Catholic Apologetics Online

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Cremation

1134. Why does the Catholic Church forbid cremation?

It was a pagan practice which Christians avoided from the very beginning. In the third century we find Christian writers, such as Minucius Felix, warning Christians against imitating the practice, and bidding them retain the custom of earth burial. In comparatively recent times Atheists and irreligious materialists have reintroduced it in order to destroy Christian belief and to impress in an imaginative way the doctrine that all is over at death. This, in itself, would be enough to justify the Church in her refusal to accept a practice credited with such closely associated ideas opposed to the doctrine of immortality. But there are many other reasons. It is opposed to human instinct and the better sentiments of the human heart. Filial piety protests against such treatment of, say, a deceased mother. Christian reverence for the dead also protests. The body that has been anointed in baptism and that has been the temple of the Holy Spirit during life, should not be treated as so much offal or refuse, but should be allowed to disintegrate according to the ordinary laws of nature in God's earth. Again, the whole liturgy of the Catholic Church for Christian burial, from time immemorial, is adapted to earth-burial, and she cannot be expected to change her sacred liturgy with fads of the times. If a Catholic is cremated, he forfeits the privileges of such Catholic burial, a liturgy of great benefit to the soul which inhabited that body. The man who does not bother about such things, and holds that once one is dead that is the end of it, and that nothing else matters, is saying just what the advocates of Cremation hoped that he would say. It is good to be buried in the Catholic way, in consecrated ground. That is the proper place for a Christian. We can add to these reasons the medico-legal aspect of the case. Cremation destroys all signs of violence or of poison, and thus prevents exhumation and medical examination for the detection of crime. Many murders have been discovered by such examination after burial, and if Cremation became a general practice, it would be an easy way out for the poisoner and murderer.

1135. Is it a sin against the law of God to support Cremation?

The natural law of morality does not forbid it, nor has God directly given a positive law in the matter. It is a disciplinary law of the Catholic Church, and a very grave one. The Church could suspend the law, and permit Cremation in certain circumstances, as in the case of an epidemic or in war time. But normally she insists upon retaining the law, and all Catholics are obliged to observe it. The Church speaks with the authority of God, and it is God who forbids Cremation through His Church. Any Catholic who would violate the will of the Church in this matter would, by the very fact, be violating the will of God.

1136. Does not the Church oppose Cremation because she knows that it renders any idea of a resurrection impossible?

No. Cremation does not affect the question of the resurrection. Cremation means but a more rapid separation of the elements of the body, and even if the ashes be scattered to the winds, God can quite easily reassemble those elements. What is impossible to us is not impossible to God. Remember that there is no such thing as the absolute destruction of matter. There can be merely a transformation of matter. However many changes matter may go through, it is always there, still in existence. And the God, who created matter, can easily transform it back again into the bodies which it formed previously. No matter how men treat human bodies, or where they put them, some day they will all rise again.

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MORE FROM VOLUME 1

• About the Author
• Introduction
  - Rev. C M Carty
• Preface
  - Msgr Fulton J Sheen
• Author's Forward
  - Dr Rumble, MSC

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