What do Catholics believe regarding cremation?
I think how we bury our loved ones transcends religion. I strongly object to cremation because it is at violent odds with love itself; the very language of love protests against it: cherish, honor, preserve, even to dote, to minister to, to hold…as dear to us the physical shape and weight of those we love who have passed away…their intact skeletons can endure for hundreds of years…as Christians we have only to look to our Lord “This is my body,” and, for Catholics, our Lady who was assumed body and soul to heaven…the story of Lazarus (four days dead in the tomb)…for illustrations of the sanctity of human life, body, mind and spirit. As Christians, bodily burial sustains and maintains Judeo-Christian tradition and is the penultimate gesture of our faith and hope in the Resurrection. Cremation, on the other hand, is, in most cases, the cold, expedient, economical pulverization of that cherished physical aspect of our loved ones. The Catholic Church, in the new code of Canon Law
