there have been some who find the exhibit unacceptable. The reasons hearken back to those expressed by people who objected to dissection of bodies by medical practitioners and students in earlier centuries.
Can you cite this or expand on it somehow? There is a difference between experiments on human bodies obtained legitimately for research for bona fide medical knowledge that can benefit the treatment of persons, and using a body as a public display. The latter does not honor the individual as a child of God, whose body, deserves the honor of a proper customary disposition by virtue of having been the only mortal body housing in its time an immortal soul created by God.
The exhibit seemed to me to be in good taste.
The CCC doesn’t seem to include ‘taste’ as a criteria for the rightness or wrongness of changing the bodies of the dead into displays profiting the exhibitors.
I have trouble believing that the exhibitors would show a corpse crucifixion on TV which would be offensive to many.
What if it’s offensive to a few? Genuine scientific inquiry such as those that have been done on human cadaver hands to determine the physical limitations of human flesh vis-a-vis crucifixion stresses are for the purpose of genuine scientific research. Changing a human body into a plasticized representation of a crucifixion strikes me as more about portraying the cruelty of crucifixion for commercial gain than for any genuine scientific inquiry.
I suggest that if this man made a casting of the body after his work was done, which would be very inexpensive and could produce an identical result, then gave the body a proper burial according to its owners’ wishes, at his expense, there would be little objection, except from people who just don’t want to see it. Since he makes a point of emphasizing these are real human bodies, that’s obviously part of his appeal, and that’s what makes it a horror, rather than an edification. His costs are very high to do this, I understand, so high that adding the cost of a casting and burial would probably be incremental, but he’s a businessman seeking profit and he obviously doesn’t want to leave that money on the table if possible. And he makes A LOT of money doing this.
Organ donation for the benefit of anothers’ life may be considered meritorious in the Catechism. This is the general principle, however:
CCC p. 2300:
The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. The burial of the dead is a corporal work of mercy; it honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit.
scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a5.htm#2300
I don’t know if doing this honors the Child of God whose body is turned into a spectacle of any kind by an impresario. The concept of burial implicitly includes physical dissolution of bodily structures: allowing “dust to dust” to occur after death. This would appear to intend the opposite, for a commercial motive justified with a fuzzy “educational” reason.
If this allowed prevention of an illness, or furthered understanding of a condition, it would make much more sense from a justice perspective. As it is, he’s using a human body as a kind of elaborate display, and I don’t know if that honors the intention of a burial process.
I do know that there have been controversies and questions about where this man obtains bodies for his displays. There have been allegations some have not been obtained consentually, and that some are executed Chinese prisoners. He is running an exhibit in my city now, and I will personally have nothing to do with it.
As Catholics we can’t view human beings as having eternal souls AND mortal bodies, then use the mortal body in death as a for-profit display and retain the integrity of our faith about the resurrection. God’s power to ressurrect bodies is not limited by any process, but my opinion is that the Christian objection here is a lack of adherence to the intention to respect the corporeal work of mercy to bury the dead.
