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A Pastor & A Reverend critique the Memorial Service

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
January 13, 2011
The answer is: Those without shame
Lee Cary

I'm retired now, but once upon a time, as a church pastor, I was called on to conduct funerals and memorial services. All too often.

I never saw them as opportunities to convert any possible unbelievers in attendance, exaggerate the virtues of the deceased, or advance some localized ecclesiastical agenda. That's not what they're about.

Funerals and memorial services are about looking beyond the moment where the cold immediacy of death has taken hold, and toward whatever divine, otherworldly, or transcendent beliefs are held by, most importantly, the family, but also their friends.

When the October 2002 memorial service for the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D. MN) turned into a political pep rally, many were offended. But who realistically expected it to be anything other than that? In that extravaganza, dignity was only moderately conspicuous by its absence. To paraphrase Rahm Emanuel: The goal is to never pass up an opportunity to take partisan advantage of a prominent politician's death.

It's happened again, this hijacking of mourning for political purposes, but this time the assault on dignity is more egregious. This time the props are innocent murdered civilians. And, this time they include a little girl.

Never mind what the President said last night. It was flat, harmless, boilerplate stuff, with no timeless, memorable quotes. It was the overall branding of the event, including special-event T-shirts (who bought them?), accompanied by applause as the various dignitaries entered the arena for the political theater, and the hob-knobbing that accompanies the gather of pols that collectively represented yet another amazing exercise of uncommonly bad taste by our political elite.

The question is: Who aims to take advantage of the death of a child to reap political gain?

The answer is: Those without shame.






Rev. Hugh MacKenzie adds:

I am a subject matter expert on Memorial Services. After almost 40 years of conducting all sorts of Services of Remembrance in all kinds of contexts and for all manner of deceased, I know the difference between a somber rite of reflection/remembrance and a Pep Rally. Last night I witnessed the latter when the former was what was needed.

T-Shirts! Slogans! Cheers! You've got to be kidding!

Ideas have consequences. Ideas and principles mould the rites and ceremonies that follow any dramatic event. Events so life changing that they demand the focused attention of the community in which it transpired. Focused in order to express the proper emotions. Focused in to bring to bear the thoughts and feelings of the community in order to make sense of the these seismic dramas. How do we make sense of tragedy? What can we do in the face of either unexpected victory or equally unexpected defeat?

Cheering! (Or as the AP reported, "Soaring response...").

Focusing on, "We can do better...", from the Consoler-in-Chief! So much for the "Bully Pulpit." So much for liberal sophistication and savvy.

What did we learn? That civility was violated and the society needs to, "Tone the rhetoric down."

This is how we respond to pure evil? The words tawdry and shallow come to mind. Inappropriate doesn't even do that public display of silliness justice.

The public would have been better served by more silence broken only by a Bach partita, a Chopin march, an American folk hymn, or Taps.

Our society seems to be not only short on words but bankrupt on class and sophistication, the result of turning our backs on anything that happened before our own births.

This "ceremony" did bring tears to my eyes but I am sure not in the way the designers of this mess of pop pottage and shallow sentimentality intended.

"Call the people together in solemn assembly...", and don't forget the t-shirts.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/01/the_answer_is_those_without_sh.html
 

Steve

Well-known member
It was flat, harmless, boilerplate stuff, with no timeless, memorable quotes.

I didn't see the whole "event",.. but I did come watch the presidents speech, I was a bit shocked at the clapping...

unfortunately like everyone else, I have been to a few to many funerals and memorial services.. and even among the sorrow, often there is a light moment, a moment when many of us feel a bit of uneasy joy in the memories of the persons life,.. usually I feel it inside and at most let only a bit come to the surface,

but clapping? and standing and clapping? .. I guess I have not been to enough memorial services to experience that depth of grief.. :?
 

Tam

Well-known member
The Liberal left which we all know includes those that run our Universities have shown us through this staged pep rally, that life means little to them. POWER is all they truly care about. When you hold a memorial service to remember the victims in a tragic event and have nothing but politicans speaking and t-shirts on the seats, you have to know it was not about those that lost their lives, it was an opportunity for a Liberal University to push an agenda. Another example of this being a Democrat Political rally was the fact they had the young man that saved the Politicians life sitting in the front row and honored him on stage and the gentleman and lady that actually tackled the shooter and got his gun away from him, saving God only knows how many lives, were buried in the audience. The fact they had him in the front row and honoring him proved to me this service was more about the living breathing POLITICAN than remembering those including the little girl that lost their lives.

This was truly a black eye for the US when the Head of the University allowed the T-shirts be put out and he and or President Obama said nothing to the audience to clue them in that it was a Memorial Service not the Pep rally they allowed it to be turned into. :roll:
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
I wouldn't blame the University. If this administration came to you and "suggested" that this is what was desired, would you say no?

Supposedly on the bottom of the shirts is written, “Rocking America and Rocking the Vote”

I haven't seen one for myself yet, so can't say for sure, but for some reason, I can see it happening with this crew.


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/32138
 

Tam

Well-known member
hypocritexposer said:
I wouldn't blame the University. If this administration came to you and "suggested" that this is what was desired, would you say no?

Supposedly on the bottom of the shirts is written, “Rocking America and Rocking the Vote”

I haven't seen one for myself yet, so can't say for sure, but for some reason, I can see it happening with this crew.


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/32138

Sorry but the President of the University did nothing to clue his students in on proper behavior. All he had to do was, at the beginning after the students cheered as Obama entered, say something to the effect of stop it and respect the reason they were gathered there and how it was to remember the victims of the tragedy they had just witnessed in their city. If the students respected their University's reputation they would have put an end to the pep rally cheering right from the get go. But he didn't and every time he introduced the next speaker it was apparent he wanted it to be just what it turned out to be, A Liberal Pep Rally.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Tam said:
hypocritexposer said:
I wouldn't blame the University. If this administration came to you and "suggested" that this is what was desired, would you say no?

Supposedly on the bottom of the shirts is written, “Rocking America and Rocking the Vote”

I haven't seen one for myself yet, so can't say for sure, but for some reason, I can see it happening with this crew.


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/32138

Sorry but the President of the University did nothing to clue his students in on proper behavior. All he had to do was, at the beginning after the students cheered as Obama entered, say something to the effect of stop it and respect the reason they were gathered there and how it was to remember the victims of the tragedy they had just witnessed in their city. If the students respected their University's reputation they would have put an end to the pep rally cheering right from the get go. But he didn't and every time he introduced the next speaker it was apparent he wanted it to be just what it turned out to be, A Liberal Pep Rally.

Anyone that was speaking that night could have said something, but they shouldn't have had to.

And we can't say it was only students that were doing the hooting and hollering either, it was open to anybody.
 
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