Funeral

    Theological Note on the Funeral of
a Child Dying near the Time of Birth
     
    This Note draws on advice to the Liturgical Commission from the Revd Oliver O'Donovan, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford.
     
    There has been a growing recognition of the need for particular pastoral care for the parents and families of children dying near the time of birth, evidenced by the work of such bodies as the Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society and the publication by the Joint Committee for Hospital Chaplaincy of guidelines in pastoral care: Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Neonatal Death. Part of this pastoral care is the provision of a full Funeral service which recognizes that the sense of loss and need for space and proper words for mourning is as great as with the death of any other person. In addition to this, the use of some of the Resources for the Funeral of a Child in a memorial service after the disposal of the body might especially help those families who have agreed too rapidly to the disposal of the body and afterwards wish for some way of marking the end of their child's life.
          Such deeply felt pastoral needs cannot be met without an awareness of potentially divisive theological questions. The words in the Committal, 'In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life', raise two questions.
          First, is it right to regard an unborn child as a human person, with the capacity for life after death? It would clearly be wrong to hold a Funeral service but to omit these words on the grounds of doubt about whether the corpse was fully human. The decision has already been taken, once it is resolved to hold a Funeral service for a stillbirth, that the parents' grief at this event is to be treated quite seriously as grief at the loss of a child. If we cannot speak of a stillborn child as a human being, then we cannot speak of a stillborn child at all. There is certainly no other status (such as that of an animal or a pet) that we can confidently assign to a nascent human being. The terms 'stillborn' and 'stillbirth' are generally used to refer to the death of children in the womb after the stage of viability has been reached, i.e. for practical legal purposes after twenty-four weeks' gestation, when both current law and current medical practice afford the child full protection as a human being.
          Second, is it right to speak of a 'sure and certain hope' in the case of someone who has not lived outside the womb, and has not been baptized? You cannot baptize someone who is dead: in any case, to do this would open up enormous areas of debate at the other end of the age-scale. Nor is there provision for baptism in utero: not only is it difficult to consider as baptism an event in which water does not touch the person being baptized, it also raises problems about how the decision is taken as to which babies to baptize in this way. It is better to look behind the baptism at the thing signified, namely, in the case of infant baptism, the desire of the parents and the place of the child within the love of God - as one might with an unbaptized child of a few days old. To attribute faith to the dead infant is no more implausible than the assumption made in infant baptism itself. It is possible that this point could be made by requiring the parents to profess that they would have brought the child to baptism had they been able.
          We are right to be cautious about a particular assertion of the individual child's resurrection. The doubt here, which we feel in the case of an adult given burial by charitable assumption, is compounded by slight speculative doubt that attaches to the human individuality of the child and also by the fact that the child is unbaptized. None of these factors is decisive; however, each detracts in a slight measure from the confidence with which we can assert that this individual will be raised on the last day. The actual text of the Committal, however, does stop short of this assertion. It says that we commit the child's body to the ground in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life. This allows us to claim the significance of the resurrection for our bereavement without dictating precisely to God in what form the resurrection is to restore to us that which we have lost. Surely, this is the correct way to lay hold on the hope of the resurrection, not only in the case of stillborn children but every time that we are bewildered by the mystery of the individual personality and the hiddenness of its destiny.
          Those who conduct such services will need to be loving and sensitive, in using the texts as tools at their disposal in giving pastoral help, talking with parents about which prayers they particularly identify with, discovering if there is a name by which parents know their child, facing with them the definiteness of death which such a service marks. No apology is needed for facing the theological questions, because pastoral help cannot realistically be given on the basis of a general lovingness which has doubts or a bad conscience about the words used, but only on the basis of a clear faith in our dead and risen Saviour, Jesus Christ.