Catholic church bans scattering of ashes

[trotsky]

http://www.nbc26.com/news/national/catholic-church-sets-up-guidelins-for-cremation

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Tuesday published guidelines for Catholics who want to be cremated, saying their remains cannot be scattered, divvied up or kept at home but rather stored in a sacred, church-approved place.

The new instructions were released just in time for Halloween, and All Souls Day on Nov. 2, when the faithful are supposed to pray for and remember the dead.

For most of its 2,000-year history, the Catholic Church only permitted burial, arguing that it best expressed the Christian hope in resurrection. But in 1963, the Vatican explicitly allowed cremation as long as it didn't suggest a denial of faith about resurrection.

...

It said it was doing so to counter what it called "new ideas contrary to the church's faith" that had emerged since 1963, including New Age-y ideas that death is a "fusion" with Mother Nature and the universe, or the "definitive liberation" from the prison of the body.

It's all about the control, even after you're dead.

[TheMastersNemesis]

1. Fuck The Catholic Church. It Is None Of Their Business.

[mercuryblues]

2. $$$$$$$$$$

Church approved place means a Catholic cemetery where you will have to pay to inter the ashes.

[trotsky]

6. "Follow the money" definitely helps one understand a lot about the RCC. n/t

[anoNY42]

3. But if you scatter your ashes,

how will the omnipotent god ever find them?

[trotsky]

7. LOL! n/t

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

26. Quite frankly, an omnipotent god who can't

find all your ashes needs to drop "omnipotent" from his name.

[HAB911]

4. Oh for Kriced sake

[saltpoint]

5. Agree. They want to monitor everyone's

sex lives while people are alive and they want custody of ashes after people die.

The decision is not for The Church to make. If they are unwilling to help people when people need the help, they should stand aside so friends and family can manage disposition of cremation/burial.

"Until our few ashes blow to dust
Or form again wiser lives..."

--Reynolds Price

[Siwsan]

8. We scattered my sister's ashes in the place she loved best - her flower garden

Every time I visit it, I think of her growing in the beautiful blooms.

[Historic NY]

9. How about being shot out of a cannon....

I know a couple people the were sent off. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

[Goblinmonger]

10. This is not a new policy.

Yes, they did allow cremation in '63, but you had to keep the ashes together and, I believe, still needed to bury them in an appropriate cemetery. We went through this with my father-in-law. He remarried and there was a split about where to bury him and the church would not let them split the ashes.

I don't have a problem with it. If you are going to believe in the Catholic version of the afterlife, I guess they get to make the rules about what you do.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. I agree-- so what?

Every religion and society has rules about what to do with the dead, and respecting the corpse is central to most of it.

I don't get it, and I'm probably going to leave my body to science for something instead of wasting good farmland to bury it, but I'm not going to tell a grieving mother that her kid has no soul and is just a pile of rotting meat.

[trotsky]

12. Yep, same old same old.

You want to make your own decisions, I guess you have to leave the church. I wish more decent people would.

[Goblinmonger]

13. I think this policy is a good metaphor for a lot of things in the RCC

Many people just do what they want. If you don't agree with the major teachings of a church (abortion, contraception, treatment of gays, burial, etc), why not just find a church you do agree with rather than continuing to fund one you don't agree with. I understand tradition and being raised in something, but at some point you have to find what you really believe in and support that.

[trotsky]

21. "at some point you have to find what you really believe in and support that"

Nailed it.

Let the bigots remain to defend their bigoted church.

[Act_of_Reparation]

22. I think that for most people, it is more about community than belief.

People will stick with the Church even when they disagree with it because finding a new church means forfeiting an existing social support structure and having to build a new one from scratch. My father-in-law has nothing nice to say about the Church's positions on gays and contraceptives, but he'll be fucked if he has to find new fishing buddies.

#Priorities

[trotsky]

23. Man, I just don't see that I could do it.

I mean, knowing that my time and money and headcount for remaining in the church was being used to fight against marriage equality, the right to die, and women's health around the world... I think I could bring myself to find some new fishing buddies. If I fished.

[Act_of_Reparation]

34. Like a lot of people, my in-laws don't see the big picture.

They're your typical low-information voter. They're not cultured. They're not educated. They lived the majority of their lives in the small, insular enclaves into which they were born. They don't have much meaningful interaction with anyone outside their immediate white, blue-collar, Catholic social group. They think these gay-hating sermons and attacks on contraception are just empty words, because they don't see the effects and don't fully comprehend the scope of the Church's political influence.

