The hole in the floor: the burial of bishops in cathedrals October 3, 2011 By Deacon Greg Kandra 6 Comments With Archbishop Philip Hannan’s funeral set for Thursday in New Orleans, the local paper looks at a venerable tradition surrounding the burial of bishops: After his funeral Mass, Hannan’s remains will be lowered into a crypt below the crimson carpet in the sanctuary in front of the altar, where he will lie alongside eight predecessors. Burying the honored dead within churches — or more accurately, building churches atop the remains of honored dead — is an ancient tradition, dating to the earliest days of Christianity, said Monsignor Crosby Kern, the cathedral’s rector. The temporal center of Roman Catholicism, St. Peter’s Basilica, is the most recent of several churches built over the site that tradition holds is the grave of Simon Peter, the fisherman Jesus picked to lead the church. Recent archeology seems to have confirmed that St. Peter’s is, in fact, atop the grave of the apostle. Later, Christians celebrated the Eucharist on the very tombs of the martyred dead, partly in the belief that those dead heroes were “friends of God” who would help carry forward their prayers in heaven, according to Ken Woodward, author of “Making Saints,” an account of the Catholic church’s sanctification process. For centuries, Catholic altars worldwide were required to keep the link between worship and tombs by containing a tiny relic of a saint — perhaps a sliver of bone — making each altar a symbolic tomb, said Monsignor Ken Hedrick of the archdiocese’s Office of Worship. The practice is no longer required, but strongly encouraged, he said. For tens of millions of Christians, the Protestant Reformation eliminated the role of intercessory saints, and dismissed any inclination to draw near to their remains in prayer, in church or elsewhere. But even so, the custom of burial in church is not restricted to Catholicism. The Episcopal Church’s Washington National Cathedral, technically the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and Paul, houses the remains of more than a dozen people, including writer Helen Keller and President Woodrow Wilson. On Thursday, when the public gathers around Hannan’s casket, there likely will be no sign that a grave has been prepared for him a few feet away, Kern said. Earlier, a few workers will have sawn a hole in the sanctuary’s wooden floor, then located an open crypt, one of eight new burial vessels ordered a few years ago by now-retired Archbishop Francis Schulte, Kern said. Flooring and carpet will be replaced for the funeral Mass, leaving nothing amiss, he said.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 23:12:11 +0000
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