The John-Henry Westen Show - COVID, death & dying - Memoirs of a funeral director

00:00:00.000 One person specifically told me that they actually had to almost stand a person up,

00:00:05.980 like buckle them into the table and almost stand them up just to get cloths out.

00:00:18.640 Hey, my friends, I've been waiting to do this report for a long time.

00:00:22.280 Have you seen those reports in, they were part of movies and things we've seen?

00:00:28.320 Never in the mainstream media, though.

00:00:30.360 Embalmers talking about blood clots, post-vaccine, seemingly related to the vaccine.

00:00:37.560 Massive blood clots they've never seen before, this fibrous stuff.

00:00:41.760 The problem is, you don't see it on the mainstream media at all.

00:00:46.440 It's such huge news, you'd think that it would be everywhere, but it's nowhere.

00:00:52.160 So then, can you really trust it?

00:00:55.220 That's always been a hard question.

00:00:56.620 And at LifeSite, we always try and give you what is the truth.

00:01:00.000 We always try and verify.

00:01:01.840 But for a long time, we couldn't, until now.

00:01:05.800 We've been able to get to a funeral director that we know, who is faithful,

00:01:10.900 who is actually a graduate of Christendom College, and she was able to corroborate this for us.

00:01:18.700 These blood clots, massive blood clots that are going on in being seen in cadavers post-vaccination, etc.

00:01:28.020 In addition, she was able to corroborate, as a funeral director, the massive spike in miscarriages during the rollout of the vaccine.

00:01:38.980 In addition, Antonia Cummings, the funeral director, is going to talk to us about how to deal properly with burial, burial of your loved ones.

00:01:51.000 And in today's day and age, you have a lot of people who, their children aren't practicing faith anymore, don't want to even have a funeral, don't want to have a proper burial.

00:02:00.760 What do you do about that?

00:02:01.900 Can you ensure that?

00:02:02.640 Yes, you can.

00:02:03.260 And there's some amazing points here.

00:02:06.260 Finally, a situation that I've sadly experienced myself, is where a hospital, after a miscarriage, won't give you the body of your baby back for burial.

00:02:16.640 They say, no, no, no, it's hazardous biomedical waste, as a doctor, no kidding, told my wife.

00:02:22.940 And we had to fight to get the body of our baby back for burial.

00:02:26.220 So, this is an amazing show, because Antonia Cummings, funeral director, faithful Catholic, is going to share all of that with us, and more.

00:02:36.620 Stay tuned for this episode of The John Henry Weston Show.

00:02:41.240 Hello, friends.

00:02:42.280 To celebrate the momentous overturning of Roe v. Wade, we at LifeSite have minted just under 10,000 of these brand new, limited edition, pro-life silver rounds.

00:02:50.640 Now, each round is stamped with the image of the Supreme Court of the United States, featuring the date that the High Court delivered this historic victory.

00:02:58.700 And on the front of our pure silver rounds, LifeSite's logo, surrounded by a brilliant sunburst and draped with olive branches.

00:03:04.400 They, of course, commemorate our 25-year anniversary of LifeSite News.

00:03:07.800 We began in 1997 in September.

00:03:10.600 So, September of 2022 was 25 years.

00:03:12.940 These one-ounce silver rounds are available from our partners at stjosephspartners.com, where you can fulfill all of your silver and gold needs in this perilous time.

00:03:22.620 May God bless you.

00:03:26.160 Antonia Cummings, welcome to the program.

00:03:28.540 Thank you so much for having me, John Henry.

00:03:30.380 I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me today.

00:03:33.840 Praise God.

00:03:34.420 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:03:37.440 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

00:03:41.260 Amen.

00:03:42.940 So, Antonia, a young lady like yourself, involved in this business, what many people would call macabre, what in the world got you into being a funeral director?

00:03:55.100 So, I originally had never had any intention of becoming a funeral director.

00:04:01.700 I was actually looking into becoming a registered nurse while getting my theology degree at Christendom College.

00:04:07.340 And it was my sophomore year where I had the experience of losing two friends in my age group.

00:04:15.080 They weren't Christendom students, but we had worked together through high school and had remained close.

00:04:21.220 They would even come visit me on campus sometimes.

00:04:23.240 And they were both very sudden deaths, things that are true acts of God, not really understandable in the moment.

00:04:32.720 But their deaths really impacted me in a good way because attending their funerals is really where I felt a calling to become a funeral director.

00:04:42.200 And it's really the only time in my life where I can honestly say I felt like I heard the Holy Spirit.

00:04:47.280 People will say they feel like they hear the Holy Spirit talk to them.

00:04:50.960 And I always kind of wondered what that would be like.

00:04:52.800 But it was just extremely clear to me that that's what I was called to do.

00:04:57.260 So I was very blessed to actually get to ask the funeral director who took care of my friends if I could shadow him.

00:05:06.020 And he was kind enough to let me do that and really made me understand that this is not just a job.

