Repost on Cremation from Report of Cynthia Cartago chief of Holy Gardens Greenhills
Indian religions
According to Hindu
traditions, the reasons for preference of destroying the corpse by fire over
burying it into ground, is to induce a feeling of detachment into the
freshly-disembodied spirit, which will be helpful to encourage it into passing
to 'the other world' (the ultimate destination of the dead). This also explains
the ground-burial of holy men (whose spirit is already 'detached' enough due to
lifelong ascetic practices) and young children (the spirit has not lived long
enough to grow attachments to this world). Hindu holy men are buried in lotus
position and not in horizontal position as in other religions. Cremation is
referred to as antim-samskara, literally meaning "the last rites". At
the time of the cremation or "last rites" a "Puja" is
performed. A "Puja" is a Hindu prayer to assist the spirit to
transcend into the after life.
ChristianityToday, cremation is an increasingly popular form of disposition of the deceased. This is true even in the Christian world, which for many years was opposed to cremation, but has come to a greater acceptance of cremation over the past century.
In Christian countries, cremation fell out of favour due to the Christian belief in the physical resurrection of the body, and as a mark of difference from the Iron Age European pre-Christian Pagan religions, which usually cremated their dead.
Beginning in the Middle Ages, rationalists and classicists began to advocate cremation. In Medieval Europe, cremation was practised only on special occasions when there were many corpses to be disposed of simultaneously after a battle, after an epidemic or during famine, and there was an imminent danger of disease spread. Much later, Sir Henry Thompson, Surgeon to Queen Victoria, was the first to recommend the practice for health reasons after seeing the cremation apparatus of Professor Brunetti of Padua, Italy at the Vienna Exposition in 1873. In 1874, Thompson founded The Cremation Society of England. The society met opposition from the Church, which would not allow cremation on consecrated ground, and from the government, who believed the practice to be illegal.
Cremation was forced into British law when a Welsh doctor, William Price burned his infant son, named Jesus Christ, in a Pagan ritual shortly before 1883 in the historic town of Llantrisant. The doctor was a well known eccentric whose cremation ceremony was initially stopped by people coming home from church. The police returned the partially burnt body of his son on condition that it would neither be buried nor burned. Later that year, Dr. Price reneged on his promise and burned his son's remains. The townsfolk, unhappy with this sacrilege, went in an angry mob to burn out Dr. Price, but were turned back when they discovered only his wife armed with pistols. Dr. Price had already left the building. Dr. Price was arrested and tried in an 1884 court case which resulted in an amendment to legalize cremation in February of that year. An Act of Parliament for the Regulation of burning of human remains, and to enable burial authorities to established crematoria was passed in 1902.
The Roman Catholic Church
For most of its history, the Roman Catholic Church had a ban against cremation. It was seen as the most sacrilegious act towards Christians and their God, not simply blaspheming, but physically declaring a disbelief in the resurrection of the body. In 1963, the Pope lifted the ban on cremation, and in 1966 allowed Catholic priests to officiate at cremation ceremonies. The Church still officially prefers the traditional internment of the deceased. Despite this preference, cremation is now permitted as long as it is not done to express a refusal to believe in the resurrection of the body. Until 1997, Church regulations used to stipulate that cremation has to take place after a funeral service. Such funeral services are conducted in the same manner as traditional burials up to the point of committal, where the body is taken to the crematorium instead of being buried. A burial service is performed after the cremation is completed.
In 1997, the funeral rite was modified so that church funerals can take place when the body has already been cremated before the ashes are brought to the church. In such cases, the ashes are placed in an urn or another worthy vessel, brought into the church and placed on a stand near the Easter candle. During the church service, and during the committal rite, prayers that make reference to the body are modified. Any prayers that refer to the "Body" of the deceased are replaced with "Earthly Remains."
Since the lifting of the ban, even with the official preference for burial, the Church has become more and more open to the idea of cremation. Many Catholic cemeteries now provide columbarium niches for housing cremated remains as well as providing special sections for the burial of cremated remains. Columbarium niches have even been made a part of church buildings. The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, California has a number of niches in the crypt mausoleum. However, church officials still tend to discourage this practice because of concerns over what would happen to the niches if such a parish closes or decides to replace the current building.
