Weird story in the news today about a weird cult, the Catholic church. Apparently this organisation has "banned" the scattering of dead people's ashes, they also disallow keeping ashes in ornamental containers and the splitting of ashes between members of a family (they only lifted a Catholic ban on cremation as recently as 1963!). Strict new Vatican guidelines dismiss the practice as "Pantheism", which as we all know is the worship or tolerance of many gods, and as any student of religious studies knows is nothing like Roman Catholic beliefs, with their myriad saints, archangels, spirits and trinitarian god-head.
I'm tempted to criticize this organisation (as I often do) by scoffing at their rather silly medieval belief in zombies rising from their (actual) graves come judgement day, but I reckon the real reason underpinning this dogma is much simpler (and "earthly"). If you read beyond the headline you discover that the guidelines dictate that unless you put the ashes in a church or graveyard then you'll not be a "proper" Christian, and presumably won't go to Heaven, in other words, sprinkle poor old auntie Mildred's ashes on our property (small fee may be applicable) or burn baby, burn! How quaint, I wonder where they stand on cricket stumps?
2 comments:
All the while it is okay for them to have divided up the corpses of saints into parcels as relics and have them scattered around the world. Such as the right shoulder of St. Bernadette is kept in Lourdes and toted around the town on holy days.
HV, quite so! Sounds like they're running scared about the rest of us "breaking their spell" to me :)
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