00:05:13.200 It's a ministry and a way of life and that it was going to be hard.

00:05:18.080 But if I loved it and really loved the people I'd be taking care of, that it would be very rewarding.

00:05:23.360 And he was right about all those things.

00:05:25.780 So I've been in the funeral business now for about eight years or ministry, as I call it.

00:05:32.840 And I never looked back from sophomore year of college with this as my goal.

00:05:37.780 So I graduated and 10 days later was in mortuary school.

00:05:41.940 And people say you can't use your theology degree in the world.

00:05:45.100 But it actually transferred right into mortuary school and actually cut a whole year off of my education.

00:05:51.680 So it made the process very simple and I use it every day.

00:05:55.280 So I'm very thankful to have that liberal arts background with theology being the main focus and applying that to funeral directing today.

00:06:03.140 Amazing.

00:06:04.340 So who would have thought that your now chosen profession would be so controversial?

00:06:12.320 We are in the midst of a place where the church even is giving strange advice to people.

00:06:20.960 I'd like to get into that first because it's so controversial nowadays, this issue of being recommended to cremate rather than bury.

00:06:30.400 And I know there's church teaching on that that I'd love you to give us because this is so frequent nowadays.

00:06:34.880 It's priests telling people, oh, we don't want to pollute the environment.

00:06:38.560 So, you know, cremation is so much more friendly to the environment.

00:06:42.520 What's the actual church teaching?

00:06:45.700 The actual church teaching is that it is allowed, but it is not the preferred method for final disposition.

00:06:53.000 And the reasons behind it not being preferred method of final disposition are some people might say immediately, oh, like, because it's a pagan practice or because it's not something that happened to Christ himself.

00:07:08.740 When he died, he wasn't cremated.

00:07:10.380 And those are true things, that those are traditional aspects of why we don't prefer cremation.

00:07:17.020 But there are actually a lot of other reasons why the church in its wisdom specifically says it's the second of the two options, essentially.

00:07:25.760 And I've come into contact with those reasons in a very intimate way many times being in the career I'm in.

00:07:34.420 So I'd be happy to kind of go over some of those things with you if you like.

00:07:37.860 Please.

00:07:38.100 Okay, so one of the things about cremation that is often disputed is that, okay, it's green, according to the public, or more affordable.

00:07:52.140 And really, as studies have been coming out more and more, it's really not as good for the environment as people are saying, which is, of course, shocking, right?

00:08:01.240 I mean, why would we not be excited about tons of heat being put out into the world right now when people are arguing that global warming is such an issue?

00:08:10.760 It produces a lot of heat, and it really is not as affordable as people may think it is initially, because it's starting to go up in price as more and more people select cremation to off-site costs that funeral homes incur no matter what, cremation is going to continue to go up.

00:08:29.780 So it'll eventually end up being the same price as burial.

00:08:32.500 So the church, in its wisdom, says that if you are cremated, that you should be permanently placed in a grave somewhere, not only so that people can remember to pray for the dead and visit their loved ones,

00:08:47.140 but it's actually very practical because a lot of people, when they choose cremation, it's very easy to go through the grieving process and then just kind of step away from the situation and just separate yourself completely from the loss.

00:09:02.600 A lot of people aren't handling their grief very well these days, probably from a lack of connection to our Lord and their faith and just hope in general, but also it's just really easy with cremation.

00:09:16.040 And you can have the cremation take place, and maybe you don't have the money yet for the cemetery property, so it's easy to just leave your loved one's ashes at the funeral home for an indefinite period of time.

00:09:26.840 So my experience is that we have shelves upon shelves and cages and safes full of urns that sometimes people don't claim for years.

00:09:37.680 And a lot of the time, we can't get a hold of family after a certain period of time, and we're stuck with many unclaimed people.

00:09:46.040 So I think it's very amazing that the church prudently understands that it would be very easy for people to just forget about their loved ones after they're cremated and leave them behind.

00:09:57.820 And eventually, too, people who end up taking their urn home but never end up buying a cemetery plot, what ends up happening is they have multiple family members that have been in their homes, and they pass away themselves.

00:10:14.460 And the grandchildren don't remember grandma and grandpa or aunt and uncle so-and-so, and they don't know what to do with these urns.

00:10:21.640 So a lot of times when the estate sale happens or the storage unit gets cleaned out, those urns end up in a landfill.

00:10:30.060 So I've actually been part of some funeral director projects where we've actually been able to recover some urns from landfills.

00:10:39.240 But it's really very sad, this entire generation of people that have essentially been lost because they're not placed somewhere that is dignified or a place to honor their genealogy and their family heritage.

00:10:53.680 And it's just sad to see that people are not respecting the dead the way they used to.

00:10:59.320 And I think cremation, that makes it just so simple to not have to think about it or respect the dead.

00:11:07.040 So one of the other issues that you deal with is something that impacted my life.

00:11:15.420 Today, many hospitals that you would go to for help when you're having a pregnancy or miscarriage, the doctors, some of them abortionists, or at least they perform abortions.

