Question:
My mother and I have been discussing how some of the rules in the Catholic Church have changed. One example is cremation. Why is it OK now, but it wasn’t some years ago? Who gets to make the rules, and how do we know that they are truly acceptable to God? (Wichita, Kansas)
Answer:
In 1963, the Catholic Church changed its policy and lifted the ban on cremation. Among the reasons were sanitation risks, overcrowded cemeteries and financial considerations (i.e., the expense of traditional burials). At the same time, though, the Church has continued to express a strong preference for the burial or entombment of the deceased, preferably in a Catholic cemetery.
A Vatican instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in 2016 underlines the theological thinking behind the change. It explains that “cremation of the deceased’s body does not affect his or her soul, nor does it prevent God, in his omnipotence, from raising up the deceased’s body to new life.”
However, that same instruction explains that “in memory of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord, the mystery that illumines the Christian meaning of death, burial is above all the most fitting way to express faith and hope in the resurrection of the body.”
Cremation is now permitted for Catholics, so long as it is not chosen in denial of the Christian teaching on resurrection and the sacredness of the human body.
The Church’s teaching also notes that the following are not considered to be reverent dispositions of the cremains: scattering them, dividing cremated remains, e.g., among family members, or keeping them in the home.
As for your final questions, the Vatican makes the rules; as to their acceptability to God, the Church decides after prayer and reflection — as it has done here — based on its teachings and on what seems reasonable under specific circumstances.
Question:
If someone has left the Catholic Church for a different denomination and is no longer a practicing Catholic, should they be allowed to receive Communion in the Catholic Church?
Recently my wife and I were helping a priest to prepare her father’s funeral, and I asked the priest whether someone who is no longer a practicing Catholic would be allowed to receive Communion at the funeral. He said that they should not receive but that he was not going to monitor the situation.
At the funeral Mass, this same priest announced that non-Catholics and Catholics who were not prepared should not receive. But in fact, some of those very people did come forward to take Communion.
What should be the consequences for these people, after they heard it announced that they should not receive? And should a priest who knows that someone is not eligible to receive deny that person Communion when he comes forward? (Dinwiddie)
Answer:
On the general rule, you are right: Those who are not Catholics should not take Communion at a Catholic Mass.
There are certain exceptions: Orthodox Christians, for example, are welcome to receive; a Protestant spouse marrying a Catholic may be given permission to receive Communion at the wedding Mass. In any of those circumstances, the non-Catholic must share our faith in the meaning of the Eucharist, and he or she must lack normal access to a minister of their own faith tradition.
As to what the consequences are when someone who is ineligible takes Communion, I don’t know the answer to that; I would prefer leaving it to God to sort that out. And as for a priest denying Communion at the altar rail, I have never done that, nor am I likely to. I just don’t know everyone’s circumstances, and the worst thing would be to be wrong in making that judgment.
Question:
One thing in the Gospels about which I’ve always been curious is why, after casting out a demon or performing some other miracle, Jesus would often command that witnesses “tell no one.” Wouldn’t a wider knowledge of these miracles have helped his ministry? (Indiana)
Answer:
You are correct in observing that often Jesus would ask observers to keep his miracles secret. Examples abound. In Matthew’s Gospel we are told that many people followed Christ and he “cured them all” but “warned them not to make him known” (12:15).
In Mark, we learn that “he had cured many and, as a result, those who had diseases were pressing upon him to touch him” but that “he warned them sternly not to make him known” (3:10, 12); and in Luke, we read that, after he had raised the daughter of Jairus from the dead, “her parents were astounded, and he instructed them to tell no one what had happened” (8:56).
The fundamental reason for Jesus’ reluctance to spread news of his miracles was this: Jesus did not want people to be distracted from what he really came to do — namely, the ministry of the word.
In Mark, Jesus had told his disciples, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come” (1:38). His concern was that the crowds would be dazzled by the miracles rather than give their attention to the lessons he had come to teach.