Posted on 01/17/2007 9:02:36 AM PST by NYer
Despite the Catholic Church's preference for burial, the Metuchen Diocese will break ground today on the first crematory in the United States to be built by a diocese.
Diocesan officials say the crematory, at Holy Cross Burial Park on the borders of East and South Brunswick, will open by year's end.
Within the last decade, more and more Catholics have opted for cremation, reflecting an overall trend in American society. The increase has come as more Catholics have become aware of the change in church law, according to theologians and funeral directors.
After forbidding cremation for centuries, the church began allowing it for Catholics in 1963, while maintaining a strong preference for burial.
"This is what's happening today. This is the reality. It is the wave of the future," said Bishop Paul Bootkoski of the Metuchen Diocese, which has 600,000 Catholics in Hunterdon, Somerset, Middlesex and Warren counties. "We're going along with what our Catholic population is looking for."
Cremation rates in the United States have risen from 20 percent to 30 percent since the mid-1990s, according to the Cremation Association of North America. The association projects that by 2025, the rate will be 50 percent.
Government statistics do not count by religion, but Russell Demkovitz, director of cemeteries for the Metuchen Diocese, said more than 100 funerals at Holy Cross last year were for people cremated at New Jersey's approximately 30 existing crematoria. He estimated that 15 percent of Catholics across the state were cremated last year.
The diocese's decision to build a crematory came about because of this increased demand, and because money from cremations -- after the crematory is paid off several years from now -- can help support the cemetery, Demkovitz said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Is that your only problem with it? That it seems to you a pagan practice?
The Romans used to keep pigeons in holes cut into walls.
Since medieval Italians did not burn their dead, and since they still kept pigeons this way, they thought that the ancient Roman cineraria (ash-holes, cinder receptacles) dotting the landscape were columbaria because it did not occur to them that ashes of people would be kept in such structures.
So they called all such structures columbaria and the term stuck.
A lot of ancient Roman cineraria did become actual columbaria used by Italian pigeon farmers. I saw an Etruscan one in Orvieto.
If they're going to do that they should drape it with the cloth of Baptism and proceed just like any other requiem mass.
... and of course, since a dove (columba) is a symbol of peace, the name "columbarium" could be translated, "dwelling place of peace."
And, yet, cremation often seems to engender very kooky notions of the afterlife. i.e., "I want my ashes to soar like the eagle..."
Me too. I think the permitting of cremation was a mistake. But then, I think the whole NO funeral rite is a mistake (actually, there is one that's okay, but it's almost never done) and presents a very weird and not very Catholic understanding of death.
Creamation is not for Catholics, Orthodox,Anglican...or any christians for that matter...consider
IF our Lord had been creamated, then prophecies in the Psalms WOULD NOT have been fulfilled. Creamation does not consume the body...the bones must be crushed, ground.
A picture of creamation is given to us by Sodom and Gomorrah, hardly an example to follow.
Lazarous was called forth from the grave...not an urn of his ashes.
Even though God has the power to raise up sons of Abraham from rocks or to resurrect the dead even from shark bait given the death circumstances....you don't TEMPT God by counting on this. Ashes to ashes, fine. But you don't go beyond the natural means. Creamation is pagan and originally intended to make resurrection "more difficult."
Jesus Christ is our example...just as he went down into the water and emerged from his baptism....he went bodily into the grave - a detail specified by prophecy - and came forth bodily
Cool.
Thomistically speaking, death results in substantial transformation of the living body into an eternal soul and corrupt material remains. Insofar as the soul is the substantial form of the complete living person, the resurrection of the body is the reunion of the soul with prime matter at the end of time. I'm not sure what relevance the corrupt remains of the deceased would necessarily have to do with this. On the other hand the phenomenon of the "incorruptibles" leaves me with some doubts...
If you ever get the chance (or make the opportunity), you MUST attend a Maronite funeral. Incense - chanted prayers - more incense - and hymns that lift the soul heavenward. Just before its culmination, the priest incenses the casket one last time, then proceeds to chant about 10 stanzas of a prayer, bowing profoudly multiple times, before the Tabernacle. Last week, I attended the Maronite funeral of a neighbor. His immediate RC neighbors sat with me. Afterwards, they both exclaimed about the beauty and reverence of this funeral Mass. What a send off!
I'm Byzantine rite, and all I want - which I won't get here in the South - is "Beholding the Sea of Life..." sung at my funeral. Uless I become Orthodox, which I would not do because that would mean rejecting all of Western theology, philosophy and culture.
It's a pity the Orthodox can't separate the cultural from the religious, and maybe get a more rational and less culturally biased view of Peter's primacy, but then - I guess that's why I am still with Rome, hideous as the rite may be.
But if anybody sings On Eagle's Wings, I'll come back and haunt them. Forever.
Ditto on On Eagles Wings. I will follow the wrongdoers who allowed it played whereever they go, singing it in my ghostly voice from their rafters until they go insane, the way I do when I hear that crappy song in Church
>> In ancient Rome a dove symbolized a tasty snack, not peace. <<
Yes, but it was medieval Italians who started calling burial holes columbarians.
Thank you. That was very helpful.
I'm still dealing with my mother's wish to be creamated when she dies. I pre-payed her funeral expenses but I still don't know if I will honer her request.
I don't know what happened to me since I'm a regular at Mass and fairly othodox in my Catholicism yet my parents, who at least sent me to a Catholic high school, only see the inside of a Church at weddings and funerals.
And BTW, Bishop Bootkoski is my bishop and seems like a generally conservative one at that.
You are a "rebound catholic" and this is quite common.
I tooled around protestantism for a couple of decades...and I woke up and realized that 4 white walls and a 50 minute sermon wasn't cutting it for worship
I'd rather be cremated. If Rome allows it, it IS for Catholics. I trust that God will have no problem with my quick ashes versus another's slow ashes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.