Scottish Catholic Observer

The Vatican’s clarification of the rules regarding burial and cremation this week is a welcome one. We live in a secular world, and it can be all too easy for other ways, other ideas, to slip in. The new document from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reiterates that burial remains preferred, with officials calling cremation a ‘brutal destruction’ of the body. But it lays out guidelines for conserving ashes for the increasing numbers of Catholics who choose cremation for economic, ecological or other reasons. It said it was doing so to counter what it called ‘new ideas contrary to the Church’s faith’ that had emerged since 1963, including New Age-y ideas that death is a ‘fusion’ with Mother Nature and the universe, or the ‘definitive liberation’ from the prison of the body.

This is no change to Church teaching, just a restatement. There can be good reasons for cremation in some circumstances, such as pestilence or in places where people are living in incredibly density, that prevent access to sufficient burial ground. Yet scattering of ashes, or having them reside at home, is a violation of Church tradition. It is correct than even in death we should be placed together, ideally in consecrated ground. The document itself puts it quite beautifully.

“From the earliest times, Christians have desired that the faithful departed become the objects of the Christian community’s prayers and remembrance,” it says. “Their tombs have become places of prayer, remembrance and reflection. The faithful departed remain part of the Church who believes in the communion of all the faithful of Christ, those who are pilgrims on earth, the dead who are being purified, and the blessed in heaven, all together forming one Church”

We are the holders of the most sacred tradition and we carry it on even after we depart this world. We are bound together in the Church even after death. If we scatter of into the wind and into small burrows and homes we lose that which has bound us together for centuries.