Cremation

CREMATION. - The term c. (from Lat. crematio = burning) has been reserved by usage for the act of burning the human corpse. This act, as it is practiced today in our countries, is a prompt, complete combustion of the corpse according to scientific technique, whereas among less civilized peoples it is a more or less complete incineration with a special religious ceremonial, as it was among the ancients.

According to a rather conventional symbolism, incineration seems to mean that bodies are forever dissolved and dispersed, whereas the opposite rite of burial accompanies the idea of death equated with sleep, and expresses with greater fidelity the Christian faith in the final resurrection. This as a symbolic expression, not as a reality.

In absolute terms, in fact, c. is not contrary to any natural or revealed truth; still less is it such as to constitute an obstacle to God's omnipotence for the resurrection of bodies. Nor can it be said that it in any way violates the rights of the human person. The corpse is no longer a person and therefore is no longer essentially inviolable in itself and for itself.

In fact, however, c. has been repugnant to the discipline of the Church from its earliest beginnings, contrary to the exquisite sentiments of Christian piety toward the dead; whereas the opposite rite, burial, through unanimous, uninterrupted, traditional teaching, has risen to a fitting signification of the immortality of the soul, of faith in the resurrection of the flesh; to a manifest reminder of biblical events and teachings, already operative in Jewish tradition, such as the idea of the body-seed (I Cor. 15, 36-44), of the earth-mother (Gen. 3, 19; Iob. 1, 21; Eccl. 40, 1), of death-rest and sleep (Dan. 12, 2; Io. 11, 11-39).

A pagan of the 2nd century said of the Christians " eseccantur rogos, et damnant ignium sepulturas " (Minucius Felix, Octavius, ch. 11: Pl. 3, 267). And he also made known the reason: faith in the resurrection of the flesh. It is therefore not a simple custom, contrary to pyres, but an execration, a condemnation made on religious principle and so open as to be known even to the pagans. Indeed, precisely in order to insult Christian convictions, they not infrequently vented their fury against the tortured remains of the martyrs, incinerating them (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, chs. 1 and 2, PG 20, 433).

Christians considered themselves gravely insulted by the the mutilation done to the corpses of their brethren, and the apologists protested, while making it understood that they had nothing to fear for the resurrection.

Nevertheless, cinerary urns and burnt remains have been found in Christian cemeteries; but the place of discovery, often beneath pagan cemeteries, and the inscriptions, none of which has so far been found to be Christian, authorize us without hesitation to hold that the said cinerary urns come, through landslides, from the pagan funerary monuments above them (cf. O. Marucchi, Manuale di archeologia cristiana, Rome 1933, p. 201).

Materialism, superstition, ridiculous incongruities — all concurred to alienate the minds of Christians from cremation, beyond the useless maltreatment to which the corpse was subjected. The Christian custom of inhumation, already in use among the Hebrews, gained ground also in the pagan world against the practice of the pyre, in proportion to the spread of the Christian faith, and extended to every class of persons, even the highest, who had embraced Christianity. Converts to Christianity, even those of noble lineage, preferred the Christian cemetery loculi to the pomp of the pyre, while the liturgy of the Church was wholly oriented toward the rite of inhumation, echoing the lofty meanings that tradition has given to the deposition of the corpse beneath the earth.

With the victory of the Church between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century, cremation ceased in the Roman Empire.

The very rarity or almost absence of canonical documentation on the matter is itself an indication of the absence of abuses. The indirect testimonies of the councils, which legislate on funerary matters, document for us the universal custom of inhuming corpses (C. 28, C. XIII, q. 2).

Even outside the Roman Empire, pyres generally disappeared in every country where Christianity penetrated. The Saxons, reluctant to abandon cremation, were pressed to do so by a capitulary of Charlemagne of 789 (ed. Boretius, I, 69). Before them the Thuringians had abandoned cremation, and after them the Scandinavians, the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Danes (1205) and the Prussians (1245).

After the year 1000 a strange funerary custom had been spreading through Europe, which in some manner had points of contact with cremation.

Corpses were artificially stripped of flesh, after being boiled, so that the cleaned bones could more easily be transferred from one place to another. Such treatment was applied to the son of the Emperor Conrad, to the Archbishop of Cologne, Rainald (1162), to Frederick I Barbarossa (1167) and to some of his dignitaries, to St. Louis IX of France (1270), to Theobald, King of Navarre, Isabella of Aragon, Philip IV of France, and others (Aimoino, De gestis Francorum, V, Paris 1514, ch. 55).

A decretal of Boniface VIII (1299) strikes with excommunication «latae sententiae», reserved to the Holy See, those who order and those who carry out such an operation, at the same time depriving the body so treated of ecclesiastical burial (c. i, De sepulturis, III, 6, in «Extravag. Comm.»). The decretal, in its text and context, is also an implicit condemnation of cremation.

