Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
Choose a topic from Vol 2:
Most decidedly. In fact, abstracting from the fact that it is essentially a part of our liturgical worship offered to God and a bond of union between living members of the visible Church on earth, the whole of the service is one of prayer for the soul of the departed person, imploring God's mercy for that soul, forgiveness of his sins, an early deliverance from expiations due to past infidelities, and a more generous share in the happiness of heaven insofar as our intercession can secure these things for him according to our fellowship in the Communion of Saints.
Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as absolution given to the dead. If we take absolution in the sacramental sense, as part of the Sacrament of Penance it is evident that the person to be absolved must still be a living subject of the Church in this world. At times, however, you may hear of the "last absolution" being given at a Requiem Mass, that "absolution" being pronounced over the dead person lying before the Altar. But that "absolution" is not to be taken in the strict sense of the word, as if it had sacramental efficacy. Rather it is a liturgical prayer or the repose of the soul of the departed person—a prayer which would be of no avail to that person, did he die in a state of mortal sin.
That is correct. Sacramental absolution cannot be given to dead people. If people are unconscious, or have even apparently died but a short time before the arrival of a priest, the priest can give but conditional absolution, which would avail only insofar as the subject is capable of responding to it, in the sight of God. God alone can know whether such a conditional absolution has its effect or not. But in any doubt, the priest gives the benefit of the doubt to the unconscious person, and absolves conditionally in the hope that the Sacrament may be of actual benefit.
In the actual burial of the dead person, no difference. In the blessings obtained for the soul of the dead person there would be a great difference. In the first place, the layman might, or might not read the official prayers of the Church on behalf of the deceased. If he did not, his own prayers, were he to substitute any, would lack the efficacy of the official liturgical prayers of the Church. On the other land, even were he to offer all the official liturgical prayers of the Church, those prayers would not have the same value as they would were they offered by a priest. For, as distinct from the layman, the priest is, by his very ordination, a consecrated element in the worship of the Church; and through the priesthood officially, independently of the personal merits of individual priests, the Church dispenses liturgical blessings and graces which are not so dispensed through laymen. There is a difference, therefore, between the Church officially praying her own liturgical prayers through the lips of one of her priests, and the reading even of those same prayers by a layman who is unable to act officially in the name of the Church.