Does the Church Allow Cremation?

by Michael Shackleton · Published June 27, 2016 · Updated June 28, 2016

What is the Church’s stand on cremation? Is it OK to be cremated? There seems to be nothing in the Bible that mentions cremation. Nowadays more and more people are opting for it. Walter Middleton

Cremation in itself has never been forbidden by the Church. It is the motives behind cremation that the Church has a problem with.

From the time of the Apostles, the Church followed the Jewish tradition of burying the dead. It scorned the way the people of the Roman Empire cremated their dead, seeing this as an unchristian rite. So for centuries the Church did not need to forbid cremation because it was practically unheard of among Christians. The bodies of the baptised were reverenced as temples of the Holy Spirit destined to rise from the grave.

Things changed in the 19th century. Physicians and sanitary engineers in England were concerned that waterlogged and overcrowded cemeteries were harmful to the health of the living. They lobbied for cremation to be legalised, and European nations followed their lead. In this way cremation became legal.

Standing firm in its belief that our mortal bodies will rise from the dead, the Church remained suspicious of the motivation behind this new direction. It especially resented those who gloated that the law showed up the futility of belief in resurrection.

In 1918 canon law banned cremation except for a good reason, such as to avoid the spread of disease or contamination. The new Code of Canon Law of 1983 recommends the custom of burial and then says that cremation is not forbidden “unless this is chosen for reasons which are contrary to Christian teaching” (1176,3).

Burial is the norm and cremation is a legitimate alternative for Catholics. Human ashes must be treated with the same respect as the human body and should be carried and transported as such. The Church does not approve of scattering ashes, seeing it as an irreverence towards the baptised. The Church has never lost its conviction that the body of a baptised person belongs to Christ who was himself buried in a grave, in the form of a tomb.

It is preferable that human ashes be interred in the earth or placed in a columbarium above ground with some form of identity of the deceased.

Neither the Old nor the New Testament forbids cremation as a means of disposing of human remains. There is a reference to cremation in 1 Samuel 31:8-13, where the bodies of Saul and his sons were burned and their bones buried, but this was on the battlefield and not the norm, which was interment into the earth.