The condemnation achieved its effect, for centuries passed without further traces of new abuses.

It will be the decidedly anti-Christian attitude of today's cremationists and of their pro-cremation associations that will arouse, over a fact not in itself strictly bound up with doctrine, the aversion of believers and the explicit condemnations of the Church.

The origins of the modern movement for cremation are traced back to the Revolution of the 18th century. There was in fact a proposed law before the Council of Five Hundred (11 Nov. 1797) to obtain that cremation be made optional, but the matter was rejected. The attempts were, however, resumed later in the various European states and with a certain success.

Freemasonry bears much responsibility in this regard. Although, for lack of evidence, the genesis of this movement cannot be imputed to it, it is certain that it favored it in every way, out of a spirit above all anticlerical, taking care to give it that character of independence and of free thought, of emancipation from religious traditions, which has been the principal cause of the Church's condemnations.

The true launching of the cremationist idea took place in Italy in 1857 through the work of Ferdinando Coletti, a physician, who was followed by various colleagues; and in 1867 it became the object of a parliamentary proposal, not however admitted for reading, on the initiative of the Hon. Salvatore Morelli, a celebrated divorce advocate. But the repeated proposals succeeded with the decree of 1874, whose art. 67 permits cremation, as something nevertheless exceptional: from something exceptional, thanks to the propaganda and the pressures of some thirty cremationist societies that had arisen in the meantime, it passed to being optional with the decree of 1892.

After its quarter-hour of fortune in the last century, cremation is today in decline in Italy.

In other countries the beginnings of the cremationist campaign likewise occurred in the last century, and almost everywhere the historically anti-religious character of cremation is evident.

Cremation found a place also in other legislations: it was admitted in France (1887), in Belgium (1932), in Red Spain (1932), in Portugal (1910), in Denmark (1892), in Czechoslovakia (1919), in England (1902), Finland (1926), Austria (1922), in many of the states of North America, in Argentina (1886), etc. In the forefront of cremationist practice stands perhaps Sweden, followed by Norway, Switzerland (where the law on the matter is cantonal) and Germany.

The Protestant Church has shown itself very conciliatory on the matter; the «Orthodox» church is opposed, and more than all the Catholic Church. But not out of prejudice.

In fact, precisely in this century the Church gave proof of tolerance in the matter with the neophytes of India, permitting its ministers to remain passive, though without approving, in the face of cases of cremation of the corpses of Christians, promoted by pagan relatives for reasons of caste prestige. And this so as not to place obstacles to their conversion (Collectanea S. Congr. de Propaganda Fide, n. 1626-27, Sept. 1884).

Intransigent, on the other hand, it showed itself, for opposite reasons, in the face of the cremationists of Catholic countries in which the purpose of de-Christianizing was evident.

In the first document, which is from the S. Congregation of the Holy Office dated 19 May 1886, the Church condemns cremation as a detestable abuse, forbids designating by will or agreement with cremation societies, or in any other way, one's own corpse for cremation, or having that of others cremated; forbids belonging to cremationist societies, which, if affiliated with Freemasonry, are subject to the ecclesiastical penalties inflicted against the latter (Acta Sanctae Sedis, 19 [1886], p. 46). On 15 Dec. of the same year another decree of the same Congregation appeared, which forbade priests access to the cremation furnace to perform the sacred rites there, while permitting them, in the house of the deceased or in Church, should the cremation take place by the will of the survivors. For if the cremation takes place by the deceased's own designation, maintained until death, he is deprived of ecclesiastical burial.

Following these decrees, many moral questions arose concerning the Sacraments, suffrages and cooperation: questions that were addressed in the decree of the Holy Office of 27 July 1892. By this decree it was forbidden to administer the Sacraments to the faithful who, without being Freemasons, had opted for c. and did not wish to retract it even after admonition; and it was forbidden to apply Mass publicly for them in the event of death; cooperation in c., done with the intention of transgressing the ecclesiastical precept, was declared unlawful, under penalty of interdiction from the Sacraments, although material cooperation was tolerated, provided that any sign of adherence to the Masonic sect or of hostility to the Church were removed from the ceremonies for c. (Collectanea S. Congr. de Propaganda Fide, n. 1808).

Consistent with these principles on cooperation is the instruction of the Holy Office of 3 Aug. 1897, by which, in reply to the superior of the sisters "a Matre Dolorosa," the incineration of amputated limbs was tolerated, if carried out by express order of the physician, while recommending, if possible, burial in a blessed place (Acta Sanctae Sedis, 30 [1897] p. 630).

