Ellyn, my favorite parish secretary, posted about a funeral and a ritual that the family wanted to have included. It got me to thinking a bit about why the church has the rules and rubrics, and why. A few of my rambling thoughts follow.
I have a special fondness for the ways in which the Church has developed ritual that reflects what we know both about human nature and God's plan. The Church has also developed rituals that incorporate the contrast between Christian teaching and pagan practices.
We are an incarnational faith, and our practices should reflect that belief. We believe that God so loved the world that he sent His only-begotten Son, who suffered and died for the remission of our sin. Jesus was begotten, not made. He had a human body. He suffered a horrible death by torture in that body. God gave us our bodies. Our bodies are not evil, they are good. We can choose them to do evil, and they can be corrupted by sin or disease, but that does not change the fact that our bodies are God's creation (with the cooperation of our earthly parents, of course). The Jewish tradition, which carried through the days of the apostles, has always been to show respect for the body after death by burying it intact. Jewish funeral practices also banned the scarification and self-mutilation often carried out by the living after the death of a family member or loved one. This respect is so deep that often an amputated body part is buried in the funeral plot where eventually the rest of the body will reside.
Christian funeral practices have also traditionally involved a respect for the intact burial (inhumation - literally in the earth - see the word root similarity to humility?) of the body. Cremation was seen as a last resort in times of plague and pestilence, and even then, mass burials were often preferred. By contrast, the non-Christian cultures surrounding the Christian countries often prescribed cremation as a religious ceremony - consider the practice of the Hindi, the Norsemen, the Attic Greek, the early Roman empire - where a funeral pyre was often an elaborate 'send-off' to a netherworld. There were other funeral rituals as well - there is still a group that exposes dead bodies to birds of carrion, and has done so for centuries (to protect both fire which they see as sacred and the earth from the 'contamination' of the dead).
Until quite recently, the Catholic Church reprobated the practice of cremation. (The recent change in policy is a further cause of discontent among some schismatic groups).This was primarily because the practice of cremation was strongly associated with a rejection of the doctrines of the resurrection of the body. The 1983 Code of Canon Law canon 1176.3 stipulates, "The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the dead be observed; it does not, however, forbid cremation unless it has been chosen for reasons which are contrary to Christian teaching." Originally, the idea was that the funeral would have the body present, and then the body would be cremated - this has further been modified to allow a funeral liturgy in the presence of the cremated remains.
What distresses me is that the average pew-sitter does not seem to realize that these concessions about cremation as opposed to inhumation, do not support the practice of ash-scattering or keeping the urn at the house. Nor do they support turning the remains into a 'jewel' or similar trends and fads. The church recognizes the human need to have a place, physically present, where the survivors can commemorate the deceased and pray for his or her soul. Being buried in consecrated ground has historically been very important. The bodily remains of a human person, even if incinerated, should be placed in a place that shows the respect due to one of God's human creations.
On my 40 some mile drive home from work, I pass anywhere from 3 to 5 of those improv roadside shrines. You know the kind I mean. The ones that mark a place where some one died in an automotive accident or shooting. The shrines are simple, maintained, and heartbreaking. I found myself wondering the other day - how many of those commemorated by these shrines have a burial place where there family can go?
for more on this topic, see below.
Father Pat on cremation (lots of CCC citations)
USCCB Catechesis on cremation
Cremation and Catholic funerals
Planning a Catholic Funeral
Catholics and Cremation
September 2004 Archives
(You can help - see addresses at the end of this posting)
The Midwifery Program at Miami Dade College had a sudden, unexpected and significant increase in the cost of student liability insurance late this summer so the students who were due to start classes in August had very little notice to get the additional funds together.
The college extended the deadline for registration and payment, and although we had a full class, most but not all of the students were able to come up with the funds by the deadline. So administration's decision was not to start a new class this fall. As of today, I don't know whether we will be starting a new class in January or whether we will wait until next fall. We will soon be meeting with
administration and I expect to have something more definite to report in the next week or so about our future plans.
Although the Midwifery program is not closing, we are facing, along with the midwifery community as a whole, the crisis of escalating costs for malpractice insurance - for students, schools, midwives and birth centers. Once again our profession is facing a major threat to our survival. Practicing midwives are faced with the ever increasing cost of malpractice insurance. I personally believe this is a national crisis for all health care professions, not just ours, and
is likely to get worse over the next few years, especially with all the money the insurance industry will have to pay out to the victims of the 4 hurricanes which have devastated Florida in the past 6 weeks. Because it affects all the health care professions, eventually I think it will be solved, if we midwives can hang in that long.
