Troskongregasjonen har i dag offentliggjort en presisering av hvordan det er er tillatt for katolikker å kremeres – mest om hva som kan skje med asken etter kremasjonen:
While the Catholic Church continues to prefer burial in the ground, it accepts cremation as an option, but forbids the scattering of ashes and the growing practice of keeping cremated remains at home, said Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
«Caring for the bodies of the deceased, the church confirms its faith in the resurrection and separates itself from attitudes and rites that see in death the definitive obliteration of the person, a stage in the process of reincarnation or the fusion of one’s soul with the universe,» the cardinal told reporters Oct. 25.
In 1963, the congregation issued an instruction permitting cremation as long as it was not done as a sign of denial of the basic Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. The permission was incorporated into the Code of Canon Law in 1983 and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches in 1990.
However, Müller said, church law had not specified exactly what should be done with «cremains,» and several bishops’ conferences asked the congregation to provide guidance.
The result, approved by Pope Francis after consultation with other Vatican offices and with bishops’ conferences and the Eastern churches’ synods of bishops, is «Ad resurgendum cum Christo» («To Rise with Christ»), an instruction «regarding the burial of the deceased and the conservation of the ashes in the case of cremation.» ….
Hele dokumentet – Ad resurgendum cum Christo – kan leses her.