‘No lies told’ - a style of funeral for an increasingly secular Ireland
ALMOST twenty years ago my life changed dramatically. While I was in the process of selling my share in a business and effectively retiring, I attended a funeral in England. It was a Humanist funeral. I had been wondering what I would do when I put my business career behind me and now I knew: I would conduct Humanist funerals.
I had been brought up in a very loving, comfortable Church of Ireland family. This not only defined where we went to church and school but also who our friends were. It wasn’t that we excluded others from our lives, but we simply would not come across people who didn’t belong to our church.
* Full article available in printed copies.
Brian Whiteside
is director of ceremonies for the Humanist Association of Ireland and a leading humanist funeral celebrant.