A reader writes:
I know that The Church allows for cremation, and that there is a law that says that the ashes must be buried. Is this a moral issue?
I ask because my recently-passed-away mother was cremated, and my sister has the ashes in her house and wants to keep them. I have expressed my desire to have them buried, but she does not want to bury them. My mother was not Catholic, so should I be concerned?
First, let me say that I am sorry for your loss and will pray for the repose of your mother’s soul and for your family.
There is ecclesiastical law that requires the burial or other interment of the cremated remains of an individual. According to the Order of Christian Funerals:
"The cremated remains of a body should be treated with the same respect given to the human body from which they come. This includes the use of a worthy vessel to contain the ashes, the manner in which they are carried, the care and attention to appropriate placement and transport, and the final disposition. The cremated remains should be buried in a grave or entombed in a mausoleum or columbarium. 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. Whenever possible, appropriate means for recording with dignity the memory of the deceased should be adopted, such as a plaque or stone which records the name of the deceased." (Order of Christian Funerals, Appendix No. 417)
If your sister, like your mother, is not Catholic then neither of them are bound by this norm legally. That still leaves the other question you ask, which is whether your sister is bound by it morally.
The answer appears to be no.
What natural law requires is that the remains of the dead be treated with reverence, and the above norm expresses the way in which reverence is to be shown to cremated remains in Catholic circles. However, it does not appear that natural law requires that reverence be shown in this particular way.
It may be helpful here to realize that there is an enormous amount of diversity in different cultures regarding the proper way to show reverence for the remains of the departed.
This was made clear to me a number of years ago when I was talking with a friend of mine who as raised in a different culture and she expressed horror at the idea of archaeologists digging into graves to learn about previous cultures. To her this was an unacceptable desecration, and the respectful thing to do would be to leave the graves alone.
Coming from an American cultural perspective, my reaction was exactly the opposite: Opening the graves (e.g., tombs in Egypt) so that we could learn about past cultures was precisely the means needed to honor the people who built them. Examining the tombs of past cultures would enable us to learn more about them and thus appreciate and respect them more fully. For some of these cultures, their tombs were the best-preserved things about them we had, and to refuse to examine them would deprive us of precious knowledge about a people who would otherwise be lost to history.
There are many other examples of how respect for the remains of the departed varies from culture to culture. In Jesus’ own day–as you may recall from the "St. James ossuary" incident–it was customary for some individuals to be placed in a tomb while their bodies decayed and then, a year later, their relatives would clean the bones and place them in an ossuary.
In Rome it is customary to honor the dead in the catacombs not just by doing archaeological excavations in them but by going on pilgrimages through them.
There is also the Capuchin church of Santa Maria della Concezione, where the bones of numerous Capuchins (some collected as late as 1870) are displayed in the most striking fashion.
Now, as an American, I find some practices that other cultures use as creepy as I’m sure many readers do, but the point is that there is a huge amount of variation culturally in how respect for the dead is to be shown to their remains.
And then there is the whole custom of venerating the relics of the saints, which are parts of their remains that are not buried.
Thus when we get to the question of what natural law requires interment it seems that it does not.
If it did then the Church would not have the relics of the saints on display in reliquaries. They would all have to go into graves or tombs.
To look at it another way, there is nothing about the molecules that once formed part of a person’s body that requires that these molecules be housed in a particular structure, such as a grave or a tomb. We the living can show our respect for the dead by so housing them, but this is a means of showing respect–and thus subject to cultural variation–rather than something required by the molecules themselves.
If your non-Catholic sister (assuming that she is non-Catholic) wishes to keep your mother’s cremated remains in a sealed container in her house the way that you as a Catholic might keep the relic of a saint in a reliquary in your house then there is not a violation of natural law here. Both are ways that respect can be shown for the dead. Her way is not the Catholic way of doing it–and I personally would not show my respect in that fashion even if Church law permitted me to–but it is not prohibited by natural law.
As to whether you should be concerned about the situation, I would say two things: (1) You need not be concerned that the natural moral law is being violated by your sister’s proposal but (2) it would be desirable if a solution could be found that was acceptable to all of the surviving relatives (assuming that your mother didn’t herself indicate what she wanted the final disposition of her remains to be). One sibling being the exclusive arbiter of what happens to the remains is not the most desirable solution. Whether a mutual solution could be reached and whether it would be prudent to push for it would be a judgment that those involved in the situation would be in the best position to make.