I would like to point out something that not many people have thought through. While the intent of the morning after pill pricks the conscience of many, the effect is basically the same as that of the more common forms of the birth control pill. Both the morning after pill and the 'regular' contraceptive pill (and the patch, and the ring, and the shot for that matter) work in at least 4 ways. In some women, they suppress ovulation. They thicken the cervical mucous to block sperm transport. They partially paralyze the cilia of the fallopian tubes so that both sperm transport up and egg transport down are impeded. And they render the lining of the uterus thin and inhospitable, so that the conceptus can not snuggle in and grow.
There is one other possible effect that I have not seen examined in the literature, but that occurs to me based on my own studies of hormone chemistry. The synthetic progestins that are contained in all hormonally based contraceptives may also block natural progesterone, causing a pregnancy to fail even after implantation. I don't know if this happens, I don't know how one could even begin to find out. But I think it may also be a possible mechanism of action.
The Penitent Blogger
she is on a faith journey - please drop by and offer her comfort and prayer.
"The concept of being a gentleman and not expecting "something else" seems to be incomprehensible to many men anymore."
I read somewhere that the earliest signs that a culture is on the skids is the loss of manners - the loss of those external signs of respect. This is on the same track.
Folks, it's a full moon out there and I just want to howl in anger and dismay. Got to keep on praying - it is our best and only weapon.
Dolly scientists' human clone bid
The scientists who cloned Dolly the sheep have formally applied for a licence to clone human embryos to find a cure for motor neurone disease
I was making post-partum rounds the other day on a young mom. We were chatting about her future plans - the FOB (father of the baby) bailed out on her at the onset of the pregnancy (very common in my patient population), and she was getting her support from her family. I strongly support these mom's decisions to choose abstinence from sexual involvement as their 'family planning' method. So I was kind of joking around that I probably wouldn't be seeing her for her next baby until she met and married the right guy. And then she said something that made me really think about how differently our culture views sexuality and procreation. She said, "Or not", meaning that she might get married and still choose not to get pregnant. I realized that marriage has an entirely different meaning to the majority of the people living in our culture than what it meant 50 years ago.
Fifty years ago, it was still pretty generally recognized that sex leads to pregnancy and that pregnancy leads to parenthood. Yes, there were contraceptive methods out there, and there was also the early stages of awareness of the natural rhythms of female fertility, but generally it was accepted that if you got married you would have children, and probably several children. The culture frowned upon non-marital sexual relations, and if a young couple became pregnant through illicit relations, it was expected that they would marry and that their families would help them to make the best of it. Failing that, the young woman would leave her community to give birth, placing her baby for adoption. Abortion was considered a risky and immoral event, even in the situations of rape etc. There were undercurrents of the sexual revolution, but for the most part the generally accepted values connected marriage, sexual activity, and procreation. The idea of a voluntarily childless marriage was foreign to the general consciousness. "If you don't want children, why get married?", seems to be what I remember hearing as a child. Women with serious medical conditions were not advised to use contraception so much as they were advised to never marry.
Somewhere, somehow, it all changed. Now we have a culture that considers childbearing as entirely voluntary and sexual activity to be as necessary as eating. Marriage is all the relationship between the adults, and the kids are so much excess baggage - or parenthood is about the kids and the other partner is so much excess baggage. We are way out of balance here, folks. The more I observe the culture in which we live, the more worried I get. I read the Didache, and the early church fathers. I see that they were concerned that Christians not become part of their surrounding culture, where divorce was easy, where children were disposed of before or after birth at the whim of the parents, where the wealthy were slaves to their bodily lusts and the poor were kept enslaved by 'bread and circuses'. Then I look at what is going on in our world today and I become very much afraid.
From G.K. Chesterton:
Now we do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown; and that for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all about the shape in which it should be built up again. No doctor proposes to produce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of eyes or limbs. The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less: but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra. Medical science is content with the normal human body, and only seeks to restore it. (My comment,"I only wish this were still true!")
