Cremation: Permissible

The early Christians abhorred cremation as a pagan practice, and ever since, the Roman Catholic Church has held that the body is not for burning. When cremation was legalized in northern Europe during the 19th century, the Catholic Church suspected an atheistic plot to discredit belief in resurrection. In 1886 the Roman Inquisition declared that Catholics who cooperated in cremation were guilty of sin, and the prohibitions were repeated in the 1917 revision of canon law.

As part of Pope Paul's creeping modernization of the church, the Holy Office has now sent an instruction to all Catholic bishops easing up on the old restrictions. The letter reaffirms the church's traditional preference for burial, but notes that there is no unchangeable dogma forbidding cremation, which thus can be authorized where national custom, economics or hygiene make it necessary.

According to one Vatican official, the Holy Office letter was issued "because there has been a change in attitudes toward burial and cremation around the world." Most non-Roman Christians long ago accepted cremation as no less reverent than interment, and Catholic theologians agree that God could just as easily resurrect a body from scattered ashes as from dry bones in a grave. The new ruling will probably be of most help to bishops in the predominantly Buddhist countries of Asia, where burial is regarded as a revolting and disrespectful custom. Japanese Catholics have already drawn up a cremation rite, and it is expected that church leaders in India, Ceylon and Burma will eventually follow suit.

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