Last November, my wife and I traveled to Boston to visit our son. While there, he took us to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, an extraordinarily rich institution still—surprisingly—not overtaken by extreme wokeness.
The museum has a small but rich collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts whose main attraction, obviously, is mummies. But the exhibition also contains canopic jars. In case you’re wondering what canopic jars are, they are the vessels in which Egyptian embalmers preserved certain organs (the viscera and lungs) they extracted from a body during mummification.
It struck me that, in one sense, the pagan ancient Egyptians in one respect had a greater respect for human embodiment and incarnation than many modern semi-gnostic “Christians”.
Surveys indicate that Catholic acceptance of cremation largely mirrors that of the general population. This should be surprising because, as French philosopher Damien Le Guay has pointed out, burial was for the longest time the funerary practice of Christians while cremation was the hallmark of pagans.
Why did Boston’s canopic jars trigger that association for me? Because they show that it’s not just the taxidermized shell of a body that mattered to the Egyptians. What the embalmers removed wasn’t just “junk,” “medical waste,” or “clumps of cells” to be discarded. Even those elements not put into the mummy case were honored.
This, of course, is not alien to Catholicism. On October 24th, Pope Francis issued his encyclical Dilexit Nos, on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Our Savior’s Heart is a symbol–but not “just” a symbol–of the center of Jesus’s Love. This is far removed from disincarnate modern thought. (The ancient Egyptian mummifiers also left the heart intact.)
But, you object, the Church permits cremation today. That’s true. Since rescinding its outright ban on cremation in 1963, the Vatican permits cremation today. But much depends on what “permits” means.
The Church “permits”–in the sense of “tolerates”–cremation. But the Church also “prefers” earth burial, in imitation of Jesus who lay in a tomb. It is like Friday abstinence in the United States: the Church in this country “permits” the eating of meat on non-Lenten Fridays provided Catholics perform some other penitential act. But we all also know the dirty little secret: people heard the permission but ignored the condition. The same is true with cremation.
The Church’s preference for earth burial is connected to her preference for bodily integrity, which is why the Church objects to some practices that cremation has otherwise made commonplace. Examples include the scattering of ashes, denying the deceased a final resting place (which is not an urn resting on the mantel over your fireplace), and the commodification of cremains (e.g., crystallizing human ashes into jewelry). It is why the Church generally sought the burial of bodies intact. Something of that same sentiment found echoes in Egyptian burial treatment of body parts, which mirrored something of their concept of life-after-death. (In the Christian West, parcelization of bodies was usually a punishment for serious malefactors, e.g., traitors whose drawn-and-quartered limbs and torso were publicly displayed at various city gates as part of deterrent punishment.)
I find it striking that the pagan Egyptians appear to have a respect for the body similar to what would be later developed more fully by Christians. It was also striking that many Christians seem to be backtracking on their own heritage.
Having written critically about cremation for years, I’ve come to see that the motivations for cremation in the West center on two motives: economics and ecology.
First, ecology. Yes, cremation is usually cheaper than burial. But, I’d argue, it’s not just an economic question. True, cremation costs less and the fact that many people live (Social Security) paycheck-to-paycheck, especially in retirement, bears on the question. Yes, the Church, with its size and cemetery industry, arguably could use its “buying power” better to leverage funeral costs.
But there’s also a cultural shift, too. Leaving a body for burial in a Potter’s Field would also be cheaper, too, but people don’t generally treat their relative’s remains as discardable biomass (even though, historically, incineration is what you did with garbage and medical waste). Acceptance of cremation involves a cultural shift: that a dead body has only a “symbolic” value (which thereby reduces what I’m willing to spend on it) and that what matters is the “memory” of one’s dearly departed. Is this the final triumph of Cartesian person-as-consciousness? Memories, unlike bodies, don’t need final resting places. Has this rendered cemeteries vestigial?
Secondly, ecology. Cemeteries lead to the question of the ecological impact of burial, especially as experienced in America. That question, in turn, collides with contemporary environmental consciousness and climate preoccupations. When one factors in chemical embalming of a body instead of a metal casket in a cement vault, environmental impact is huge and deleterious. And the truth is this mode of burial has elicited a counterreaction that begrudges the dead (even what Leo Tolstoy once described as “six feet from head to toe–all the land a man needs.”)