(much later in the book)
Of course, I mean that Catholicism was not tried; plenty of Catholics were tried, and found guilty. My point is that the world did not tire of the church's ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. Certainly, if the church failed it was largely through the churchmen. But at the same time hostile elements had certainly begun to end it long before it could have done its work. In the nature of things it needed a common scheme of life and thought in Europe. Yet the mediaeval system began to be broken to pieces intellectually, long before it showed the slightest hint of falling to pieces morally. The huge early heresies, like the Albigenses, had not the faintest excuse in moral superiority. And it is actually true that the Reformation began to tear Europe apart before the Catholic Church had had time to pull it together. The Prussians, for instance, were not converted to Christianity at all until quite close to the Reformation. The poor creatures hardly had time to become Catholics before they were told to become Protestants. This explains a great deal of their subsequent conduct. But I have only taken this as the first and most evident case of the general truth: that the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
What's Wrong with the World,
Thanks to Bob for finding the ebook!
THE AMERICAN FRUGAL HOUSEWIFE
DEDICATED TO THOSE WHO ARE NOT ASHAMED OF ECONOMY.
BY MRS. CHILD,
AUTHOR OF "HOBOMOK," "THE MOTHER'S BOOK," EDITOR OF THE "JUVENILE MISCELLANY," etc.
A fat kitchen maketh a lean will. "FRANKLIN"
"Economy is a poor man's revenue; extravagance a rich man's ruin."
TWELFTH EDITION.
ENLARGED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR.
1832.
We are not responsible for redeeming the world. Christ's death and resurrection have already accomplished that. But as followers of Christ, and as sons of God, we become His partners in caring for the weak and the oppressed and those without a voice.
The Distributist Review is a 3 author blog focussed on the economic theory of distributism. I thought that some of you might be interested.
YOU ARE CHAMOMILE
found several places in the blogosphere, but it took me 10 tries to get the page to load. grrrrrr.
My only complaint is that they do not recognize that some CNMs and even some FP docs will attend home births.
Alexa has found images that she finds representative of various blogs. Here is the one she found for me.
I like it. Not very midwifey, and that is OK. Below is an image I found and was considering using to replace my other Maria Lactans pic. It is the Madonna of the Green Cushion, found in the Louvre, and is the frontispiece for the book Mother and Infant by Fr. Wm. Virtue.
POD and proud of it!
Fiddleback Fever
thanks for hanging in there - I'm not done yet. Kind of like rearranging the furniture, and discovering that the chair was up against the wall to hide the hole the kids left!
by the creeping and insidious culture of death, Life Matters!
is someplace you might want to read.
The most recent item is about the tragic decision of the Florida courts reversing "Terri's Law".
My daughter made it through her surgery OK, and is home now resting. As far as can be told now, it was successful. The cyst was not able to be removed intact - it collapsed when touched but they drained the fluid and hopefully her pain will be relieved. Concord Hospital has a marvelous team of nurses and docs in the day surgery center. Thanks again for all the prayer support.
from the Evangelical Alliance Election Site
Grace – a subversive value! Giving people more than they deserve.
Hope – not a guarantee of immunity from harm but a conviction that God is always present
Faith - the means to real depth in relationships of all kinds
Love – means to love the unlovely
Justice – for all (not ‘just-me’). A concept biased in favour of the disadvantaged.
Joy – impossible to legislate for this but an essential social value
Service – meaning is found in service rather than self-centredness
Peace– not just the absence of fighting but positive well-being
what do you think?
Maison de Naissance
you can help make a difference. via Such Small Hands.
here
a great resource.
My youngest is having surgery tomorrow to remove a cyst on her wrist. She has been in pretty constant pain for 6 months now, and has continued to play her cello and do all her other stuff despite the pain. We are hoping and praying that the surgery will ultimately help her and be worth the short term increase in pain and the temporary disability of healing. Please hold her surgical team up in prayer for tomorrow that things go smoothly.
I've been playing with the template. Let me know if there are any problems.
Dr. Edward F. Keefe, a pioneer in the NFP movement, died in the late evening of Monday, September 20 at the age of 94 and three months. In 1948 he invented the Ovulindex thermometer with high standards of accuracy and ease of reading. By 1949 he was advising his patients to observe cervical mucus and to use this sign in conjunction with the temperature sign. He taught his patients to observe the mucus at the cervical os where he, as a physician, would observe it. When his patients told him that the cervix seemed to change during the fertile time of the cycle, he took them seriously. He took photographs of the cyclic changes of the cervix and published his findings in the 1962. It is because of his work that we can say that the fundamentals of the sympto-thermal method were in place a half dozen years before Humanae Vitae was published (July 25, 1968).
Dr. Keefe remained sharp almost to the end. He will be missed.
A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11:00 am at St. Mary's Church on Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich, Ct.
