Cremation Prohibitions

♱ Introduction to Cremation

For many centuries, the Holy Catholic Church forbade cremation, and denied Christian burial rites to anyone who chose to be cremated. The only exception allowed was for an extraordinary set of circumstances, such as in times of plague or other natural disasters that killed thousands of people at once.

Fr. William J. Devlin, S.J. writes in The Catholic Encyclopedia that pagans of the Roman Empire would burn the bodies of Christian martyrs intentionally, to prevent them from possibly one day rising from the grave.

In centuries past, Catholics never burned their beloved dead but instead followed early Jewish burial practices as shown in Sacred Scripture. It is recorded that in times of persecution many Catholics risked their lives to recover the bodies of martyrs so that they may have the Holy Rite of a Christian Burial.

♱ Sacred Scripture

There are many examples in Sacred Scripture that exemplify the practice of burial.

“And so Abraham buried Sarah his wife, in a double cave of the field, that looked towards Mambre, this is Hebron in the land of Chanaan.” (Gen 23:19)

“And Moses the servant of the Lord died there, in the land of Moab, by the commandment of the Lord. And he buried him in the valley of the land of Moab over against Phogor: and no man hath known of his sepulchre until this present day.” (Deut 34:5-6)

“And Joseph [of Arimathea] taking the body [of Jesus], wrapped it up in a clean linen cloth. And laid it in his own new monument, which he had hewed out in a rock. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the monument, and went his way.” (Matt 27:59-60)

♱ Catholic Church History

The early prohibition against cremation was specified in the PIO BENEDICTINE CODE OF CANON LAW 1917 in Canon 1203, paragraphs 1 & 2 stating: “The bodies of the faithful departed shall be buried, their cremation being reprobated. If anyone by any manner orders that his body be cremated, it is illicit to execute that desire; and if this was added to any contract or testament or any other act it is considered as not being added.”

In the same PIO BENEDICTINE CODE OF CANON LAW 1917, In Canon 1240, paragraph 1 states: “Unless they gave before death a sign of repentance, the following are deprived of an ecclesiastical burial: Notorious apostates, excommunicates, those who killed themselves, those who died in a duel, those who ordered that their body be handed over for cremation and other public and manifest sinners.” In Paragraph 5 it states that “Those who give orders that their body be cremated are amongst those who must be refused ecclesiastical burial.”

Later, the Conciliar Catholic Church revised the CODE OF CANON LAW 1983 and used permissive language to describe Cremation in Canon 1176: “The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed; nevertheless, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine.”

♱ The Gruesome Details

Cremation is the mechanical, thermal, or other dissolution process that reduces a human body to bone fragments. “Flame-Based Cremation” and “Alkaline Hydrolysis” (also known as an acid bath) are legally done in the United States and Canada. To incinerate human corpses the temperature of the furnace must be set to 1,400 – 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and there is a tremendous amount of generated energy needed for this process. Cremation in reality is not environmentally-friendly nor economical for society as a whole, due to the amount of energy used for every cremation.

Crematoriums typically incinerate the clothing along with the body. In most cases the person is cremated in whatever garments they arrived in or a specific garment that was provided by the family. Any resulting ash from the fabric mixes with the pulverized bone fragments of the body. (Taken from the Cremation Association of North America)

The process involves placing the human body in a pre-heated high-temperature furnace, where sizzling and shrinking begins to take place and the corpse begins to break down. The process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours depending on the body size and stored heat in the chamber. Soft tissue such as skin, muscle, organs and fat, fully combust during the cremation process.

Not everything can be burned during this initial process, especially large bones. After the cremation chamber cools, the remaining bone fragments are put in a separate machine called a “Cremulator” which pulverizes them and reduces them to a fine, uniform powder. After the whole process is completed, there is no assurance that the “ashes” that a family is given are only of their deceased loved one. There could possibly be prior cremated remains mixed in with your loved one.

The process of cremation is so terrifying that as general practice, the family is not permitted to watch the actual cremation of their loved one.

♱ Conclusion

Even though cremation is offered as a “cheaper” option, Catholics should adhere to the constant Tradition of the Church, which numbers the burial of the dead as one of the “Corporal Works of Mercy,” so great must be our respect for the body, which is “the temple of the Holy Ghost.” (I Cor. 6:19)

We must neither request cremation for ourselves, nor permit it for our relatives (as much as is possible) and NOT attend any religious services associated with it. If need-be a traditional Catholic priest can be consulted about cases where cremation was chosen out of ignorance of Church teaching.