00:11:29.320 They don't regard the child in the womb as a child.

00:11:33.060 So my wife was in the situation where we had a child who was lost in miscarriage and she asked the doctor for the body of the baby and he refused.

00:11:43.400 He says, it's a biomedical waste and, you know, it's hazardous.

00:11:51.300 So you can't have it.

00:11:52.620 And so we had to go through a sort of fight for the body of our child back and so on.

00:11:59.240 And eventually it was agreed to after they could do whatever investigation they had to do.

00:12:04.980 But many parents are going through this nowadays.

00:12:07.640 And you help parents navigate through those waters.

00:12:11.560 What do you do?

00:12:12.080 That's an issue that I've been running into in particular, very, it's been a lot lately.

00:12:20.020 We've had a lot of families, especially Catholic families who've suffered a lot of miscarriages recently.

00:12:25.660 I'm very sorry that you and your wife have been through that experience, unfortunately.

00:12:28.980 One of my friends recently had a miscarriage and the hospital was saying the same thing.

00:12:35.500 They weren't going to give the baby back.

00:12:37.620 And the baby was still in the room in a container by the bedside.

00:12:42.540 And the father called me and said, I just ran out of the hospital with my baby.

00:12:47.320 What do I do now?

00:12:48.600 Because he was worried that they were just going to take the baby off and not give the baby back.

00:12:53.740 So I ended up being able to help them get all the necessary documentation to be able to have their baby buried at a cemetery because you need, it's not considered a death certificate when a baby passes away.

00:13:07.680 If they have not taken a breath, it's considered a fetal demise certificate.

00:13:11.580 And in these cases, a lot of the times doctors are unwilling to fill those out because they're not willing to state that this is indeed a baby that deserves to have rights of burial.

00:13:22.500 So I'm able to, at least in Virginia and D.C., do what's called a manual fetal death certificate and get that filed with the local health department and be able to make it so that these families can bury their babies in a public cemetery.

00:13:40.080 I've gone up to bat for a number of families with hospitals that are withholding a baby from the family and been able to get the necessary release to go and take these babies into my care.

00:13:50.940 I've gone into the delivery room and taken the baby myself if that made the hospital more comfortable with the situation.

00:13:58.160 It really just depends on the hospital and the staff member at the time, essentially.

00:14:03.240 But it is perfectly legal to take your baby's remains home and do whatever it is that you would like to do because since there's no death certificate, a lot of the legal process is not as difficult as if they had taken a breath and then you have to go through a death certificate process through a funeral home.

00:14:23.420 So one of my ministries that I like to do a lot is to help families figure out what they can do or what they can afford for their baby to be buried.

00:14:33.560 You can have your baby buried in your own yard, at a church property.

00:14:39.640 There just aren't as many legal issues with burying a baby that has a fetal certificate versus a death certificate.

00:14:47.280 So that's something that priests reach out to me all the time for families who are at hospitals going through these battles.

00:14:53.840 Now, you give talks at seminaries for priests to be able to understand what it is they need to know.

00:15:03.680 What what do you cover there with them?

00:15:07.220 So I was recently able to go to St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, which was an amazing experience.

00:15:13.520 They have 14 seminaries that are being ordained this year and the rector was kind enough to have me.

00:15:19.720 So what I did was I put together a book for them with terminology that they're going to find useful when they come into contact with families who've either already experienced a loss or they've been called to give last rights to someone.

00:15:34.020 And I wanted them to have that terminology just because they're going to run into a lot of things that maybe they haven't heard about, like water cremation or heat cremation or a graveliner or caskets, whatever it is that they're going to have to have people asking them questions about.

00:15:49.420 And I just thought it would be helpful for them to be familiar with that.

00:15:51.840 And then I specifically put together for them the Catholic version, so to speak, of cremation, where if you are going to have cremation, here are some things you can do to make it a little bit more in line with the church's teachings, such as having a wake so that people have an opportunity to acknowledge a death, acknowledge mortality, be able to see their loved one one last time in the image of God,

00:16:19.900 even if it's not with the likeness because the soul has left the body, because I do believe that's very important for people, especially as part of the grieving process, to actually identify someone that does not look like themselves as they remember,

00:16:34.100 but actually identify that there is something inherently different about them after they've passed away and their soul has left their body,

00:16:39.940 and to be able to start healing in a way that's healthy and take those steps in grief.

00:16:47.220 A lot of people just don't know that if you have cremation, you can still have a wake with a body present, and a lot of funeral homes offer what's called a rental casket,

00:17:01.760 so you're able to do that fairly affordably, and then have the funeral mass with the body in the casket present.

00:17:10.480 A lot of Catholics don't realize that a funeral mass is only able to be said one time, and the body has to be present,

00:17:17.940 and while you can't have a funeral mass with an urn, you're not able to have the pall placed on an urn,

00:17:23.960 which is the unified symbol of baptism for all baptized Christians, and because an urn is not the image of God,

00:17:32.960 it's an urn with ashes in it, you cannot have a pall on an urn, you can only have a pall on a casket with a full body present.