Gays have rights, they figure. Nothing the Church says can change that. All this anti-gay talk is just bad press for the Church, and that will eventually go away.

Anti-contraception? They don't see the big deal. "Just go to the store and buy a pack of rubbers," they say. Apparently, that's a common sentiment.

Because they don't have to deal with any of these issues on a personal level, they can't empathize with those that do. So, women and gays take a back seat to fishing and spaghetti dinners with the Knights of Columbus.

[trotsky]

36. "Nothing the Church says can change that."

A dreadfully common reaction, it seems. Why right here in the past I've seen the horrible teachings of the RCC excused with a simple 'well what he says on that doesn't apply in the civil arena.' No, it technically might not, but it has lasting real world effects and many people who are in power in the civil arena DO take those words seriously and use them to assault and oppress others.

Anything to protect and defend the church. Even at the expense of one's fellow human beings. So very sad.

[Act_of_Reparation]

37. In many cases, these people were indoctrinated.

They were brought up believing that Catholicism is central to their cultural or ethnic identity. The Church has effectively made itself tradition for many people of European extraction, and particularly in the United States where tradition was tempered in the fires of anti-immigrant sentiment, these roots have grown very, very deep indeed.

I'm not excusing it, but having grown up in the Church I can't help but empathize with those who continue to stick it out in the pews. Many of them went through the same childhood experiences I did, and under different circumstances I might have wound up in the same place they are now.

[Igel]

25. Sometimes it's about the assets.

Leave the church and kiss those assets goodbye.

A couple of major decisions in religious groups have been made in that way with a lot of court cases just to keep assets. Even if the congregation went from hundreds to single digits, and the congregation had raised the money for the building and its upkeep, it was about the $.

[Dorian Gray]

32. because

culture....

many people were raised in the catholic church. It's what they are familiar with. Their culture is tied to it. And their community is tied to it.

Sometimes religion is more than the set of beliefs. There is a culture and community tied to it. Which is why its difficult for people to leave.

[Mc Mike]

30. Well, I'm a practicing Catholic. I don't disagree with your o.p., t.

Here's the thing. The hierarchy tells us dumb stuff, quite a bit. Millions of us ignore them.

They told us how to vote in '04, '08, '12. We ignored them completely.

My city is strongly Dem and majority Catholic. We vote Dem.

My state has a law against scattering ashes, even without the church trying to gouge the bereaved families. A lot of secular outfits try to gouge the bereaved families too. Funeral homes, tombstone sellers. I'm getting cremated, and if I could get the ashes scattered, I would.

[MFM008]

15. They still need to fine tune

That molestation thing first.

[trotsky]

16. Hey, you gotta have priorities, right?

Clearly a much more important issue, what happens to ALL the bits of an incinerated corpse, than innocent children having their lives ruined.

[rug]

17. Why do you care?

[Goblinmonger]

18. Next time you are going to post something about atheists,

ask yourself that same question.

[rug]

19. Fine. Now you can answer the question since he is understandably reluctant.

Why do you care what Catholics do with ashes?

From his comment it's clear Trotsky posted this solely to make another lame anti-Catholic remark. From a glance at his posting history, that's about all he's left doing in here.

So, why do you care, monger?

[Goblinmonger]

20. Um, I don't.

I think my answer was pretty clear. You can ask if you need more clarification.

[Angry Dragon]

24. I always thought it was the soul that was resurrected and not the body

no wonder why so many people have a lot of trouble with organized religion .....................
so much like organized crime

[Oldem]

27. No. Jesus' resurrection body

is a model of how all Christian's will be resurrected in the body. The rest of the New Testament has a good deal to say about that. Don't know how RC's interpret all that. If God can resurrect soldier's blown to pieces in battle and people burned at the stake, I wouldn't get all worked up about ashes--scattered or otherwise. We can believe all of it or none of it. Our choice.

[trotsky]

33. Belief in a literal physical resurrection for everyone...

is what took the RCC so damn long to even allow for cremation to happen.

[DesertFlower]

28. WTF? that's insane like many

catholic ideas. i still want to know where all the people are who ate meat on friday and died before they changed the law.

[trotsky]

35. Oh there's convoluted "reasoning" for everything...

and there are always loyal subjects who convince themselves how wonderful those emperor's clothes look. Such fine patterns! Such lovely golden threads!

[El Supremo]

29. Oh well, my sister wasn't Roman Catholic anyways.

Fuck them.

[Dawson Leery]

31. And more doors will close everyday.