Are Catholics allowed to be cryogenically frozen after death?

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Bookcat said:
Suggest all read Spe Salvi

w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html
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Great read. Found this part very pertinent…

“Whatever precisely Saint Ambrose may have meant by these words, it is true that to eliminate death or to postpone it more or less indefinitely would place the earth and humanity in an impossible situation, and even for the individual would bring no benefit. Obviously there is a contradiction in our attitude, which points to an inner contradiction in our very existence. On the one hand, we do not want to die; above all, those who love us do not want us to die. Yet on the other hand, neither do we want to continue living indefinitely, nor was the earth created with that in view.”
 
WingsOfEagles said:
Great read. Found this part very pertinent…

“Whatever precisely Saint Ambrose may have meant by these words, it is true that to eliminate death or to postpone it more or less indefinitely would place the earth and humanity in an impossible situation, and even for the individual would bring no benefit. Obviously there is a contradiction in our attitude, which points to an inner contradiction in our very existence. On the one hand, we do not want to die; above all, those who love us do not want us to die. Yet on the other hand, neither do we want to continue living indefinitely, nor was the earth created with that in view.”
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I thought that “living indefinitely” in the earthly embodiment was indeed intended, prior to the whole original-sin thing?

ICXC NIKA
 
The technology is based on a belief system: we will eventually be able to repair any damage caused to the body and the brain, and hope a new body can be regrown just by preserving the head. Who pays for having a body frozen for 100 years? Who ensures that power outages are remedied and any malfunction rapidly corrected?

We may be able to regrow internal organs using the patient’s own cells. We might, long in the future, be able to regrow certain limbs, but the brain is a different matter.

Ed
 
I don’t know for sure what Catholic teaching is on this matter, but I would think that even if not explicitly forbidden, it is not regarded as the most appropriate procedure in honor of the dead. According to Judaism, such a procedure is a little more than problematic in that the dead should be buried rather than frozen, cremated, or put in a mausoleum. Of course, as in most things, many Jews do not abide by the law.
 
meltzerboy said:
I don’t know for sure what Catholic teaching is on this matter, but I would think that even if not explicitly forbidden, it is not regarded as the most appropriate procedure in honor of the dead. According to Judaism, such a procedure is a little more than problematic in that the dead should be buried rather than frozen, cremated, or put in a mausoleum. Of course, as in most things, many Jews do not abide by the law.
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The only preference for burial over freezing etc. is so that the body returns to nature, which the cryogenicists seek above all to avoid. So yes, there would be a conflict.

ICXC NIKA
 
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