00:17:41.140 So I encourage a lot of Catholics to do that, and then of course the cremation will have to take place, 1.00

00:17:47.140 so you're not going to have a burial right away, but at least you'll have been able to have that closure from a wake,

00:17:54.240 and then a funeral mass with the body present, and then down the road, hopefully within a week at the most,

00:18:00.200 have an internment with a priest present to bless the grave and give the final committal service.

00:18:07.500 So I broke down all the different variations of cremation, like best to worst essentially for them,

00:18:14.960 and gave them a rundown of what all of that is, and then I went on to address burial rites with a casket,

00:18:23.460 and how they're going to come across a lot of families that are going to say that they're not Catholic anymore,

00:18:30.000 and so they really don't need to remember their loved one one last time in a way that just isn't settling,

00:18:35.780 that they don't want to have a funeral mass because it will be uncomfortable for them to have to go

00:18:41.020 and stay behind while everyone else goes to communion, or whatever the issue is for them.

00:18:48.600 And I just encourage these priests to remember that not only are we fighting for the soul of the person who's passed away,

00:18:54.220 just like we fight for the unborn children, we are fighting for the souls of people who no longer can speak, 0.96

00:19:00.380 because practicing Catholics deserve to have those funeral rites and those opportunities for people to pray for them.

00:19:07.620 But something that I think we neglect to think about is that this is an opportunity to really evangelize people.

00:19:14.160 Even though we live in a culture of death, we don't really meditate on death very much for ourselves.

00:19:21.260 We don't meditate on our mortality and meditate on end things.

00:19:25.800 It's just much easier to sweep all of this under the carpet and focus on celebrations of life and parties

00:19:32.480 and things that are kind of flash in the pan fixes for the grief that we're feeling.

00:19:38.100 I'm all for a good Irish Catholic wake.

00:19:41.700 You can have a big party and have a great time.

00:19:45.320 I mean, I encourage in-home wakes with people having glasses of wine and toasting the person that's passed on.

00:19:53.880 But there's that element of facing the death head on.

00:19:57.940 You're celebrating their life, but you're acknowledging mortality and you're preparing for the holy rite of a funeral mass.

00:20:04.820 And it's just much more full circle wholesome than maybe a celebration of life would be.

00:20:09.720 I think that sometimes as Catholics, we can maybe think it's all rigid and there's no joy in this.

00:20:17.720 But for me, funerals are incredibly joyful.

00:20:21.200 And the rigidity, as they call it, is really in order to help start the healing process.

00:20:28.740 And something that we've all seen is mental illness on the rise since COVID.

00:20:34.260 And especially in the funeral ministry, I've seen a lot of people really suffering with mental illnesses,

00:20:40.480 not only from the seclusion that COVID produced, but truly an illness of just grief sickness.

00:20:48.360 They never got over the death.

00:20:50.520 Years later, they're still facing this sense of loss.

00:20:54.460 Maybe they didn't get to say goodbye because their loved one died in the hospital alone, going through all this guilt.

00:20:59.900 They didn't get the support they needed from friends and family after the loss.

00:21:04.400 And they're still, to this day, just not able to cope.

00:21:08.620 I unfortunately have recently had a couple of people who lost someone in 2020 and actually just lost their own lives from their own hands,

00:21:19.260 from just still not being able to cope from the grief.

00:21:21.320 So, the unspoken deaths that COVID took are, so many of them are just truly depression and all the other things that came from COVID.

00:21:34.460 So, I'm a very strong believer in the church's teachings for Catholic funeral rites.

00:21:39.920 People like to say all the time that the Catholic church is not in line with science.

00:21:43.820 I beg to disagree because the science shows that people need a grieving process and they need order.

00:21:51.940 And that's proven in all kinds of scientific studies.

00:21:56.460 So, I think it's pretty amazing that we have this series of funeral rites, a wake, a funeral mass, a committal, and maybe a reception or some kind of a celebration.

00:22:06.280 But all of those things are in line with a true good step process for healing after a grief.

00:22:14.920 So, those are some things I covered with seminarians.

00:22:19.700 I went on to all the different ways they can save money with burial, especially.

00:22:26.240 How to put together your own family cemetery if you can't afford to buy property at a public cemetery.

00:22:32.520 There are just so many resources to make this affordable.

00:22:36.460 It's just a matter of facing the issue of mortality and being willing to have those conversations as a family and how to make that work for you.

00:22:44.900 Amazing.

00:22:46.000 One of those issues that you mentioned is very severe today.

00:22:48.940 Because there are, unfortunately, a lot of young people, middle-aged people, whatever, who no longer practice faith and don't see the value, as they might say, in terms of a funeral.

00:23:05.040 Oh, it costs money and we can just, you know, burn the body, get rid of it and not worry about it.

