We were so relieved when our local parish priest agreed that my dad could have a Catholic funeral. He had faithfully been coming to Mass with us for 50 years, but had always hesitated about joining my mother and his children as Catholics.The same priest had visited him in hospital a few days before, and had even offered to receive him into the Church there and then, but my dad, prone as ever to prevarication, had said he wanted a bit more time to think it over, though he still agreed to receiving the Sacrament of the Sick. “As far as I am concerned,” the priest told us afterwards, “he died a Catholic.”When it came to the exact details of the funeral, we chose favourite hymns and a family friend sang Gounod’s “Ave Maria”. My dad was not particularl