Where to draw the line on funeral texts?

Funeral chaos this week, one in the evening, of all things, (necessitating several hours of rearranging schedules for rehearsals for another gig because the rectory gave me a time, assured me it was written in stone when I explained I had a conflict I would have to resolve; and then called back with no qualms whatever to say the stone had been erased, and THAT, Father, is why you pay the bench fee, because your underpaid MD has made a commitment to put the parish's needs first, and you make it deuced difficult for her to supplement her income in any meaningful way when you pull stuff like that... the trouble is, of course, that it is not he, nor is it the parish that I would leave in the lurch were I to put my foot down, it is a family in mourning.)

And that funeral's the least of my concerns; an obviously protestant-except-for-words-on-a-form-filled-out-decades-ago family with music choices that would really be pushing the envelope -- had not the Church chucked the envelope in the recycle bin years ago, pretty much saying anything goes, if it makes you feel good we'll do it.

If we jettison the prescribed texts, if we forgo any thought that the dead might be in need of prayers.... well, heck, maybe peace DOES begin with me, blessedly assured as I am, as I walk, (Glory, hallelujah!) in the garden.

We really have no standards, so I haven't a leg to stand on in objecting to what are perhaps more unusual but not really more inappropriate songs than our customary fare....

Speaking of prescribed texts, last week one of the priest preached on THE INTROIT.
I would have wept tears of joy, had I not wept tears of chagrin, for he obviously wrote the sermon in the expectation that he would be entering to some Advent hymn, so despite the fact that we actually had sung the entrance antiphon, (in English,) he kept referring to the sentiments that would have been expressed had we not sung a hymn....

I would have concerns about our diction, if this were not the same reverend Father who is wont to carry on loud conversations with departing worshipers over the final verse of a hymn or during a choral postlude; and when it is pointed out that perhaps his microphone just might have accidentally been left on, he cavalierly smiles and sweeps any implicit reproach aside, I don't doubt it! and continues his amplified bandinage.

It's all good....