‘Love transcends death’: How Singapore’s Chinese Catholics remember their dead

SINGAPORE — At some Catholic funeral wakes in Singapore, visitors are given red strings and invited to join in prayers for the souls of the dead. As they leave, they may be offered flower water to wash with, alongside holy water to sprinkle on the caskets.

Such wakes show how Chinese and Catholic customs around death sit side by side, said Bryan Goh, a historian at the National University of Singapore who studies the history of Christianity in insular Southeast Asia.

Catholics, he said, “find no problem offering joss-sticks at Taoist/Buddhist funeral wakes, focusing on the prayers they say in their heart rather than the form of the action.”

Clergy in Singapore did not see these customs as “something in dire need of correction,” Goh said, “mostly because they viewed certain actions and rituals as performance of filiality, rather than religiosity.”

‘Love transcends death’ Father John Chen, a priest of the Archdiocese of Singapore, told EWTN News that the Catholic faith and Chinese culture share one attitude toward the dead: “Love for our departed loved ones does not end with death. Indeed, love transcends death,” he said.

Students from Buddhist or Taoist families often ask…