A friend told me that after her daughter was stillborn a year ago she had trouble finding a priest to offer a memorial service for her. She wasn't living in the wilds of Montana where there are very few Orthodox churches, she was living in New York in an area stuffed with priests. The priest who eventually did the service was reluctant. This struck me as unreasonable. Why would we not do a memorial service for a departed infant? The answer was, the baby was not baptized. Even though infants who die before birth have no need of baptism (
explanation here) consider what a comfort for the grieving family a memorial service is. By not permitting any sort of memorial service to be done we would in essence be denying the existence of the infant.
There is an excellent article on this site (
Touchstone Article) that addresses the question of how the Church ministers to miscarried and stillborn children and their families. The upshot is that work needs to be done. The situation I described above certainly illustrates that. You would think that the Church has never addressed the situation but that is not the case. Below is an excerpt from that article:
It is in the other aspect of ministering to pre-born death—services
for the infant himself—where there is more room for improvement, or at
least for clarification. There are no prescribed Orthodox services for a miscarried
child: no funeral, no commemoration, no anniversary observances. This is because
the unborn child is not baptized. Indeed, there is a school of thought that
the pre-born dead cannot partake in the fullness of God’s kingdom for
his departed, and therefore should not even be buried in the same part of the
cemetery with the faithful.
Thankfully, this custom—which has been condemned as “nothing
less than barbaric” by Fr. Alexander Rentel, a professor of Orthodox
canon law—is not universal and was not applied in our case. The funeral
service for infants was read, with some modifications, over little Constantine.
The monastic community at St Tikhon’s stepped in out of loving concern
and conviction regarding the sacredness of all human life, and made room for
Constantine among all the other Orthodox awaiting the resurrection in that
place. The only distinguishing aspect of the pre-borns’ grave markers
at St. Tikhon’s is that they bear only one date. Other monasteries exercise
similar care over the pre-born dead.
Some progress is being made toward addressing the perplexities of theology
and custom that have inhibited pre-born funerals for the Orthodox. In March
2001, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece set guidelines for burials of
unbaptized babies, classifying children of Orthodox Christian families as “candidate
members” of the church: “After the establishment of infant baptism,
the unbaptized children of Christian parents occupy the place of catechumens.” And
catechumens may receive a Christian burial in the Orthodox tradition. [emphasis mine]
This decision by the Greek synod may be a welcome step toward ending the
situation in which, in the words of Fr. Peter Jon Gillquist, “children
who die in the womb are among the only human beings . . . denied any place
in the liturgical life of the church.” We look forward to the day when
such precedents will spread across Orthodoxy and Christianity as a whole, and
extend to the pre-born dead the full range of services for the dead.
"...unbaptized children of Christian parents occupy the place of catechumens." Any Orthodox Christian knows that catechumens have their own special litany during every Liturgy. We even (with a special blessing from the bishop) have conducted memorial services
in church for non-Orthodox family of members of our parish. It has been painful for me to hear catechumens commemorated when my own babies are not and to attend memorial services in church when my babies' services were restricted to the graveside.
It would seem that while at least one local Church has made an official statement, there is still a gap to be filled by the rest of the Church*. To the best of my knowledge the topic of miscarriage and stillbirth is never brought up at seminary unless it is in passing by a priest who has experienced it personally. A seminarian remains ignorant on the subject and is ordained and sent out to a church not knowing what to do if a woman comes to him having lost a baby. Chances are he will have never thought about the matter until it is staring him in the face. Certainly, that was the case with the loss of our own son Innocent in April of 2011. My husband was at a loss, not knowing what was going on, not knowing what services would be appropriate, not knowing what to say to me. Mercifully, his spiritual father was able to provide comfort and a service we could do at the graveside, he himself having buried six of his own miscarried grandchildren.
We need to do a better job in seminaries of educating men on the subject of miscarriage and stillbirth. It would be unthinkable for them to graduate and be ordained having no idea what to do upon the death of a child or adult, but we leave them empty handed when it comes to the unborn. It is not only unfair to the priests, it is profoundly unfair to the faithful to whom they minister. I don't know how many women have written me, telling me they went to their priests for solace, advice and services and were turned away or treated insensitively. In this day and age, when we can see unborn children when they are comprised of but a few cells, when we can perform surgery on them, when we know more about them than has ever been known, to ignore their plight and deny them the services of the church and to send their grieving parents away with empty words is absurd and wrong.
I don't know where exactly to start with this - I am but a single matushka in the middle of nowhere (as far as the Orthodox church is concerned). But really, this has got to be improved. Surely we can do better than this.
*Matushka Euphemia has emailed me and pointed out that the Romanian Orthodox Church has made a
similar statement which
predates by many decades that by the Church of Greece. The original statement is in Romanian but below is a translation. This is a
tremendously important statement. Note that it predates Communism in that country, the ecumenical movement, etc.
The most important source is the decision of the Romanian Orthodox Church Holy Synod of 5 May 1908. It says:
Also,
regarding the address of the same Holy Metropolis, relative to the issue
whether it is proper to have the religious service of burial of
children who die before they are baptized as well as those who are born
dead. After the discussion which followed, the suggestion of H.E. the
primate Metropolitan and H.E. the Metropolitan of Moldova to allow the
priests to do the religious service for children born dead as well as
those who die before being baptized, being children of Orthodox parents.
(Thanks to Fr. Peter Andronache for the translation!)