00:23:10.440 No funeral needed.

00:23:11.040 How do parents of older children who are themselves, you know, nearing their death, ensure that they get a funeral?

00:23:23.020 No, that's a really great question.

00:23:24.940 And COVID is really what made me start asking that question as well.

00:23:28.240 Because a lot of people had essentially a pre-arrangement for funeral services.

00:23:36.080 But COVID came and the kids came in and us next of kin said, we're not doing any of this.

00:23:42.440 We're not doing a wake.

00:23:43.300 We're not doing a funeral mass.

00:23:44.360 We're not doing anything that was even prepaid for.

00:23:47.340 Like money wasn't an issue.

00:23:48.580 They just decided they didn't want to do it.

00:23:50.620 So they broke it all down to a direct cremation.

00:23:55.460 So that really made me start thinking, like, what can we do to help protect Catholic families from this situation?

00:24:02.140 And what I ended up deciding to do is to go back to school, essentially, and become a not only licensed funeral director, but also licensed insurance agent and start working with an estate lawyer to learn what we could do to ensure this would happen for Catholic families.

00:24:20.160 So depending on the area of the country that you're in, there might be some variations.

00:24:26.360 But in Virginia and D.C., if you pre-arrange for your funeral services and you've prepaid them, you have an option to make them irrevocable, which means that the money that you've put in has no cash value.

00:24:40.380 It can't be canceled.

00:24:41.680 So there really is no reason not to have the services because the money is either going to be used or it's not.

00:24:49.900 So that's kind of a very simple fix to the issue.

00:24:55.520 Another one is that you can actually put together in your will a designation form where people have designated someone who's not maybe a family member, maybe someone who you trust, like a friend.

00:25:10.740 We can't choose our family, but you can choose your friends or even a lawyer if you don't have a good friend group that's young enough to be able to handle these things for you.

00:25:18.620 But what I do is I put together these designation forms along with an estate planning lawyer to have someone in place to essentially act as a morality trustee to make sure that these things happen.

00:25:31.080 And designation forms are specifically just for rights of disposition, kind of like a medical power of attorney is just for your medical power to be able to make decisions on your behalf if you're ill or financial power of attorney on behalf of your finances.

00:25:45.840 So a designation form is a really simple and inexpensive fix for that.

00:25:50.960 The more detailed, the better.

00:26:20.940 The more detailed, the better.

00:26:21.940 The better.

00:26:22.940 The better.

00:26:23.940 The better.

00:26:24.940 The better.

00:26:25.940 The better.

00:26:26.940 The better.

00:26:29.940 And the better.

00:26:30.940 The better.

00:26:31.940 And the better.

00:26:32.940 The better.

00:26:33.940 The better.

00:26:34.940 And the better.

00:26:35.940 The better.

00:26:36.940 And the better.

00:26:37.940 And the better.

00:26:38.940 The better.

00:26:39.940 And Mamma great Dave and if you're finding it even more important at this position, yet, you know what yourself.

00:26:44.940 Of course, some states are contesting morality clauses for different things, but I would hope that at least for morality clauses in regards to your final disposition rights, that those will continue to be protected for now.

00:26:57.120 So that's something that I'm specifically working on with families is prearranging your funeral services and getting them in connection with a good Catholic estate planning lawyer and making sure they have a designee that is a practicing Catholic or at least someone who really truly is there for them to value what they want, regardless of their own beliefs.

00:27:21.660 Hmm. It's hard to have to talk about these things, but it's obviously a reality that is affecting people nowadays.

00:27:30.060 I wanted to ask you, too, about your work during COVID. What happened during COVID as a funeral director? What did you see going?

00:27:39.960 Yeah, that's a great question. So when COVID first came on the scene, or at least on our scene in the East Coast in March of 2020, we didn't really know what to expect like everyone else.

00:27:54.780 So we were kind of all hands on deck ready to go. We, at least in Virginia and D.C. area, we had a couple of spikes, so to speak, but we didn't have the floodgates that some people talked about in New York and California.

00:28:10.580 Um, so it was kind of an interesting experience because people would be asking me regularly, like, are you just swamped? Like, what's going on over there? Um, but once we found out that COVID wasn't transmittable from a deceased person, which was pretty early on, um, I wasn't really completely sure why we were as concerned as we were sometimes.

00:28:31.060 Um, I'm blessed to work for a company that, um, does not require the vaccine. They were, um, once they knew that masks weren't that helpful, um, they didn't really uphold that. So I really had the best experience I possibly could as far as COVID goes in the workplace. Um, but really March of 2020, August of 2020, um, I don't want to speak wrong here,

00:28:59.460 but I think there were only two other months in 2021 where we had a so-called spike, but to be completely honest, um, the spikes that we saw in death numbers, if you track them and what they were and categorize them, yes, we had some people that were, um, supposedly COVID deaths. I had a number of those, um, where the family said my, I was never told my loved one had COVID.

