by Gabriele Cantaluppi

Why did the Church prohibit cremation in the past and allow it today?

The Easter period, which as believers we are experiencing this month, is a reminder of the final destiny of the Resurrection of our body, when Christ "will hand over everything to the Father" (1 Cor 15).

In 1963 the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office with the document Pium et constantem and in 2016 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (new name of the Congregation) with the Instruction Ad resurgendum offered us some norms for the custom, now widespread , of the cremation of the deceased, underlining however that this does not bring any change to the Catholic doctrine of the final resurrection, as we also profess it as a community in the Creed of the Mass.

The new Vatican document explains: «By burying the bodies of the faithful deceased, the Church confirms faith in the resurrection of the flesh and intends to highlight the high dignity of the human body as an integral part of the person whose history the body shares», and underlines that «it cannot therefore allow attitudes and rites that involve erroneous conceptions of death, considered both as the definitive annulment of the person, and as the moment of his fusion with Mother Nature or with the Universe, and as a stage in the process of reincarnation, and as the definitive liberation of the 'prison' of the body."

Since Christian antiquity, inhumation was preferred to cremation and it also better expressed the expectation of the final resurrection. Saint Paul also attests to this in the first letter to the Christians of Thessalonica (4,16), defining the dead as "those who sleep" waiting to be resurrected at the moment of the "coming of the Lord".

Currently «the Church strongly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be preserved; however, it does not prohibit cremation, unless this has been chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine" and "continues to prefer the burial of bodies, since this shows greater esteem for the deceased".

This new position of the Church, while not changing the doctrine on the resurrection, is one of the signs of a new way in which it presents itself before the world, in the name of dialogue, listening to understand the reasons of those who act and work in a right course of action.

However, the recent Instruction prescribes that "the ashes of the deceased be preserved in a sacred place, that is, in a cemetery or in a church or in an area specifically dedicated for this purpose by the competent ecclesiastical authority". What remains is the absolute prohibition of "dispersing ashes in the air, on land or in water or in any other way" or "the conversion of cremated ashes into commemorative mementos, pieces of jewelery or other objects", in addition to the "division of ashes between the various families".

Burial in cemeteries or other sacred places promotes the piety and respect due to the bodies of the faithful deceased and the memory and prayer for them on the part of family members and the entire Christian community. In this way, communion between the living and the deceased is safeguarded, opposing the tendency to hide or privatize the event of death and the meaning it has for the believer.

With a practical sense, it is pointed out that this avoids the "possibility of forgetfulness and which can occur especially once the first generation has passed": time brings with it the forgetfulness of even the closest people.

A final advantage is to avoid "the possibility of inappropriate or superstitious practices", frequent in the contemporary community. 

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