The Church requires reverent disposition of the ashes which means that the ashes are to be buried or entombed in an appropriate container, such as an urn. The Church does not permit the scattering of ashes or keeping them at home, though some Catholics have done so despite the ban.
Traditional Catholics have objected to the practice of allowing cremation, which sedevacantists believe to be one of the many reasons why the post-Vatican II church is no longer the true Catholic Church.
Protestant Churches
The Protestant Churches approved cremation earlier than the Catholic Church with the rationale being "God can resurrect a bowl of ashes just as conveniently as He can resurrect a bowl of dust." The development of modern crematoriums also helped to differentiate Christian cremations from Pagan rites of burning the body on pyre. The first crematorium in Stockholm, Sweden was built 1874; in Finland, the Helsinki Lutheran Parish Union built its first modern crematorium in 1926 which is still in use. Nowadays in Lutheran Scandinavia, approximately 50 to 70 percent of the dead are cremated, and in large towns up to 90 percent.
In Scandinavian Lutheran doctrine, the ashes are to be dealt with the same dignity as any earthly remains. They are either to be interred in an urn or sprinkled on consecrated ground, "dust returning to dust," and not stored at home or disposed of in an undignified way. Most large parishes do have crematoriums as part of their chapels, and urns are buried in the cemetery in the usual manner, or sprinkled on special consecrated grounds. Some seashore parishes also have consecrated sea areas where the ashes can be scattered.
The rise in popularity of cremation has resulted in the resurgence of the old Lutheran tradition of family graves in Scandinavia. As urns require less space than caskets, the family grave in the cemetery can now contain the earthly remains of the family members in many generations.
Protestant
churches were much more welcoming of the use of cremation and at a much earlier
date than the Catholic Church; pro-cremation sentiment was not unanimous among
Protestants, however. The first crematoria in the Protestant countries were
built in 1870s, and in 1908 the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, one of
the most famous Anglican churches, required that remains be cremated for burial
in the abbey's precincts. Scattering, or "strewing," is an acceptable
practice in many Protestant denominations, and some churches have their own
"garden of remembrance" on their grounds in which remains can be
scattered. Other Christian groups also support cremation. These include the
Jehovah's Witnesses.
Mormonism
Leaders of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have typically declared that cremation is strongly discouraged. This is based on the LDS belief that the body is holy, and that the body and soul will eventually be reunited. Prominent LDS leader Bruce R. McConkie wrote that "only under the most extraordinary and unusual circumstances" would cremation be consistent with LDS teachings.
Judaism
Judaism has traditionally disapproved of cremation (which was the traditional means of disposing the dead in the neighboring Bronze Age cultures). Traditionally, it has also disapproved of preservation of the dead by means of embalming and mummifying, a practice of the ancient Egyptians. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, as the Jewish cemeteries in many European towns had become crowded and were running out of space, cremation became an approved means of corpse disposal amongst the Liberal Jews. Current liberal movements like Reform Judaism still support cremation, although burial remains the preferred option.[
The Orthodox Jews have maintained a stricter line on cremation, and disapprove of it as Halakha (Jewish law) forbids it. This halakhic concern is grounded in the upholding of bodily resurrection as a core belief of "mainstream" Judaism, as opposed to other ancient trends such as the Sadduccees, who denied it. Also, the memory of the Holocaust, where millions of Jews were murdered and their bodies disposed by burning them either in crematoria or burning pits, has given cremation extremely negative connotations for Orthodox Jews. Conservative Jewish groups also oppose cremation.
Zoroastrianism
Traditionally, Zoroastrianism disavows cremation or burial to preclude pollution of fire or earth. The traditional method of corpse disposal is through ritual exposure in a "Towers of Silence," but both burial and cremation are increasingly popular alternatives. Some contemporary figures of the faith have opted for cremation. Parsi-Zoroastrian singer Freddie Mercury of the group Queen was cremated after his death.
Neopaganism
According to Feminist interpretations of the archaeological record, cremation is the usual means of corpse disposal in Patriarchal religions, the rising smoke symbolizing the deceased's spirit ascending to the domain of the Father deities in the heavens, while Matriarchal religions are speculated to have favoured interment of the corpse, often in a fetal position, representing the return of the body to Mother Earth in the tomb which represents the uterus. Of modern Neo-Pagan religions, Ásatrú favours cremation, as do forms of Celtic Paganism.