--John F. Kippley
Scientific forum addresses menstrual cycle as vital sign
Latest research sheds new light on DMPA’s impact on bone health
Results from a new study indicate that women who use DMPA experience bone loss.
The Curt Jester: The Arian Heresy Revisited
worth reading. I may have more to say later.
Girl clutching cross in photo and what she is doing now.
“Artificial methods [of contraception] are like putting a premium on vice. They make men and women reckless.... Nature is relentless and will have full revenge for any such violation of her laws… If artificial methods become the order of the day, nothing but moral degradation can be the result.”
Mahatma Gandhi
(found in Fr. Sibley's outline)
Adding a new link to a nurse blog.
I'va also added Medical Madhouse, who today has a nice post about dementia.
I'm on an email list for discussion of the Theology of the Body. Every so often, one of the list members has an idea that is a little off topic but worth discussing. What follows is one such, and I welcome your thoughts on this topic. It was triggered by a discussion of the various attitudes attributed to Boomers and Gen-X.
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What I think it most troubling, with only 2.1 or 2.3 children per family, just about half the kids have no experience of having both a brother and a sister. Half the boys can't really understand the words of the lover in the Song of Songs, "My sister, my bride," and the other half have no access to what it means to care for "the least of my brothers" literally, and thus less analogically.
The sister thing alone is perilous. How much less will a young man value
chastity when he has no sister! I'm only scratching the surface here, of course. The effect of sisterless brothers could be pondered at length, and it's flip-side, the brotherless sister.
Personally, I want each of my kids to be able to say he or she has "brothers and sister," which immediately tells you there are at least five kids in the family. We have six, but only two boys, thus "brother and sisters" for the boys. Hoping for another boy to rectify the situation. But we've had four girls in a row . . .
And of course every boy needs a brother and every girl needs a sister. That almost goes without saying, and you won't find many parents -- at least not many fathers with brothers or mothers with sisters -- to disagree. Yet they still have "their two" and then "quit."
That word "quit" is kind of interesting. In a sense they are quitting, quitting the job of bringing life into the world. But "quitting" suggests a cessation of activity, while in fact they continue the "activity" of begetting life while performing other activities that undermine its natural direction -- actually more "work" rather than less, at least as far as the baby-making function is concerned (surgery, barriers, drugs).
On the other side are the NFP couples who say "quit" when they mean "quit worrying about having another baby" or "quit charting." The work -- the drudgery -- is in postponing pregnancy, a job well worth quitting, when circumstances allow.
Well . . . I do go on. This is why I don't have a blog of my own. I'd never get anything else done.
Eric J. Scheidler | eric@12myths.org | TOTB List Moderator
"God speaks to us primarily in our hearts."
-- John Henry Newman
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my comments: In a culture with generally large and connected families, cousins take the place of siblings for those few families unable to have more than one or two children. Also, the attitude is very different towards the smaller families.
Carrying to Term Pages
Help for families and care providers when a baby is diagnosed prenatally with a lethal condition.
Some 'Catholic' hospitals offer preterm induction of labor at very early gestational ages for babies known to have lethal birth defects.
The Case against Premature Induction
Prenatal Ethics from OSV
please read article and vote on survey.
Sorry not to have had more substance lately, it's been overwhelming. But I thought that some of you might be interested in what follows here. It is a letter I wrote in another forum about the increased demand from some women for cesarean on demand - that is primary cesarean section without a medical indication. As a Catholic, there are pretty clear teachings that I think should prevent this from happening, but the forum in which I was writing is mostly secular. It is also rather international. My letter follows.
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On some level, what we are discussing here is the philosophy (and maybe theology) of moral decision making - on both an individual and a societal level
What is interesting about this whole debate is that it strikes at the heart of most ethical dilemmas - a different paradigm among the different parties. We live in a culture of moral relativism, that endorses the concept that there are not any absolute truths. There is my truth and your truth and his truth and her truth. The general culture in the USA values autonomy above all. Other cultures may value beneficence (doing good) and will value doing 'what is right' even against the will of the beneficiary. Some value non-maleficence (doing no harm) and will co-operate with any thing as long as no one gets hurt (I think this is a basic tenet of Wiccan philosophy - but I could be wrong here). Beneficence and non-maleficence are easily confused but there is a difference there. And then there are those whose primary value is justice - if one person can choose a course of action, then that course of action must be equally open to others.
My personal moral philosophy is based on natural law and a belief that there are some absolutes in life. Based upon those beliefs, I choose to refuse to provide certain 'services' that some patients may request. They still have the option to request (or more likely, demand) those services - but they will need to go elsewhere for them.
