By Ben Agbo (Rev Fr)
In the recent times, the Social media has been awash with reflections on Burial Clearance in the South Eastern part of Nigeria, especially sequel to vituperative indictments from no lesser celebrities than the likes of Fr Mbaka and Chimamanda Adichie. I just want to quickly draw our attention to a few realities to avoid the danger of many of us operating from Plato’s world of ideas:
1. The ideal thing is that burial is not the best time to collect levies from relatives of deceased members. It often looks callous and brutal. The ideal situation is when there is no levy at all for anything and people give freely in the Church according to their resources. But the defacto situation is that the ‘psychology of compliance’ of an average South Eastern Christian is very low. In this part of the world, people generally do things when there is a clear punishment for defaulters.
2. Facing this reality of the sociocultural aspects of Christianity (especially Catholicism) in Igbo land, the Church is seen more as an extension of other social institutions that implement debt collection as modus operandi. When the bereaved must have to pay even their own kindred (Umunna) all the debt owed by their deceased relations before even the grave diggers may be allowed to do their job, it becomes preposterous to expect a different treatment from the Church which constitute of virtually the same people.
3. There is a plethora of economic pressures on an average Parish Priest in the South Eastern part of Nigeria. He has serious bills to pay such as arising from Diocesan budgets, Deanery budgets, Cathedraticum and other Parish projects. He is seen as a failure even by his own bishop once he doesn’t deliver at the Centre and also do one or two Parish projects. He therefore panders into the whims and caprices of a socio – economic network that may sometimes not tally with his conscience/ moral philosophy.
Burial Clearance is one of such pressures because the Zonal executive will make you realize that once you don’t allow them collect such levies then you are on your own because you may have less than 10% compliance from your Parishioners.
4. The theological problematique here is that burying the dead is supposed to be a corporal work of mercy. Besides, Canon law stipulates that except on situations of apostasy or the scandal of grievous sinful condition, baptized Christians are not supposed to be denied a Funeral Mass. Determining who has apostatized or whose sinful condition is scandalous or not becomes the prerogative of the Parish Priest who still depends on the same Zonal leaders for information. This is why clearance in the form of dues seem to become a serious parameter for determining active participation. Many priests resort to Full Christian Burial (Mass + Interment + other funeral solidarity) for active members and Partial Christian Burial (Mass + Interment minus other funeral solidarity) or in some cases where the diseased has lost faith in the Eucharist (Interment minus other funeral solidarity).
5. My suggestion is that the spirituality of freewill donation (in form of tithe, barzaar, special thanksgivings, AMC, Ordination levies, etc) be well documented in a Parish structure and other parameters of checking active participation be expedited to ensure that Parish priests don’t end up becoming mere undertakers of every Dick and Harry that dies in the name of compassion. Yet, poor but active Christians would not be victimized by humongous post humous taxations. Justice must never be sacrificed at the altar of compassion and vice versa.