Islam and Zoroastrianism forbid cremation. Neo-Confucianism under Zhu Xi strongly discourages cremation of one's parents' corpses as unfilial. In Egyptian Reconstructionism it is believed the Ka will be killed with cremation but it is not forbidden and during ancient times, was a practice of desposing of criminals who were executed in order for them to be deprived of an afterlife.
Ancient
Cremation dates to at least 26,000 years ago in the archaeological record with the Mungo Lake cremation.
Alternative death rituals emphasizing one method of disposal of a body, inhumation (burial, cremation, and exposure), have gone through periods of preference throughout history.
In the Middle East and Europe both burial and cremation are evident in the archaeological record in the Neolithic. Cultural groups had their own preference and prohibitions. The ancient Egyptians developed an intricate transmigration of soul theology, which prohibited cremation, and this was adopted widely among other Semitic peoples. The Babylonians, according to Herodotus, embalmed their dead. Early Persians practiced cremation but this became prohibited during the Zoroastrian Period. Phoenicians practiced both cremation and burial. Ancient Greeks and Romans practiced both with cremation generally associated with military honours.
In Europe, there are traces of cremation dating to the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BC) in the Pannonian Plain and along the middle Danube. The custom becomes dominant throughout Bronze Age Europe with the Urnfield culture (from ca. 1300 BC). In the Iron Age, inhumation becomes again more common, but cremation persisted in the Villanovan culture and elsewhere. Homer's account of Patroclus' burial describes cremation with subsequent burial in a tumulus similar to Urnfield burials, qualifying as the earliest description of cremation rites. This is mostly an anachronism, as during Mycenaean times burial was generally preferred, and Homer may have been reflecting more common use of cremation in the period in which the Iliad was written centuries later.
Criticism of burial rites is a common aspersion in competing religions and cultures and one is the association of cremation with fire sacrifice or human sacrifice.
Hinduism is notable for not only allowing but prescribing cremation. Cremation in India is first attested in the Cemetery H culture (from ca. 1900 BC), considered the formative stage of Vedic civilization. The Rigveda contains a reference to the emerging practice, in RV 10.15.14, where the forefathers "both cremated (agnidagdhá-) and uncremated (ánagnidagdha-)" are invoked.
Cremation remained common, but not universal, in both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. According to Cicero, in Rome inhumation was considered the more archaic rite, while the most honoured citizens were most typically cremated, especially upper classes and members of imperial families.
Christianity frowned upon cremation, both influenced by the tenets of Judaism, and in an attempt to abolish Graeco-Roman pagan rituals. By the 5th century, the practice of cremation had practically disappeared from Europe.
In the Middle Ages
Throughout parts of Europe, cremation was forbidden by law, and even punishable by death if combined with heathen rites. Cremation was sometimes used by authorities as part of punishment for heretics, and this did not only include burning at the stake. For example, the body of John Wycliff was exhumed years after his death and cremated, with the ashes thrown in a river,. explicitly as a posthumous punishment for his denial of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. On the other hand, mass cremations were often performed because of necessity, when there was a danger of contagious diseases, such as after a battle, pestilence or famine. Retributory cremation continued into modern times. For example, after World War II, the bodies of the 12 men convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremburg trials were not returned to their families, but were instead cremated, then disposed of at a secret location, as a specific part of a legal process intended to deny their use as a location for any sort of memorial. In Japan, however, a memorial building for many executed war criminals, who were also cremated, was allowed to be erected for their remains. Many Communist countries used similar obliteration as an aggravated capital punishment: the bodies of the executed were cremated and the ashes ignominiously disposed, thus humiliating the families even further.
Even today, cremation bears the stigma of "human waste disposal" in many ex-Socialist countries and is considered ignominious or shameful.
The modern era
In 1873, Paduan Professor Brunetti presented a cremation chamber at the Vienna Exposition. In Britain, the movement found the support of Queen Victoria's surgeon, Sir Henry Thompson, who together with colleagues founded the Cremation Society of England in 1874. The first crematoria in Europe were built in 1878 in Woking, England and Gotha, Germany, the first in North America in 1876 by Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne in Washington, Pennsylvania. The second cremation in the United States was that of Charles F. Winslow in Salt Lake City, Utah on July 31, 1877. The first cremation in Britain took place on 26th March 1886 at Woking.
