Cremation and the Catholic Church

There are some Catholics who say that the Church allows cremation.  Others say that cremation is always forbidden in the Church.  What should we believe?

The Catholic Church's preference has always been to bury the dead.  The ban on cremation was to oppose the pagan practices that were considered to be anti-Christian.  The Romans did not believe in an afterlife.  As such, they cremated their dead.  The Christians of the early Church avoided cremation because of the connection with the Roman view.  To be cremated served the purpose of denying the resurrection and afterlife.

Another reason why this practice fell into disfavor among Christians was the fact that Jesus wasn’t cremated.  There is also the belief that the body is the home of the Holy Spirit and it should be respected as such.

The Catholic Church's rejection of cremation was never intended to imply that someone who is cremated would never go to heaven.  The church has never opposed the cremation of Catholics after disasters such as a plague, earthquakes or floods when mass casualties occurred, making individual burials next to impossible.

The Church also permitted cremation in extra-ordinary situations where transporting a body a very great distance would have created extreme financial hardship.

In 1963, while continuing to maintain a strong preference towards burial, the Catholic Church became more open to allowing cremation.  As more and more Catholics became aware of this change in the law, there has been an increase number of cremations among Catholics.

Prior to 1997, cremations had to take place after the funeral Mass so the body could be present during the rite.  Since then, the Vatican has granted permission to allow funeral Masses with the presence of the ashes.

To this day, the Catholic Church Law forbids cremation when it is chosen for reasons that are contrary to Christian teaching.  These include being cremated in an effort to deny the resurrection of the body.

The ashes of cremated Catholics are to be preserved after the funeral in the same manner that a body would be preserved, either through being placed in a mausoleum or buried in a grave which has been blessed.  The Catholic Church does not permit the ashes of our loved ones to be scattered.  

Our respect for the human remains of our loved ones is evident in the teaching of the United States bishops who wrote, “This is the Body once washed in baptism, anointed with the oil of salvation, and fed with the bread of life.  Our identity and self -consciousness as a human person are expressed in and through the body...Thus, the Church’s reverence and care for the body grows out of a reverence and concern for the person whom the Church now commends to the care of God.”