Metuchen (NJ) Diocese is the first to build Catholic crematory

NJ.com ^ | January 17, 2007 | JEFF DIAMANT

[ichabod1]

Is that your only problem with it? That it seems to you a pagan practice?

[wideawake]

Columbarium means dovecote or pigeon-hole in Latin.

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.

[ichabod1]

If they're going to do that they should drape it with the cloth of Baptism and proceed just like any other requiem mass.

[wideawake]

It doesn't seem to be one. It is a pagan practice artificially imported into Western Christian culture during the past few decades.

[dangus]

... and of course, since a dove (columba) is a symbol of peace, the name "columbarium" could be translated, "dwelling place of peace."

[dangus]

And, yet, cremation often seems to engender very kooky notions of the afterlife. i.e., "I want my ashes to soar like the eagle..."

[wideawake]

In ancient Rome a dove symbolized a tasty snack, not peace.

[livius]

I'd rather be buried unembalmed in a pine box with a headstone consisting of a single fired brick than be burnt like a pagan.

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.

[Tribemike]

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

[Tax-chick]

Cool.

[Ozone34]

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...

[NYer]

I think the whole NO funeral rite is a mistake

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!

[livius]

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.

[cammie]

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

[dangus]

>> In ancient Rome a dove symbolized a tasty snack, not peace. <<

Yes, but it was medieval Italians who started calling burial holes columbarians.

[wideawake]

That's only because they did not know they were burial holes and mistook them for pigeon holes.

[Incorrigible]

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.

[Incorrigible]

And BTW, Bishop Bootkoski is my bishop and seems like a generally conservative one at that.

[Tribemike]

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

[technochick99]

Creamation is not for Catholics,

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.