St. Benedictus
Posted on 05/19/2015 7:15:36 AM PDT by Salvation
Monsignor Pope Ping!
Thank you so much for this posting.
God bless.
I’ve heard some folks in my denomination offer some rather ignorant reasons for avoiding cremation. The worst being that if you are cremated, God cannot give you a new body when the time comes for the new heaven and earth. I found this immediately ridiculous and asked, “what then do we say about all the biblical figures in the past and the Christians of old whose bodies are now dust that is scattered?” If God can restore them, I think He can restore me from ashes.
I agree with the historical issue with cremation that it was a practice often attributed with rituals and sacrifice. The bible never says that you must avoid burying the dead through a method that is cost effective or convenient. Only that the process should not involve any rituals of potential idol worship and communing with the dead. As with many things, it’s not the act, but more the heart and intentions you have going into it. Focusing on the act leads you into legalism and the best followers of that are Muslims.
Thank you for posting this.
“The Church clearly prefers and urges that the body of the deceased be present for the funeral rites”
Where the body goes, so goeth the funeral home.
It sure helps gets rid of much of the $15,000 bill if you bury first and then do the funeral second. No body, no funeral home.
It's such a difficult issue. Funerals and proper burials have gotten very expensive, and I understand that people might feel backed against the wall and confused by having to make difficult decisions with the combination of grief and in some cases rather aggressive and savvy funeral arrangers.
(I've always had an ability to separate those kinds of decisions from emotions. Those who can't must feel like prey.)
You’re welcome.
??
Translation -- The ashes MUST be buried in the ground, just like a body.
....Or entombed.
You’re right. As the article mentions the ashes can be placed in a mausoleum.
My brother died in NYC. We all live in the KC metro area. The cost of shipping the body home was prohibitive so they did the cremation. The funeral mass had his remains on the altar. But now almost three years later they still sit on my sister in law’s piano. They have a funeral plot but his kids don’t want him buried. They are having a really hard time letting go. I think I’ll ask my SIL about putting him in the crypt out there at the same cemetery and then, when she passes, putting his ashes in her vault. It really is up to her and she is a good Catholic so I’m not worried that she’ll make jewelry out of his remains or scatter them in her back yard.
My great grandfather who was a preacher and his wife were put in one of those above ground mausoleums. I think it’s creepy but that’s where they wanted to be for eternity. I need to go down there and check on them. Last time we were there the place was leaking and looked a bit shabby.
St. Benedictus
Why are you posting this?
The thread is about cremation and reverence. Do you think your post fits the thread?
For the first thousand years the Church taught that cremation was a form of physical desecration of the human body and by extension, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. During the second thousand years, even as Christianity in the West fragmented, this teaching was upheld by virtually every denomination until the second half of the 20th century. Until sometime after Vatican II the Roman Catholic Church forbade cremation and refused the rites of the church to those who were cremated.
As far as I am aware, today only the Orthodox and non-Chalcedonian Churches still enforce this moral dictum. When did the desecration of human remains cease to be a grave sin?
You don’t see the contradiction between a church saying that bodies should not fail to be buried, or that their parts not be kept as keepsakes or turned into jewelry, then putting heavily jeweled skeletons on display?
And nobody has turned them into jewelry or trinkets; they're relics and are treated as such.
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