00:29:22.620 And I went back to the doctors and I went back to the doctors and asked about that. And a couple of them changed the cause of death for me to whatever it actually was. So I was, I was very blessed in that area as well. I had a number of families that I was able to do that for, I think at least six. And then, um, some of them just brushed it off and said, well, maybe they did. I don't know. They were in a nursing home. So it's quite possible, but we had, we did have those experiences.

00:29:48.620 And then, um, the spikes in the deaths, if you looked at them and we looked at all the causes of death, because we do send in a report to the health department at the end of every month with those. And you look at that report, the spikes were, um, miscarriages, heart attacks. Um, we did have a lot of pneumonia cases and, um, random people who committed suicide.

00:30:15.620 So the spikes weren't actually the deaths that we would have thought were causing the spike. So the spike months we had were just a giant hodgepodge of other things. They weren't just COVID deaths. So that was interesting. And, um, I actually talked to some of my colleagues about that. Like, what do you, what do you think about that? Isn't it strange that we've had.

00:30:37.620 Dozens of babies pass away recently. And even they couldn't deny that instead, like, yeah, this is really weird. Like we've been funeral directors for almost 30 years, never seen a month like this, where we've had almost a baby for each day of the month. Like that was a reality for a couple months in 2020 and 2021. It's definitely slowed down.

00:30:59.560 Um, but the spike months we had, um, but the spike months we had, had lots of heart attacks, lots of strokes, lots of pneumonia and lots of miscarriages. So I don't think that one of the things I meant to, I meant to ask you was, and I don't know if you've been involved directly in this, but during this whole thing, particularly as the vaccinations got going, there were reports from embalmers all over the place regarding clotting.

00:31:26.660 I don't know if you came across any of that.

00:31:31.220 Yeah, no, I had a lot of people come up to me about that as well. So I, I am a licensed embalmer. Um, I kind of transitioned away from that in 2019. So unfortunately I wasn't a heavily involved in that side of things. Um, a couple of my colleagues who are kind of on the same page as me, I went to them and asked them, what are you seeing? Like what's going on? And they were very frank with me that

00:31:56.660 Normally when you embalm someone, you only have to have the head and the feet at a slight angle, feet being maybe five inches lower than where the head is at on the embalming table.

00:32:09.380 And that's for natural reasons, gravity to be able to let water and everything that we're doing to cleanse the body, go down into a drain. And, um, one person specifically told me that they actually had to almost stand a person up, like buckle them into the table and almost stand them up just to get cloths out.

00:32:30.980 And that they thought that was very unusual. And we are on the same page on most things. So I ended up going to another source for another funeral director that I'm close with, but we're not necessarily on the same page with things. And they also said that they'd had very odd clots and that, um, they were all kinds of textures that we weren't used to. And I, I was an embalmer for four years.

00:32:54.880 So I was able to really discuss with them, like, well, were they sinewy? Were they like coffee grounds? Were they really long? And we were kind of, um, just having a, a trade conversation about like, yeah, remember the time we had, I had one that came out that was three inches long and they were saying, oh no, like I'm having 12 inch long clots.

00:33:15.240 So we were kind of just having a trade conversation. Like we would have had when I was an embalmer and kind of asking for tips and tricks essentially. And they were saying, no, there, there is something different about the issues that I'm dealing with. So I can't say I've seen it firsthand, but I was able to go to people that I trust and ask them on what their experiences have been when people were asking me about it.

00:33:38.840 Hmm. That's amazing. Corroboratory evidence for us. Cause that's, it's one of the things, I mean, you see everything on the internet and you're like, he looks beautiful. I don't know what to believe anymore. You know, cause there's so much doubt out there. So thank you. Thank you for that. Um, is there something you can tell us? I don't know if you, you know it at all, but have you experienced, uh, a difference from a, a funeral done in a more traditional sort of, uh, right?

00:34:08.180 Traditional Catholic right versus a Nova sort of right. Have you noticed any differences that way?

00:34:14.260 That is a great question. Um, so I've had the honor of doing two pretty incredible traditional Latin right funerals that, I mean, I was really excited about them because from beginning to end, they were everything that I would ever want my own funeral to be. They had an in-home wake. Um, they had zoned their property for a burial on their property, which I was able to help them get someone to clear

00:34:38.180 out the property and get someone from the health department to come out and zone the property so they could be buried there. Um, they had a beautiful black Paul. They had all black vestments. They had a beautiful, um, school. Uh, everything was just beautiful. And it was a very emotional thing for me. And I would think it was an emotional thing for other people, um, to be there because it was just so beautiful. Um, it was an all night wake candle lit. People were having wine. Um, there was the sense of

00:35:08.020 true reverence for the person who passed away. Um, but also just this sense of really celebrating who they were, their legacy that they left behind that the person had actually, um, had a conversion on their deathbed. So it was a really neat thing for the family because they really wanted this for them. And they actually converted right before they passed away and had last rights. So, um, it was just, it was, it really was like a true celebration. Um, and then this,

00:35:37.800 it's beautiful reverence for the mortality and, um, the rights that we've been known for as Christians since Christ died because before we were known as Christians, we were known as a burial society. So this really is a keystone of our faith that we really have to protect. So seeing the Latin right is always amazing and I do love it and it's beautiful.

