Cremation

[Benadam]

The soul reaches it’s natural perfections only with the body. If you think of OT nations or peoples, being scattered isn’t a good thing.

But a communal remembrance is, like becoming a stone in the building of a house. That’s why it’s ok as long as you’re not intentionally acting in opposition of the truth ‘and’ you provide a communal permanent space for the remains. The rest of what seems like license to explore is really for those who were cremated in the past.:twocents:

 

[Linna]

The flesh body does not have any natural perfections. It is dust and it returns to dust. In life, the flesh body gets sick, smells, and putrifies at death. To say that everyone will be glad to have a flesh body back is really out there because most people rationally wouldn’t want it back. Why would you want a flesh body in the eternity? For myself, I’m looking for the eternal glorified body which has been promised to us by God himself. We shall all be “metamorphised”, “changed”. “Changed” doesn’t mean “the same in the flesh.”

Where do Catholics get these ideas? It’s closely related to Morman beliefs that say we continue to marry and have children in heaven and become gods. Bible doesn’t say that at all. It just doesn’t say we are resurrected in the flesh.

 

[ElizabethPH]

The flesh body does not have any natural perfections. It is dust and it returns to dust. In life, the flesh body gets sick, smells, and putrifies at death. To say that everyone will be glad to have a flesh body back is really out there because most people rationally wouldn’t want it back. Why would you want a flesh body in the eternity? For myself, I’m looking for the eternal glorified body which has been promised to us by God himself. We shall all be “metamorphised”, “changed”. “Changed” doesn’t mean “the same in the flesh.”

Where do Catholics get these ideas? It’s closely related to Morman beliefs that say we continue to marry and have children in heaven and become gods. Bible doesn’t say that at all. It just doesn’t say we are resurrected in the flesh.

I like the way St Augustine puts it.

Augustine

“Perish the thought that the omnipotence of the Creator is unable, for the raising of our bodies and for the restoring of them to life, to recall all [their] parts, which were consumed by beasts or by fire, or which disintegrated into dust or ashes, or were melted away into a fluid, or were evaporated away in vapors” (The City of God 22:20:1 [A.D. 419]).

“God, the wonderful and inexpressible Artisan, will, with a wonderful and inexpressible speed, restore our flesh from the whole of the material of which it was constituted, and it will make no difference to its reconstruction whether hairs go back to hairs and nails go back to nails, or whatever of these had perished be changed to flesh and be assigned to other parts of the body, while the providence of the Artisan will take care that nothing unseemly result” (Handbook of Faith, Hope, and Charity 23:89 [A.D. 421]).

 

[Linna]

I don’t want a flesh body back. Who would?

 

[ElizabethPH]

I don’t want a flesh body back. Who would?

Allow me again to quote a Church Father.

Theophilus

God will raise up your flesh immortal with your soul; and then, having become immortal, you shall see the immortal, if you will believe in him now; and then you will realize that you have spoken against him unjustly. But you do not believe that the dead will be raised. When it happens, then you will believe, whether you want to or not; but unless you believe now, your faith then will be reckoned as unbelief (To Autolycus 1:7–8 [A.D. 181]).

 

[Linna]

Then your body is not really flesh, but glorified. I think I was right to the start.

 

[ML561]

Peace be with all of you. I have a somewhat different question. I would like to donate my body to a medical center for research, and have a memorial Mass said for me. Is that permissible? The cost of funerals is appalling, and as a previous poster said, burial is a waste of land. Aren’t we as Catholics called to be good stewards of the earth? How is burial in an expensive coffin and a cement vault good stewardship? The funeral industry preys on bereaved families at a time when they are vulnerable and encourages them to spend excessive amounts of money to demonstrate how well they loved the one who has died. Read Jessica Mitford’s expose on these vultures, “The American Way of Death”, published in 1961—things have certainly gotten no better since then. I do not want my family burdened with thousands of dollars in expenses, not to mention the fact that I think embalming is barbaric and unneccessary. At least if medical students are using my body for research some good may come of it. I hope the Catholic Church permits this.

 

[ElizabethPH]

Then your body is not really flesh, but glorified. I think I was right to the start.

You will have a glorified body in heaven.

As I said in a previous post: These will be the same bodies people had in earthly life—but our resurrection bodies will not die and, for the righteous, they will be transformed into a glorified state, freed from suffering and pain, and enabled to do many of the amazing things Jesus could do with his glorified body

 

[Benadam]

Peace be with all of you. I have a somewhat different question. I would like to donate my body to a medical center for research, and have a memorial Mass said for me. Is that permissible? The cost of funerals is appalling, and as a previous poster said, burial is a waste of land. Aren’t we as Catholics called to be good stewards of the earth? How is burial in an expensive coffin and a cement vault good stewardship? The funeral industry preys on bereaved families at a time when they are vulnerable and encourages them to spend excessive amounts of money to demonstrate how well they loved the one who has died. Read Jessica Mitford’s expose on these vultures, “The American Way of Death”, published in 1961—things have certainly gotten no better since then. I do not want my family burdened with thousands of dollars in expenses, not to mention the fact that I think embalming is barbaric and unneccessary. At least if medical students are using my body for research some good may come of it. I hope the Catholic Church permits this.

I think burial is good stewardship. It’s the denial of the reality of death that drives up funeral expenses.

Donating your body to science is a good thing as long as when science is finished with it it is returned so it can be dignified with a place of remembrance. And if you are catholic it’s a comfort to believe you will be remembered and prayed for.

 

[bextah]

The trend toward more “green” funerals and burials is rooted in being more environmentally friendly, as well as, lowering costs. For example, each year, 22,500 cemeteries across the United States bury approximately 827,060 gallons of embalming fluid which includes formaldehyde and other hazardous chemicals. Buried caskets contain 90,272 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze and 30-plus million board feet of hardwoods. Cremation and burial vaults contain 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete and 14,000 tons of steel. These statistics were complied from some very reliable sources which include: Casket and Funeral Association of America, Cremation Association of North America , Doric Inc., The Rainforest Action Network, and Mary Woodsen, Pre-Posthumous Society.

In addition, Casket manufacturers are listed on the EPA’s top 50 hazardous waste generators list due to chemicals such as methyl and xylene used in the protective finish sprayed on the caskets exterior. On a segment of a Fresh Air interview on NPR, Mark Harris, author of “Grave Matters: Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial” told host Terry Gross that the amount of wood from coffins located in a ten-acre cemetery is enough to build 40 houses and that there is enough concrete to build swimming pools for all of them.

On the surface cremation seems like a more friendly and convenient way to deal with the bodily remains of a loved one. But, let’s consider the impact of this truly industrial process. Like most modem, natural-gas devices, the technology is becoming more efficient and clean burning; however the amount of non-renewable fossil fuel needed to cremate bodies in North America is equivalent to a car making 84 trips to the Moon and back each year.

There is also a growing body of research that indicates cremation has a significant impact on the environment. Cremations lead to emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, mercury, hydrogen fluoride (HF), hydrogen chloride (HCl), NMVOCs, and other heavy metals, in addition to Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP). The United Nations indicates that crematoria contribute 0.2% of the global emission of dioxins and furans.

I think that to be truly good stewards to our earth you need to be buried in a ‘green’ way - that is, no embalming and in a woven cardboard box or untreated pine.
I feel we have a duty to show the utmost respect and care for the Earth to honour God and to honour our fellow men and women.

Ideally I would like to donate all possible organs and then be wrapped in cloth and placed in the Earth but I don’t think that is legal.