But Catholics have no obligation to fill the veins of their deceased with formaldehyde or buy bronze caskets and concrete vaults. “Green burial”–unembalmed interment in “green” (e.g., wood) caskets–is growing in popularity among Catholics. Many such caskets are the products of religious orders like the Trappists. We need to recover the idea that the human body is not just a biological by-product that poses only the problem of “disposal” while, at the same time, grappling with environmental questions.
Why does all this matter? Arguably, because reducing the deceased body to merely a biological waste product undermines the Christian perspective of the body as Temple of the Holy Spirit, as well as the Judaeo-Christian perspective (rooted in Genesis) that people are not just another biological species with perhaps a disproportionate carbon footprint. Unless we counter that trend, we will not staunch our society’s gnostic swing that reduces people to consciousness, with their bodies mere instruments or tools attached.
It’s not just a funeral question. Downplaying the body and embodiment underlies many other social issues. It justifies contraception. It lets us pretend that an unborn child with a heartbeat is not a body or person but just a “clump of cells.” It’s why Planned Parenthood fought so vociferously against fetal burial laws, insisting post-abortion remains be treated only as “biological waste.” It teaches us that bearing a child through sexual intercourse versus making a baby in a test tube or petri dish are distinctions without a difference. It insists that by performing mastectomies on girls or giving puberty blockers followed by castration to boys, you can change their “genders.” And, finally, it turns one’s “final resting place” into a mantelpiece or coffee table for the lucky, blowing in the wind or washing out to sea for the less so.
My visit to Boston’s Egypt collection made clear the value of the human body which, although reaching its zenith in Christianity through the Incarnation (which we celebrate next month), was already found inchoately in other cultures like the Egyptian. That should be no surprise, because what’s at stake is the profoundly human.
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“In the Christian West, parcelization of bodies was usually a punishment for serious malefactors, e.g., traitors whose drawn-and-quartered limbs and torso were publicly displayed at various city gates as part of deterrent punishment.” AND FOR SAINTS. I have always found it unsettling how the bodies of Saints are frequently “parcelized”. Yes, there is a reason for that — so that their relics can be venerated in multiple churches — but there was a reason why, when a classmate of mine committed suicide in the middle of a debilitating illness with a hopeless prognosis (and under the influence of the side effects of who knows what medicines), his family had him cremated and his ashes scattered in the Gulf of Mexico: he had been a marine biologist who loved that body of water. Of course the two excuses are not equal, but I do question whether either of them justifies the “parcelization” of the body.
I have read several anti-cremation articles since my husband’s sudden death three years ago. Reality check: the total difference in cost was over $20,000.00. It’s not just the mandatory embalming (my state laws), and the casket, but the burial plot, etc. many hidden costs. At a time when my world had crumbled around me, my pastor told me cremation was totally acceptable for Catholics.
Every time I read your unnecessary and self-righteous opinions on cremation the pain rises . WHY do you continue?
I am sorry you evidently still feel pain about this decision but, as to WHY I continue to write against cremation, it’s for the reasons I put in this text: because it embodies an approach to the human body and embodiment that, together with other currents in the modern world, is profoundly opposed to the Christian meaning of the body. I do not discount the economic factor and do blame the Church’s ongoing failure to use its “institutional” buying power to leverage funeral costs but, that said, the same mindset that also begrudges the dead a grave and a burial is ofteh the same mindset that begrudges a child life. Is that true of every decision about cremation? Obviously not. But when enough toxins build up in the air, even the healthy begin to succumb: there’s a reason asthma is higher in old Rust Belt states, for example.
As bad as the current situation with burials is, the current situations with weddings is even worse. It has all the problem with wasteful expense, together with undue delay. I don’t mean the pre-Cana stuff, although even that should be shorter and more intense; I mostly mean the idea that it should take over a year and more than a down payment for a new house to plan and celebrate a wedding. More attention needs to be placed on the marriage and less on the wedding.
While we’re at it, parishes and/or dioceses should maintain “closets” of children’s clothes for First Communions and Confirmations. More about God, and less about Mammon, is what we need.
Since I did not write the article, I assume you are addressing John Grondelski and only placed your reply under my comment by mistake.
