"My Way" as Highway to Hell?

Among the most theological of C.S. Lewis' books is The Great Divorce. Lewis uses the writer George MacDonald — who he considered “his master” — to explain how so many people end up in Hell.

The Great Divorce was the subject of one of four talks by Peter Kreeft last week at the Anglican Way Institute. Kreeft, a prolific author and Catholic philosophy professor at Boston College, noted that one passage of the book is more quoted than any other:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”

Kreeft considered this an apt summary of a doctrine of free will and salvation — as (during Q&A) did Fr. Lawrence Bausch, the outgoing head of Forward in Faith North America. In the end, this is just another manifestation of Pride, the first of the Seven Deadly Sins formalized in the 6th century by Pope Gregory.

The Pastoral Dilemma of Funeral Hymns

Hearing this summary of The Great Divorce suggested a potential pastoral problem. Sure enough: when I looked up the latest funeral hymn survey by a U.K. chain of funeral homes, this is what I found:

Based on the data and insights of our Funeral Directors and Funeral Arrangers, who conduct up to 100,000 funerals a year, we can reveal that our 2019 chart winner is... ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra.

The Sinatra song was tops not only in the 2019 survey, but also in 2016 and 2012. (It was briefly dislodged by “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” in the 2014 survey).

The problem is that, as Kreeft summarized, “Every time we choose ‘my will be done’ instead of ‘thy will be done,’ we choose hell.” In case people missed his point, Kreeft termed the Sinatra favorite as “the song people sing going into hell”. (While “My Way” has been the overall leader for most of the past decade, “Highway to Hell” was #5 on the Rock chart in 2016).

It’s a little too late to convert the heart of the deceased once he/she is in a pine box. So discussing funeral hymns seems like a catechetical opportunity for pre-need planning — at least for those who still want a church ceremony.