Sports anthems and popular songs such as Frank Sinatra's "My Way" have been banned from funerals at more than 200 Australian churches after new orders from Melbourne's archbishop.The edict follows a study that found the signature song for Australian Rules Football team Collingwood was one of the top requests at Melbourne funerals, along with "My Way" and the Bette Midler version of "The Wind Beneath My Wings".
Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart said sports songs were not appropriate for a service which emphasises the solemn nature of death and is not designed as a celebration of the deceased's life.
"Secular items are never to be sung or played at a Catholic funeral, such as romantic ballads, pop or rock music, political songs, football club songs," Hart writes in the new guidelines.
"At the funerals of children... nursery rhymes and sentimental secular songs are inappropriate because these may intensify grief."
The guidelines stress that the wishes of the deceased and their family and friends should be taken into account, but say the Catholic funeral mass is a sacred rite rather than "a secular celebration" of the individual's life.
"In planning the liturgy, the celebrant should moderate any tendency to turn the funeral into a secular celebration of the life of the deceased," they say.
The move in Melbourne, a city that prides itself on its fanatical attachment to Australian Rules Football and where club songs are commonly played at funerals, has received a mixed reaction, a spokesman for the church said.
One parish priest, Father Bob Maguire from South Melbourne, said the move would make it harder to balance the needs of mourners with those of the church.
He told Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper he preferred to see funerals as "family affairs attended by clergy, not a clergymen's affair attended by family".
"I think (the rules) are a bit insensitive to local sensibilities, and a reversal of grassroots Catholic rituals," he said.
Funeral directors said celebrations of the deceased's life were important elements of modern services, and this often involved the playing of football club songs or songs such as Pink Floyd's "The Wall".
"It's important to focus on celebrating the life of the person," managing director of Jensen Funerals in Melbourne, Andrew Pinder, told ABC radio.
A survey conducted by the Herald Sun two years ago found the Collingwood song, "My Way" and "The Wind Beneath My Wings" were funeral favourites, along with Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World" and "Unforgettable" by Nat King Cole.
More unusual choices included Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust", Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and AC/DC's "Highway to Hell", it said.
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