n this monologue episode of Death And, Victor M. Sweeney takes on a listener-submitted video — a bishop's directives tightening up Catholic funeral practice — and works through it clip by clip, weighing each ruling against his own years as a funeral director. He traces the faith's three-part rhythm of vigil, mass, and burial, explaining why folding a eulogy or a pre-mass visitation into that sequence breaks its motion from looking backward to looking forward, and why the church insists cremated remains stay whole and be interred within 30 days rather than scattered into keepsakes. Along the way he takes up harder questions too: whether a "celebration of life" leaves room enough for grief, and how he serves families whose beliefs don't match his own, arriving at the same conviction each time — that a good funeral, Catholic or secular, has to hold tears and laughter, mourning and hope, in the same hand. http://deathandpodcast.com http://youtube.com/@victormsweeney http://instagram.com/victor.m.sweeney http://tiktok.com/@victormsweeney http://x.com/victormsweeney http://simonandschuster.com/books/Now-Departing/Victor-M-Sweeney/9781668062111 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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