Is cremation any way to honor our dead?<\/a>\u00a0Only rarely, she argues:<\/p>\nNeither 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.<\/p>\n
Among the reasons for the popularity of cremation, she suggests this interesting one:<\/p>\n
It is also possible that modern people, because they have such difficulty disciplining the bodily appetites, are especially attracted to the symbolic \u201cdiscarding\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An essay by the philosopher Rachel Lu taking up the subject of Friday\u2019s The Grave Not Taken, from her Aleteia column: Is cremation any way to honor our dead?\u00a0Only 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1863,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,43,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-death","category-how-we-should-live","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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