Dishonoring Cremation

An essay by the philosopher Rachel Lu taking up the subject of Friday’s The Grave Not Taken, from her Aleteia column: Is cremation any way to honor our dead? Only rarely, she argues:

Neither cremation nor burial is a Sacrament, so the significance of the choice is mainly symbolic and not metaphysical. Nevertheless, as Christians, we should when possible choose burial as a more fitting way of honoring our loved ones in keeping with our faith.

Among the reasons for the popularity of cremation, she suggests this interesting one:

It is also possible that modern people, because they have such difficulty disciplining the bodily appetites, are especially attracted to the symbolic “discarding” the body in the post-mortem. The body feels like more of a weight than a blessing to the soul, so it seems better to live without it.