I think that all midwives do at least some of the same decisionmaking. For example, in my homebirth days, I refused to take as a client an insulin using type one diabetic. I happen to have a lot more knowledge of this particular complication than the average CNM and maybe even the average OB - I could probably manage some one well with this issue and have reasonably good outcomes etc. But my personal moral and ethical decision is that a person with that degree of disease needs a specialist in disease and I am not that.
Similarly, I won't induce labor just because some one is sick and tired of being pregnant. I see this as not only a medical decision but also a moral and ethical one. Cesarean on demand likewise.
I personally think that one of the worst things that has happened to health care in the USA is the attitude of consumerism and entitlement. It has cheapened what should be a trust and covenantal relationship into a financial and contractual deal, and I think it has hurt both patients and those of us who care for and about them
A sad update on the MacFarlanes. please pray!
The court removed Bai Macfarlane's custody yesterday, because she wouldn't quit homeschooling her kids DESPITE the psychologist's finding that they seemed to be thriving. And last evening, what a scary thing, Bud Macfarlane arrived with police escort to take the kids away permanently. Picture here
I don't know if anything can be done at this point(snip) but with God all things are possible.
Why are homeschooling and breastfeeding considered grounds to take your kids, in a custody battle, instead of hallmarks of good mothering?
Information about an upcoming TV show from the director of Apple Tree Family Ministries
Subject: Freud, Lewis, and PBS
PBS is running a show this week and next based on Dr. Armand Nicholi's book The Question of God. As Chuck Colson explains, it contrasts the "contrasting worldviews" of Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, one a secular materialist and the other a theist, considers the big questions of life like sexuality and suffering, and clearly shows how these two men's views impacted their lives for ill and for good, respectively. He also says it's not dry and boring, but interestingly presented.
The book itself grew out of a Harvard class Dr. Nicholi teaches on the subject, and though I haven't read it myself, I've heard very good things about it. Colson recommends it and the broadcast highly. As he says, he's always contended that when Christianity is rationally examined as a worldview, it emerges as the most reasonable one, and this special apparently does that.
We can certainly use TV that accurately discusses Christianity, so you might be interested. It's scheduled for 9/15 and 9/22, but local PBS stations often vary their scheduling. You can find your local station at here , which also allows you to look up the network's description of the program itself.
Kathy Nesper
President
Apple Tree Family Ministries
_______________________________________________
see also:
PBS's own page about the program:(They apparently also have other pages where one can delve deeper.)
Chuck Colson's radio program/transcript (today's) on the program.
Some 'Catholic' hospitals offer preterm induction of labor at very early gestational ages for babies known to have lethal birth defects.
My understanding of 'proportionate reasons' for preterm induction is that they should be the same, regardless of the presence or absence of fetal anomalies. For example, a mom with worsening pre-eclampsia may need to have her baby delivered earlier than full-term, or risk losing both baby and mother. A mom with real (not gestational!) diabetes ditto. Babies with anencephaly rarely initiate spontaneous labor 'on-time' and inducing them after 37 weeks is not unreasonable.
Some one needs to talk to these hospital ethics committees about the true meaning and intent of the standards for Catholic hospitals.
The Abundant Life tonight is talking about parents losing children. It is breaking my heart but I can't turn it off. There are days when I wish that I could turn off my empathy.
My Gospel of Life
from alexa
I think I mentioned that one of the two hymns at Sophia's funeral was The King of love my shepherd is, sung to the tune St. Columba. It is #345 in the Anglican hymnal. At the time the pastor announced it, he announced #45 (apparantly his cheat sheet had a typo) and some very puzzled people were searching through the Christmas carols (#45 is Joseph dearest, Joseph mine), but since I knew the hymn from the tune, I was able to find it in the index of first lines and let those around me know as well. It is not a hymn I remember singing as a child, but for some reason the local parishes have been singing it recently.
Well, today at Mass I was pleased to hear that Father used the long gospel reading, though a little concerned at his interpretation that it called us to an inclusive and accepting attitude but was reassured when he did point out the need for repentance. Then at communion, I was stunned when the hymn sung (a cappella by a duo with heavenly voices) was The King of Love my Shepherd Is - with the traditional language and to the tune of St. Columba. I was literally in tears. I am sure that the communion ministers were wondering why I was tear-streaked and all choked up.
I don't cry easily. Ask my husband. I can deal with things mostly without