The code of canon law retains the principles and sanctions of the aforesaid decrees, and the relevant canons are to be interpreted in their light. Can. 1203 § 1 prescribes the burial of corpses, disapproves of c. and declares void the will of a deceased person who had left a mandate in any manner for the c. of his corpse, forbidding cooperation in c. itself in accordance with the decree of 1892. It is this invalidation of the deceased's will that is the only new element of the canonical legislation.

The penalty for anyone who, in any manner, has given directions that his own corpse be cremated, and has not retracted them, is, in accordance with can. 2291 n. 5 and 1240 § 1 n. 5, deprivation of ecclesiastical burial, and therefore, in accordance with can. 1204, of being accompanied to the Church, of the funeral rites and of deposition in a sacred place.

Consequently the deceased will be deprived of any funeral Mass, including an anniversary one (can. 1241).

Deprivation of ecclesiastical burial remains in force as a penalty, even if the c. is in fact not carried out, provided it appears that the deceased persevered until death in his intention of c.

If this will is doubtful, ecclesiastical burial is not forbidden. Thus it is not forbidden if the c. is carried out against the retraction of the person who arranged it, or else against any previous will of the deceased; but in that case scandal must be prevented, which can also be achieved by making public the true will of the deceased, and the ashes must still be buried, in the manner of the interment of a corpse.

The accompanying of a corpse to the crematorium can be regarded not as an act of religion, but as a duty of civil honors, and from this standpoint, even if a non-Catholic minister were present, it will be lawful in accordance with can. 1258 § 2.

If, ecclesiastical burial having been refused, a non-Catholic minister has been called, whoever did so is suspect of heresy and cannot be admitted to the Sacraments, except after having repaired the scandal (reply of the Holy Office to the bishop of Linz, 25 Febr. 1926; AAS, 18 [1926], p. 282).

Cremation societies are certainly forbidden, but not under censure unless they are branches of Freemasonry. Non-Catholics too, in accordance with c. 12, are bound to observe the laws of the Church on c.

In June 1926 an instruction of the Holy Office raised the alarm about a revival of c., recalling almost literally the decrees of 1886 and once again reaffirming the doctrine of the Church.

It is appropriate, however, to point out, to avoid misunderstandings, that this is in the purely disciplinary and ritual sphere: if circumstances required it, the Church could, without contradicting herself, change the provisions. And even today she finds nothing to object to if c. is requested in extraordinary circumstances, such as war, epidemics, etc., for a certain and grave reason of public good, just as in the past she found nothing to object to against the death penalty, applied by c.

Besides religious motives, there stands against c. a grave argument of a social nature, drawn from forensic medicine, which has among its objects of study the human corpse, even for some time after its burial, following a death that may appear violent or criminal. Now c. destroys with the corpse one of the possible pieces of evidence of the crime; it is therefore also socially dangerous because of the greater security it gives to crime.

Pietro Palazzini

MEDICINE

In favor of cremation, its supporters bring arguments of a historical, technical, hygienic, social, political and religious nature. In particular: 1) The worsening of the problem of the disposal of corpses in the ever more extensive necropolises annexed to cities, which are growing because of the phenomenon of urbanism: thus, for example, while in 1870 the Verano cemetery in Rome occupied an area of 15 hectares, naturally the overall cemetery areas of the city (Verano, Flaminio) and of the suburbs cover about 100 hectares. 2) The practical difficulty of arranging the cemetery in conditions of location and orientation such as to be truly not harmful to the underground water table, on account of infiltrations into the subsoil, or in relation to the direction of the prevailing atmospheric currents, which are bound to convey the miasmatic exhalations in the direction opposite to the built-up area. Although the experts have clearly demonstrated that a cemetery laid out according to all the rules of hygiene causes no harm to the nearby built-up area, it must be recognized that in practice it is not easy to solve the problem in a satisfactory manner, and there are very few cemeteries that cannot be criticized from the hygienic point of view. However, both the reasons adduced from the point of view of spatial encumbrance and those of a hygienic nature, even if at first sight they may appear of notable importance, in practice prove not to be worrying. Cemeteries themselves have a relatively brief life; within a few years, at most ten, they accomplish in the dead that incineration which the flame would produce in a few moments; life advances irresistibly, and while history shows that many cities arose and many new fertile fields were won by the plough where our ancestors once found pious burial, it has never spoken of necropolises that suffocated or swallowed up cities of the living. From the hygienic point of view, the excellent filtering power exercised by the earth upon the most dangerous pathogenic germs (smallpox, cholera, typhus, etc.) is demonstrated; it is a matter of observation that, whenever an epidemic breaks out, the sources of contagion and of its spread start from the living and not from the dead; that one never witnesses the reawakening of old epidemics when, during the period of urban development of the 19th century, the old cemeteries were swept away by the rise and expansion of new settlements.

Giuseppe de Ninno