My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Death and funerals are not topics that people tend to talk about very often, unless you happen to be talking to a funeral director and our diocesan director for Property, Buildings and Cemeteries, as I happened to be doing recently. Our conversation centered on the increasingly unusual requests people are making regarding funeral plans. Not too long ago, it was common practice for family members of a deceased Catholic to arrange for a wake at a local funeral home, a funeral Mass in church and burial in a Catholic cemetery. Unfortunately, that is not always the case any longer.

In one recent case, the deceased person’s body was cremated and the ashes were to be divided, with half of the ashes (technically called “cremains”) being buried in a Catholic cemetery and the other half in a public cemetery. In another case, the decedent had instructed that her cremains be divided into four urns to be given to her children. People are also asking more frequently about scattering the ashes of the deceased over land, in the air or over the waters of an ocean, lake or sea. In light of such requests, I would like to offer some guidance about what is acceptable and what is problematic in terms of Catholic teaching and discipline about burial practices.

During the time of Jesus, it was common throughout the Roman Empire to cremate bodies after death. The Jewish community, however, followed the practice of burying the dead, as was done with Jesus after his crucifixion. He was buried in a tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea. We know that early Christians were buried underground, some even secretly in catacombs. To this day, the Catholic Church clearly prefers burial of the body over cremation.

Prior to 1963, cremation was forbidden by the Catholic Church. In 1963 the Vatican lifted the prohibition against cremation, as long as it was not used in a way to deny our Christian faith in the resurrection of the body. The 1983 revision Code of Canon Law, which remains in effect today, says in canon 1176, §3, “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 has been chosen for reasons which are contrary to Christian teaching.”

The “reasons which are contrary to Christian teaching” are generally understood to refer to the denial in the resurrection of the body. However, the term “resurrection of the body” itself may not be understood very well by many people, including practicing Catholics. When we say in the Apostles’ Creed that we believe in the “resurrection of the body” and in the Nicene Creed that we recite every Sunday that we believe in the “resurrection of the dead,” we are not referring to the resurrection of Jesus that took place almost two thousand years ago, but to the future resurrection of our bodies. The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses this clearly (in paragraphs 989-990), “We firmly believe, and hence we hope that, just as Christ is truly risen from the dead and lives forever, so after death the righteous will live forever with the risen Christ and he will raise them up on the last day. … The ‘resurrection of the flesh’ (the literal formulation of the Apostles’ Creed) means not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our ‘mortal body’ will come to life again.”

Denial of this fundamental dogma of our Christian faith need not be only through an explicit statement, such as, “I choose cremation as a statement that I do not believe in the resurrection of the body.” Such an assertion would be rare. Denial of the resurrection of the dead may be implicit, however, such as cremating the body and then scattering the ashes as a way of saying that there is nothing beyond our earthly existence.

In those cases when cremation is chosen for reasons that are not contrary to our faith in the resurrection of the body, the preferred practice is for cremation to take place following the funeral liturgy at which the body was present. However, when circumstances prevent the presence of the body at the funeral liturgy, it is appropriate that the cremated remains of the body be present for the full course of the funeral rites, including the Vigil for the Deceased (also called the wake), the funeral Liturgy in church and the Rite of Committal at the cemetery.

The remains of cremated bodies should be treated with the same respect given to the corporeal remains of a human body. This includes the manner in which they are carried, the care and attention to appropriate placement and transport, and their final disposition. The cremated remains of a body should be entombed in a mausoleum or columbarium or buried intact in a cemetery, not divided. The practice of scattering cremated remains on the sea, from the air, or on the ground or keeping cremated remains in the home of a relative or friend of the deceased are not the reverent disposition that the church requires. Appropriate means for memorializing the deceased should be utilized whenever possible, such as a plaque or stone that records the name of the deceased.

Another unfortunate situation arises in the case of the death of a Catholic who was a regular churchgoer, but whose spouse or children do not practice the faith or are not believers. In such cases, the surviving non-practicing or non-believing adult family members who are responsible for making funeral arrangements sometimes choose to forego a Mass of Christian Burial in church since they do not believe as their spouse or parent did. That is very disrespectful of the faith of the decedent. My advice to those who want to make sure that their wishes are respected for a Catholic Mass of Christian Burial in church is to ask your attorney to write your wishes into your last will and testament as well as in a separate letter of instructions. This will help to make sure that your wishes for a proper Catholic funeral Mass and burial will be heeded.

May God give us this grace. Amen.