Are Catholics allowed to be cryogenically frozen after death?

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I would suggest that the appropriate forum for this kind of question would be apologetics? 🙂
 
I would say after death with the intent for the body to be studied when science was more advanced would be morally okay. To freeze oneself before death to be woken up when a cure was available might seem to go against God’s plan.
 
There is no rule expressly forbidding it.

However, placing your hope in this process would seem to run counter to the faith.

ICXC NIKA
 
Hmm interesting question. I guess it would depend on why we are being frozen? Is there a doctrinal thing where we can’t be brought back to life? …hm. Now I wonder, what if we chose to be cryogenically frozen before death, say because we want to see what the world will be 3000 years from now. Lol I’d sign up for it. Only if I knew for sure my body wouldn’t be used in some medical abuse in my frozen state. Like the only way to get the chamber open would be from the inside, when I wake up.
 
LexDivina said:
Hmm interesting question. I guess it would depend on why we are being frozen? **Is there a doctrinal thing where we can’t be brought back to life? **…hm. Now I wonder, what if we chose to be cryogenically frozen before death, say because we want to see what the world will be 3000 years from now. Lol I’d sign up for it. Only if I knew for sure my body wouldn’t be used in some medical abuse in my frozen state. Like the only way to get the chamber open would be from the inside, when I wake up.
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Where does that leave our soul if we’ve died and then science tries to bring our body back?
 
LexDivina said:
Hmm interesting question. I guess it would depend on why we are being frozen? Is there a doctrinal thing where we can’t be brought back to life? …hm. Now I wonder, what if we chose to be cryogenically frozen before death, say because we want to see what the world will be 3000 years from now. Lol I’d sign up for it. Only if I knew for sure my body wouldn’t be used in some medical abuse in my frozen state. Like the only way to get the chamber open would be from the inside, when I wake up.
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That couldn’t happen, as a great deal of biomedical intervention, mostly currently undiscovered, would be needed to restore your life.

ICXC NIKA
 
WingsOfEagles said:
Where does that leave our soul if we’ve died and then science tries to bring our body back?
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That’s a scary thought, would we be us anymore? Or just a shallow shell of our former self… Hmm. It kinda reminds me of when people claim to die and have reported seeing hell, or heaven, or angels,etc. Does that really happen, is it possible to happen?
 
LexDivina said:
That’s a scary thought, would we be us anymore? Or just a shallow shell of our former self… Hmm. It kinda reminds me of when people claim to die and have reported seeing hell, or heaven, or angels,etc. Does that really happen, is it possible to happen?
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I know it’s a gamble I wouldn’t be comfortable with.

As far as could people “died” (like in the case of briefly on a operating table) and seen hell/heaven/angels etc., I personally believe there is creedence to at least some of those accounts.
 
Well let’s suppose that someone was frozen prior to death. Perhaps in that case the soul would have never left in the first place.

As for if you die and then were reanimated. Going off of Lazarus, it’s plausible your soul would reenter your body. (To my knowledge there’s nothing that says Jesus created a new soul that was a Lazarus doppelgänger when He raised him.) However I’d imagine it’d only happen with God’s consent given the circumstances.

Not sure if that’s right, but it seems reasonable.
 
Until the Holy See speaks, it isn’t explicitly forbidden.

One might infer that such a person has an inordinate attachment to life, but that is a value judgement from one creature to another.
 
mVitus said:
Well let’s suppose that someone was frozen prior to death. Perhaps in that case the soul would have never left in the first place.

As for if you die and then were reanimated. Going off of Lazarus, it’s plausible your soul would reenter your body. (To my knowledge there’s nothing that says Jesus created a new soul that was a Lazarus doppelgänger when He raised him.) However I’d imagine it’d only happen with God’s consent given the circumstances.

Not sure if that’s right, but it seems reasonable.
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Since time doesn’t exist in the hereafter, it doesn’t matter whether a person has been medically dead for 10 seconds or 10 thousand years. If they were to return to the body, it would be as though they had just left. It would also be foreknown that said person’s time hadn’t come.

Judgement occurs after the separation of the soul from the body, but God of course is God and there is no rule saying that a human can’t be brought back from death, as several private accounts discern that they have been, including through Mary’s intervention.
 
TK421 said:
Until the Holy See speaks, it isn’t explicitly forbidden.

One might infer that such a person has an inordinate attachment to life, but that is a value judgement from one creature to another.
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Why shouldn’t someone be attached to life?
 
As God knows the past, present, and future then wouldn’t God let the soul stay in the frozen body until it truly dies after being unfrozen many years later? :confused:
 
mVitus said:
Well let’s suppose that someone was frozen prior to death. Perhaps in that case the soul would have never left in the first place.

As for if you die and then were reanimated. Going off of Lazarus, it’s plausible your soul would reenter your body. (To my knowledge there’s nothing that says Jesus created a new soul that was a Lazarus doppelgänger when He raised him.) However I’d imagine it’d only happen with God’s consent given the circumstances.

Not sure if that’s right, but it seems reasonable.
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If someone was frozen prior to death, they would die in the process. There is no way to freeze a human being and have them survive the freezing process. They are dead. Humans are complex multi-celled organisms, not single celled bacteria, and their metabolic needs are entirely different. Even the organs in our bodies have different needs for oxygen, nutrition, etc.

A body without a soul is dead. Whether it’s frozen, mummified, buried, cremated. And only Jesus can resurrect a dead body and restore the soul, and even then, our bodies will be in a new, glorified state. Man cannot do this.

I cannot see how cryogenically freezing a person in the hopes of restoring their life would be all right. It is not compatible with our religion to say that Man is capable of resurrecting dead bodies and restoring the soul to the body. Believing that and acting on that belief is what would be wrong because it is a denial of a tenet of our faith–it probably would be classed as an heretical belief. When the Apostles raised the dead after the Ascension, it was done by the power of God, not by the human power of the Apostles. Now freezing for later scientific research would be ok, because the Church permits the use of bodies for research as long as they are treated respectfully.
 
WingsOfEagles said:
Where does that leave our soul if we’ve died and then science tries to bring our body back?
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Death is only when the soul leaves the body and none of us knows when that happens.

If anyone is revived, whether it is after 100 minutes or a 100 years it means they were not actually dead because the soul had not departed.

Modern Catholic Dictionary:

DEATH. The cessation of the bodily functions of a human being through the departure of the soul. It is part of revelation that, in the present order of divine providence, death is a punishment for sin. According to the teaching of the Church, death is a consequence of Adam’s sin, as declared by St. Paul: “Sin entered the world through one man, and through sin death” (Romans 5:12). In the case of those justified by grace, death loses its penal character and becomes a mere consequence of sin. All human beings, therefore, are subject to death, although in the case of Christ and his Mother, because of their freedom from sin, death was neither a punishment for sin nor a consequence of sin. Yet, as they were truly human, death was natural for them.

Death is also the end of human probation or testing of one’s loyalty to God. It ends all possibility of merit or demerit.

Properly speaking, only the body dies when separated from its principle of life, which is the soul. However, the Bible speaks of a second death (Revelation 20:6), referring to the souls in hell, who are separated from their principle of supernatural life, which is God.
 
So the short answer is yes we can be cryogenically frozen. There is no teaching against it however it would not be advisable?
 
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