00:35:57.740 And I also had the honor of taking care of two children who passed away very tragically. And they were able to receive not only the Latin right, but the Latin right of the Holy Innocence, which is a whole superpower mass in itself. Um, so being involved in that and seeing that was really in some ways, just kind of a historical moment because it was kind of at the cusp of things, maybe, um, becoming more.

00:36:23.740 More unavailable, I guess is the best way of putting it. Um, but I do think that the Latin mass has a intrinsic power that is palpable and, um, it's beautiful and it's ordered.

00:36:39.740 And those are all things that are slowly becoming more and more difficult to come into contact with in our society. So absolutely the Latin mass is in many ways more powerful for a funeral right than any other. And I'm sure that it has spiritual effects for the soul of the person who's passed away, protecting them from any kind of, um, demonic presences amongst, um, their fight essentially for, to leave purgatory and enter heaven.

00:37:07.380 And so I think that that's a beautiful opportunity if anyone can do that for their loved one. Um, as far as the Novus Ordo mass goes, um, it really depends on the priest and the congregation.

00:37:18.680 I mean, I've seen some funeral masses that are just really sad because nobody goes up to communion and the priest kind of, it's just awkwardly standing there waiting to see what's going to happen.

00:37:31.800 And the eulogies are a little shaky, which there's nothing wrong with not necessarily knowing what to say when someone's passed. That's a normal reaction, but just this kind of timidity of mortality, it's like people just don't want to face anything about it.

00:37:48.060 So it can be very sad because a lot of times the Novus Ordo mass, um, I found a lot of people are not necessarily as, um, ardent in their belief of the resurrection and their, their feelings of hope.

00:38:00.360 So, um, I don't want to dissuade people from a Novus Ordo funeral mass because I've definitely had them where the families are very ardent and the priest gives an incredible homily.

00:38:12.100 And the organist and the soloist do a beautiful job and those experiences do happen.

00:38:18.760 I think that the key to that is, um, while we're in a time where maybe we can't have a Latin rite funeral mass as commonly as we can, the Novus Ordo, um, I think participation as lay people can make all the difference.

00:38:33.540 Um, the corporal work of mercy of bearing the dead and spiritual work of mercy of praying for the dead, um, go hand in hand.

00:38:41.080 When you attend a funeral mass and maybe you of course are there present praying for the deceased, but you can act as a pallbearer.

00:38:49.080 Um, little baby girls can throw flower petals in front of the casket as they walk to the graveside to participate at a young age and learning how to pray and participate in burying the dead.

00:39:00.680 Um, you can have people singing as you process out of the church to the hearse and then at the cemetery site.

00:39:06.900 I encourage families to write letters to their loved one, maybe forgiving them for something that they've been harboring some kind of angst against them or just saying how much they're going to miss them at whatever event they were looking forward to, um, being present with them and putting that in the casket with them or cremating it with them or whatever it is they're doing.

00:39:25.900 Um, and just kind of, um, releasing any soul ties that they have that are negative with the person, but also strengthening the ones that are good.

00:39:34.640 So I think participation of the lay people in funeral rights is really what's missing and what's going to help reawaken, um, Catholic funeral rights, which really need to make a comeback.

00:39:48.260 Um, if I ever got a chance to talk to Pope Francis about something, that would definitely be the first thing I talked about because I think that if we can change, um, the culture of death to a culture of life, I think that facing mortality in a healthy way is really where we need to start because then we'll be able to identify what life is and the value of life and be able to live it well.

00:40:10.140 So that we can be able to live it well so that we can be able to live it well so that we can die well.

00:40:12.360 Absolutely. Beautiful.

00:40:13.080 You know, one last thing I wanted to ask you about, and that was just the, the idea you, you had mentioned there, the, um, that the Christians were known as the burial people, uh, explain that a little bit more, but also the, the concept of sacred ground.

00:40:29.800 Yeah. So, um, historically, um, it was unusual when Christ died to be buried, um, mainly because it was,

00:40:40.140 it was expensive. Not everyone could afford a cave. And the reality is that, um, burying deep enough was very difficult because, um, the ground is hard there. It's, it didn't have the proper equipment and burying meant that they had to make sure that animals weren't going to get to their loved ones' bodies. That's just practical information.

00:41:00.500 And so the Romans and other people, um, that weren't Christian or Jewish at the time were doing other things like water burial or, um, pyres or other things.

00:41:12.340 So it became very well known that these crazy people were always burying their dead, no matter what it meant that they had to do to make it happen.

00:41:21.540 And so they became known as a burial society before they became known as followers of Christ, because that's what people identified them as was these people that always buried their dead.