At any rate, practical necessity is a reality in this world. Somewhat similar situations have arisen in the past when, for example, someone died on a long ship voyage and had to be buried at sea. In other cases, men have been lost in mine collapses where it was too dangerous to recover the bodies for burial, and whole villages have been covered by landslides, making it practically impossible to dig out millions of tons of dirt and rock in hopes of finding the bodies.
A contrasting situation happened when my brother died. I am the only Catholic in my family. My dad wanted my brother cremated, but he left all the other arrangements to me. I had to be careful in choosing my fights; I told my dad there WOULD be an obituary, whether he and his silly new wife wanted one or not, and I had to put my foot down to the silly new wife that, no, she would not be able to wear my brother’s ashes on a necklace. My brother left enough money to cover normal funeral practices. The timing indicates that my dad’s wife used a chunk of it to buy a new car within weeks of my brother’s death.
I think Grondelski’s complaint is about situations similar to my brother’s, not to your husband’s. It is about a casual choice, not about a heart-wrenching necessity.
I knew relics would come up and considered writing about them in the article but did not want to give my editor another 2000 word piece. Long story short: yes, the Church as institution (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic) has shared relics, including parts of human bodies, because they were physical contact of the sacred. This was the flesh or bone of a saint. That is far removed from this is biomass we need to incinerate or, more commonly, this is a criminal whose behavior we find so abhorrent we are going to carve him like a turkey and put him on display.
Certainly, it is done with the best intentions. Certainly, being done with the best intentions is not enough to justify any action fully.
After all, I suspect we both venerate Pope St. John Paul II, even when no first-class relic of him is nearby.
2 Kings 13:21 gives a good Old Testament precursor to the relics of Catholic Saints. For all that, the bones of Elisha were not distributed to every town in the Holy Land.
That was 103 words to say, “Nuh uh!”
Despite a strong distaste for cremation, I have to admit that there are certain circumstances where it is, I think, the best option. One case that comes to mind is when the bodies have been mutilated in mocking ways — for instance, the use of Jewish skin for leather book covers by the Nazis, and even things like “Bodies, the Exhibition”. It is one thing to preserve the body, but another thing altogether to preserve it in a state of disgrace.
Ask any Knight of Columbus if it is the same thing to dump an American flag into the trash as to “retire” it in flames. For that matter, ask any priest how to best deal with old sacramentals that are beyond repair or restoration. Even within the Catholic tradition, burning is sometimes a sign of respect, rather than the contrary.
“If I had been a Heathen,
I’d have piled my pyre on high,
And in a great red whirlwind
Gone roaring to the sky;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And a richer man than I:
And they put him in an oven,
Just as if he were a pie.” — Chesterton, “The Song of the Strange Ascetic”
By the Grace of God a late family member ended up in a Catholic hospital after they were found unconscious & close to death. A social worker for the Catholic hospital suggested cremation & the remains being split between the family. The widow who was Buddhist objected saying dividing up the ashes would be against her beliefs & disrespectful to her husband’s body.
It’s a sad state of affairs when a Catholic hospital’s social worker needs Catholic teaching explained to them by a Buddhist.
“It’s a sad state of affairs when a Catholic hospital’s social workers needs Catholic teaching explained to them by a Buddhist” … or a pagan ancient Egyptian embalmer. : )
Thank you, Dr. Grondelski.
I have often thought that when it comes to the actual burial the best mode is to be buried in a winding sheet or shroud directly in the earth, no coffin. Perhaps we could return to the custom which lasted into at least the 19th century of a common parish coffin used to transport the body to church and grave but not buried with the body. Also, though I guess impractical in our “enlightened” days when work and social obligations take priority, burial a day or at most two after death and not, as in the case of the recently deceased Ethel Kennedy, weeks later at the convenience of whomever. Death is not convenient. It’s jarring. It’s an interruption.
I think of these things because they would greatly reduce the expense of modern burials which are prohibitive, especially for the poor. From what I hear it is cost and convenience that are at the root of cremation by Catholics. We can reduce the cost and still bury people with dignity. Of course the death industry won’t like that one bit.
Orthodox Jews still use winding sheets.
Outis makes a good point about burning sometimes being a sign of respect – and is it more respectful to a human body to bury it in the ground where it will rot away and could be eaten by vermin, worms etc, rather than to cremate it? And what about saints like Joan of Arc who were burnt at the stake, and whose body was reduced to ashes?