The Church's Earnest Recommendation and Clear Preference
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - August 15, 2008
Today we celebrate the Assumption of our Lady, body and soul, into heaven. It is a feast on which we celebrate not only the reality of heaven and the passage of our spiritual Mother to the outstretched arms of her Son, but also the eternal destiny of the human body.
The human body, and not just the human soul, is made for eternity. Since Mary's body never knew sin — because her flesh never warred against her soul — it was assumed together with her soul at the end of her earthly life. For the rest of us, death separates our body and soul, but as we proclaim every Sunday in the Creed, we await the resurrection of the body when our bodies will be reunited with our souls for the general judgment and, God-willing, enter eternal communion with all the saints.
The eternal destiny of the human body shows us that our body is sacred. Once washed in baptism, it becomes the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is nourished with the Bread of Life. It is anointed with sacred chrism and with the oil of the sacrament of the sick. As Pope John Paul II once said, the human body is the "sacrament of the person," the visible sign of the unity of body and soul through which the person interacts with the world. It is the means by which we are able to enter into a one-flesh life-giving communion of love. The woman's body is a hallowed sanctuary for every person's first forty weeks of life. The greatest witness, however, to the dignity of the human body is that the eternal Son of God took one to himself and redeemed it. God the Father prepared for him a body (Heb 10:5) so that he — every day of his life but especially at its culmination — could say, "this is my body given for you." Jesus' bodily resurrection, like his mother's assumption, shows how holy the body is, that it is meant for heaven.
For that reason, when a human being dies and the soul is separated from the body, the Church, while praying for the person's soul, has always shown great reverence for the body, knowing that it is destined for eternity. The early Christians always sought reverently to bury the bodies of their loved ones with the same reverence with which Joseph of Arimathea and the faithful women at the foot of the Cross buried Jesus' body in Joseph's newly-hewn tomb. This was in sharp contract to the practice of most of the Greco-Roman pagans who surrounded them. They identified the person with the soul and viewed the body merely as an instrument or prison of the soul; since the body no longer had a purpose after the soul was separated from it, in most places it was destroyed through cremation.
The Christians, however, never annihilated loved one's bodies through cremation. The fact that Christians never incinerated their dead was a distinctive mark of the Church against which the Church's enemies repeatedly acted. In the early Church, some of the Roman persecutors would burn the bodies of the martyrs in a failed attempt to prevent their eventual resurrection — thereby trying to scare the living from following the martyrs' example. In later times, like the anti-Catholic excesses of the French Revolution or of secularist countries dominated by the Masons, strong efforts promoting cremation were made precisely to try to eradicate Christian beliefs. Since cremation was almost always associated with a disbelief in bodily resurrection and was inconsistent with the dignity and destiny of the human body, the Church explicitly, repeatedly and strictly forbade it.
That ban lasted until 1963, when the Church, while reiterating the importance of full-body burial, began to permit cremation in "extraordinary circumstances," provided that it was not done for reasons contrary to Catholic belief. As the 1983 Code of Canon Law stated, "The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the dead be observed," while adding that it did not forbid cremation unless it is chosen for reasons contrary to Christian teaching (Canon 1176). In 1989, the revised Order of Christian Funerals stressed, "Although cremation is now permitted by the Church, it does not enjoy the same value as burial of the body" and "The Church clearly prefers and urges that the body of the deceased be present for the funeral rites." It added, "The Church's teaching in regard to the human body as well as the Church's preference for burial of the body should be a regular part of catechesis on all levels and pastors should make particular efforts to preserve this important teaching" (OCF 413-414).
It seems clear, however, that this "important teaching" and "earnest recommendation" on the part of the Church have not been getting effectively transmitted. Especially in some areas of the Diocese of Fall River, cremation has become the norm for Christian funerals rather than an exception "when extraordinary circumstances make the cremation of a body the only feasible choice" (OCF 415).
The Church's stress on catechesis shows that she recognizes that the time to transmit the Church's "clear preference" for full body burial is not after a parish receives a call from a local funeral home that someone requesting cremation has died. It's well before, as Catholics are beginning to the think about how to follow Christ in death and burial. That catechesis is becoming increasingly urgent and necessary — especially since the Church in our country in 1997 allowed funeral Masses in the presence of cremated remains — because the more Catholics see funerals in the presence of "cremains," the more they seem to be drawing the conclusion that, contrary to Church teaching, cremation is equivalent in value to full-body burial.
We are living in a culture when, even though few make theological cases repudiating the dignity of the human body and the Christian belief in bodily resurrection, there are abundant practical disavowals, many flowing directly from the practice of cremation. Most of us would recognize that it would be contrary to the sacred nature of the human body to disperse its limbs on a beach or from a plane or to bury them under the Fenway Park grass, and yet many seem to think it is something somehow fitting to scatter ashes in these ways and places. Few of us would ever consider it anything but morbid if we were to preserve our loved one in a casket in our parlor, yet some deem the fireplace mantle an appropriate place for their beloved's ashes. It is clear that, in these cases and others, ashes are not viewed or treated with the reverence fitting for the human body after death. In some cases the "environmental" arguments in favor of cremation make it seem as if the human body is like rubbish that should be incinerated rather than "uselessly occupy" space in a cadaverous landfill.
The feast of the Assumption of Our Lady and its indication of the eternal destiny of the human body is a good time for every faithful Catholic to consider how they will respond to the Church's "earnest recommendation" and "clear preference" that they be buried full-body style like Christ. It is an occasion for those who have sought to proclaim their faith in Christ during their lifetime to ask how they want to proclaim their faith in him and in the resurrection of the body after they die.
The fact that the Church now permits cremation "when extraordinary circumstances make the cremation of a body the only feasible choice" means that Catholics who seek to be faithful to what the Church is asking should choose it only in the rare circumstance when full-body burial is basically not realizable. The Church does not define what those extraordinary circumstances might be, since what is extraordinary may vary from one time, family, locale or situation of death to another. But it does clearly frame the question that Catholics and their families ought to be asking. The question for a faithful Catholic is not, "Do I prefer to be buried or cremated?" The question is, "Is there an extraordinary reason why it would not be feasible for me to be buried full-body style?"
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
