The Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog has set out new guidelines for Catholics who want to be cremated, saying their remains must be stored in a sacred place and cannot be scattered, or kept at home.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), issued the instruction last week.
Ad resurgendum cum Christo (“To Rise with Christ”) was written after consultation with other Vatican offices and bishops’ conferences and the Eastern churches’ synods of bishops.
“Soon, in many countries, cremation will be considered the ordinary way” to deal with the dead, including for Catholics, the cardinal said.
Cremation, in and of itself, does not constitute a denial of belief in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, the instruction says.
Nevertheless, an anonymous burial or scattering of ashes “is not compatible with the Christian faith,” Cardinal Müller said.
In 1963, the congregation issued an instruction permitting cremation as long as it was not done as a sign of denial of the Resurrection. The permission was incorporated into the Code of Canon Law.
Keeping ashes at home, Cardinal Müller said, obscures how the loved one belonged to the entire community of faith and not just to his or her closest relatives.
“Only in grave and exceptional cases,” the instruction says, local bishops may give permission for ashes to be kept in a private home.”
When asked if there was any way to rectify the situation when a person’s ashes already had been scattered, Cardinal Müller suggested making a memorial in a church or other appropriate place.
It’s atheism or Catholicism, says convert Harvard professor
A Harvard law professor who underwent a dramatic conversion to Catholicism has suggested there is no middle way between atheism and the Church.
In an interview with Christina Dearduff of Inside the Vatican, Dr Adrian Vermeule said that the logic behind his Catholic beliefs is inspired by Blessed John Henry Newman. He said that he had been convinced “that the apostolic succession through Peter as the designated leader and primus inter pares is in some logical or theological sense prior to everything else – including even Scripture, whose formation was guided and completed by the apostles and their successors, themselves inspired by the Holy Spirit.”
He said he realised “the very great evil of schism and private judgment” when the US Episcopalian church “decided to go its own way based on novel views even in the face of faithful admonition by the broader Anglican Communion. Ultimately I think with Newman … that there is no stable ground between Catholicism and atheist materialism. One must always be travelling, or slipping unintentionally in one direction or the other.”
Melbourne’s JPII institute closes
The Archbishop of Melbourne has announced that he is closing the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family. In his letter to faculty members and students, Archbishop Denis Hart said that the reason for the closure was the financial cost and the low number of students.
A campaign to keep the institute open has been launched by current and former students.
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