Free Republic

Fighting the wolves at the gate by John Krenson The shepherd tends his flock at night as the wolves are ever present. He increases his control of the space around his pastures to establish a buffer for his sheep; to keep the wolves out of range. Finally he yields some of that space back to the wolves only to see the attacks against his sheep increase to the point that he begins to lose them to the wolves. What do we expect shepherds to do? We expect them to protect their sheep - to provide tranquility for their grazing and...

by Fr. William Saunders Other Articles by Fr. William Saunders Instruction on Cremation 07/30/04 Recently, a neighbor’s wife died. She was then cremated. They want to take her ashes and spread them in the mountains she enjoyed hiking so much. As Catholics, are we allowed to cremate (I think we are now) and are we allowed to spread the ashes? While cremation is definitely becoming more and more popular, it is actually something new to Catholic Christian tradition. The early Church retained the Jewish practice of bodily burial and rejected the common pagan Roman practice of cremation. The basis for this...