you together.
When people gather at the site where a friend or relative died tragically and hold candles or release nitrogen-filled balloons which they all let go at the same time, what does it all mean? Is that ritual coming-together a sign that the person is fondly remembered? Or, simply that the people who come are in solidarity mourning together? These demonstrations replace religious rituals of song and prayer which, I guess, to most people are irrelevant in a progressive culture like ours.
By the way when did schools stop asking ministers of religion to come and comfort people after a tragedy, to pray with them, to listen to them? Now they pay grief counsellors to do the job. The process is all very efficient and structured to provide acceptable outcomes. Children (or adults) will feel understood and comforted. Who knows what inappropriate thing a minister of religion might feel moved to say? I guess all that religious stuff belongs only in a church these days and official religious persons are no longer welcome at public tragedies.
The last time I tried to help in a crisis, someone had phoned the rectory to let us know that person had jumped in front of a train, was dead and that I should go over there to see if we could help. This happened in a Chicago suburb. When I arrived dressed in my clergyman outfit, the officer at the area said: “Who called you to come and help? My answer was “I don’t know, for sure.” Someone else had taken the message. I thought maybe someone in the deceased’s family had asked for a priest. Or, more likely, I thought, someone from the sheriff’s office who was at the scene called had called me. “I am just responding to the request,” I said. The officer was firm: “You’ll have to leave if no one with authority called you here.” He was not nice about it. I guess he thought why would a minister be called at all?
Who knows what the remains looked like but the officer was grim as if he had seen the whole thing and he had no use for a minister of religion who could do nothing but pray.
Two weeks later after the 7 PM Mass that Sunday a tearful middle-aged woman came up to me and told me that it was her son who had walked onto the tracks as the train approached. Deliberate suicide. She had approached me after Mass to ask me for prayers for her and her family and her son. My first reaction was to hug her and offer my condolences. I know for sure that that was the proper place to pray with her and to hug her. And, I did both.
These days, prayers are pretty much restricted to a church building. So, are ministers of religion. But, doesn’t it seem sad that at a tragedy the absence of clergy and the omission of prayers is now replaced with a secular coming-together in remembrance with multi-colored balloons released, lit candles glowing and memorial T-shirts prominent? This is a new kind of ritual. I guess the secular rituals are spiritual but not religious and, therefore, acceptable to all.