00:41:31.260 And that they had, um, um, some traditions that came with them from their Jewish backgrounds and they followed some rights of the old Testament, but they were incorporating this, um, hope that Christ had brought from the resurrection and burying their dead and, um, assuming that there would be a resurrection and that this wasn't the end and respecting their dead in a way that made their bodies sacred.

00:41:55.540 So they, um, so they, um, um, they, um, became well known for that.

00:41:59.400 And as far as, um, sacred ground goes, um, of course it is preferable to be able to be buried in a Catholic cemetery that has been blessed and consecrated.

00:42:12.720 Unfortunately, a lot of dioceses either have their cemeteries completely full or there just simply isn't one.

00:42:18.980 Um, so a lot of cemeteries nowadays have a Catholic section, which as long as the cemetery is not designated under a particular title that would go against our teachings completely, like, um, just as an example, maybe a Wiccan cemetery that's specifically dedicated to nature or something like that.

00:42:39.260 There's no reason why you can't be buried in a cemetery, um, that has a Catholic section, or you can have your plot or grave specifically dedicated, um, to Christ by a priest.

00:42:53.040 So, um, I do have options for families for that, but my personal favorite option for consecrated ground, if you don't have a diocesan Catholic cemetery is to maybe go in with a family and continue that tradition of being a burial society.

00:43:08.700 And buying a piece of land in a rural area and having it deeded as a private non-profit cemetery where you and maybe five other families, um, put together a family cemetery.

00:43:20.140 And that's not very hard to do if you're in a rural area or have access to a rural area within an hour or so.

00:43:26.900 Um, you simply would buy the property, go to your local health department and deed it as a private non-profit cemetery, um, make sure all the family's names are on there.

00:43:36.120 Um, and one acre of land will easily allow for up to 250 people to be buried there.

00:43:43.140 A lot of acres of land, at least in this area, um, one acre of land could be $13,000, not too far from Northern Virginia.

00:43:51.480 Um, one plot in Northern Virginia is $13,000 typically at the least.

00:43:56.960 So you could bury 250 people, um, or you could bury one.

00:44:01.560 And, um, and that to me is a huge difference.

00:44:04.600 So burial could be very affordable with conversations being had with family and, um, getting that land consecrated by a priest.

00:44:12.780 Um, and hopefully that land would be there as a symbol of our Christian burial practices, but also for the genealogy of families to be able to remember and honor the people that came before them and remember their heritage as people that thought this was important enough to bury their loved ones.

00:44:31.980 And hopefully be assigned to them to continue to honor their dead as they begin their own family.

00:44:37.260 So I think if we, um, start having these conversations, even with children and make it a normal practice to bring your children to wakes and funerals and talk about mortality and the value of life, that these things will slowly become more important.

00:44:53.760 Um, and I truly believe that cremation is going to go down.

00:44:57.180 Um, I think that COVID was the step towards that, um, because a lot of people have realized that scientifically we identify shapes as humans, babies learn to see squares and circles and triangles, and they can identify them.

00:45:12.960 And we, and we, and we, as adults, we identify shapes of people and objects and different things and identify them.

00:45:18.920 But when you haven't seen your parent in months, and then you're not allowed to say goodbye to them dying in hospital, and then you're handed their urn, identifying that that is your parent is very difficult because you can't associate that that shape is your parent.

00:45:34.940 It's just not the way our brains are wired.

00:45:37.200 And so I think that as we've suffered so much loss, um, because we weren't allowed to be with them or whatever the case was, we're going to start seeing a decline in cremation.

00:45:49.500 And I've seen a lot of Catholics already start to identify that this is an issue, and I'm hoping it'll continue to go that way. 1.00

00:45:56.620 So bringing back the beauty of the Catholic funeral rites, I think will really help with the culture of death, becoming a culture of life and, um, the healing process in America.

00:46:06.200 Beautiful.

00:46:08.380 Antonia Cummings, thank you for this very different ministry that I don't think many people would think of as a ministry, particularly not for young Catholic women like yourself.

00:46:21.780 And, uh, amazing the love and care you show for the, you know, taking care of everyone's loved ones, uh, in their final journey.

00:46:33.480 God bless you.

00:46:34.480 Well, thank you.

00:46:36.740 God bless you.

00:46:37.580 And thank you for everything that you're doing.

00:46:39.620 Um, the fight goes on, but everyone has their part for sure.

00:46:46.860 Awesome.

00:46:47.380 Antonia, thank you again.

00:46:49.020 God bless you and God bless all of you.

00:46:52.220 And we'll see you next time.

00:46:53.060 Hi, everyone.

00:47:04.440 This is John Henry Weston.

00:47:05.440 We hope you enjoyed this program.

00:47:07.200 To see more like it, be sure to hit the subscribe button below to get all the latest content from LifeSite News.

00:47:12.740 Check the links in the description to read more and connect.

The John-Henry Westen Show - May 23, 2023

COVID, death & dying - Memoirs of a funeral director

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