Funerals and the Catholic viewpoint

[Irishgal49]

Everyday I read in the newspaper obituaries of people who don’t want funderals, or don’t have one paid for by their families

I think it’s sad just to basically throw the body away without any prayers or family present.

After all it is in our bodies that we are baptised, confirmed, recieve Holy Communion and are anointted.

Our family is very weird, no one ever has a funeral. Ever. So far all the way back to my great-grandma everyone is cremated and usually their ashes are scattered or someone keeps them. Very weird but its normal to me. I totally want to be cremated and no funeral at all. I know my Catholic friends would have masses said for me. No one else is Catholic and since no one does funerals, they wouldn’t get it.

I do have the world’s most unusual family.

 

[Stylites]

Is this the position of the Church? If not, when did it change and why?

It’s not. The Church requires where possible that remains rest on the hallowed grounds of a Catholic cemetary, but that also could include a niche for cremains. The Church teaches the resurrection of the body, and recognizes the power of the Creator to resurrect it regardless of its earthly and temporal state.

 

[andrewstx]

Actually, in New York State, at least, you can’t just “throw a body away.” It has to be properly buried or cremated, by law. Even when a body is donated to medical science, it is cremated. The medical school near here periodically has a nondenominational service for those bodies which were cremated after use by the school, and if there is no family to claim the cremains they are buried individually in a plot on the university grounds.

Around here at least they are usually buried in the ground by graveyard workers. with no family or clergy present. To me that is the same as “throwing a body away”.

Most locals are fundamental Christians, baptist, church of Christ, or belong to so called “non-denominational” denominations. It seems that to these groups it is all over at death. You are “saved” or “unsaved”, they don’t ackowledge purgatory so to them there is no point in praying.

They defineatly do not pray for their departed. Growing atheism and agnosticism also play a big part.

 

[andrewstx]

When I die I will be cremated, and my ashes will be placed in a niche at the churches columbarium chapel.

I can’t afford ground burial, and anyone who knows the indignities a human body goes through in the process of embalming will be shocked.

I oppose the funeral industry and their euphaisms, It’s a coffin not “casket”. A body is embalmed, not “prepared”, and placed in a grave, not a “space”. The body is put in a hearse, and not a coach.

I have the feeling that the funeral industry exists to make the highest profits available, and thus employ those euphansims to deny death and maximise profits.

I reccomend that people read THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH, by Jessica Mitford.

 

[MarinerFan]

TXFLYGUY, the same thing happened to my great aunt. She wanted nothing to do with any church. She was legally blind by the time she died, but on her deathbed she sat up and looked right through my other aunt. She definitely saw something. She laid down and died a few minutes later without saying anything.

 

[Thomas_Casey]

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