Cremation was declared as legal in England and Wales when Dr William Price was prosecuted for cremating his son; formal legislation followed later with the passing of the Cremation Act 1902, (this Act did not extend to Ireland) which imposed procedural requirements before a cremation could occur and restricted the practice to authorised places. Some of the various Protestant churches came to accept cremation, with the rationale being, "God can resurrect a bowl of ashes just as conveniently as he can resurrect a bowl of dust". The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia was critical about these efforts, referring to them as a "sinister movement" and associating them with Freemasonry, although it said that "there is nothing directly opposed to any dogma of the Church in the practice of cremation". In 1963, Pope Paul VI lifted the ban on cremation, and in 1966 allowed Catholic priests to officiate at cremation ceremonies.
Australia also started to establish modern cremation movements and societies. Australians had their first purpose-built modern crematorium and chapel in the West Terrace Cemetery in the South Australian capital Adelaide in 1901. This small building, resembling the buildings at Woking, remained largely unchanged from its 19th century style and in full operation until the late 1950s. The oldest operating Crematorium in Australia is at Rookwood in Sydney. It opened in 1925.
In the
Netherlands, the foundation of the Association for Optional Cremation in 1874
ushered in a long debate about the merits and demerits of cremation. Laws
against cremation were challenged and invalidated in 1915 (two years after the
construction of the first crematorium in the Netherlands), though cremation did
not become legally recognised until 1955.
World
War IIDuring the Holocaust, massive crematoria were constructed and operated by the Nazis within their concentration camps and extermination camps to dispose of the bodies of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, and other prisoners who were killed or died in the camps daily. In addition to the atrocity of mass murder, the remains of Jews were thus disposed of in a manner deeply offensive to Orthodox Judaism because Halakha, the Jewish law, forbids cremation and holds that the soul of a cremated person cannot find its final repose. Since then, cremation has carried an extremely negative connotation for many Jews.
The Tri-State Crematory incident
A recent controversial event involved the failure to cremate, known as the Tri-State Crematory Incident. In the state of Georgia in the United States in early 2002, three hundred thirty-four corpses that were supposed to have been cremated in the previous few years at the Tri-State Crematory were found intact and decaying on the crematorium's grounds, having been dumped there by the crematorium's proprietor. Many of the corpses were beyond identification. In many cases the "ashes" that were returned to the family were not human remains - they were made of wood and concrete dust.
Eventually Ray Brent Marsh—who was the operator at the time the bodies were discovered—had 787 criminal charges filed against him. On November 19, 2004 Marsh pleaded guilty to all charges. Marsh was sentenced to two 12-year prison sentences from both Georgia and Tennessee which he is serving concurrently. Afterwards he will be on probation for 75 years.
Civil suits were filed against the Marsh family as well as a number of funeral homes who shipped bodies to Tri-State. These suits were ultimately settled. The property of the Marsh family has been sold, but collection of the full $80 million judgment remains doubtful. Families have expressed the desire to return the former Tri-State crematory to a natural, park like setting.
The Indian Ocean tsunamis
The magnitude 9.0-9.3 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake triggered a series of lethal tsunamis on December 26, 2004 that killed almost 300,000 people, making them the deadliest tsunamis in recorded history. The tsunamis killed people over an area ranging from the immediate vicinity of the quake in Indonesia, Thailand, and the north-western coast of Malaysia, to thousands of kilometres away in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and even as far as Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania in eastern Africa.
Authorities had difficulties dealing with the large numbers of bodies, and as a result thousands of bodies were of necessity cremated together. Many of these bodies were not identified or viewed by relatives prior to cremation. A particular point of objection was that the bodies of Westerners were kept separate from those of Asian descent, who were mostly locals. This meant that the bodies of tourists from other Asian nations, such as Japan and Korea, were mass cremated rather than being returned to their country of origin for funeral rites.
Laws
The state of California has a law that forbids scattering human ashes on privately-owned land, including that of the decedant, although it does allow scattering at sea. Carl Djerassi found this to be a problem after the suicide of his daughter, Pamela. As he states in the chapter "A Scattering of Ashes" in his autobiography 'The Pill, Pigmy Chimps, and Degas' Horse, he solved the problem by scattering Pamela's ashes into a creek on the family estate that was a tributary to San Francisquito Creek, which eventually runs to the San Francisco Bay…..by FROST MEDITATIONS
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