Vatican and musicians at odds over appropriate use of crematorium leftovers The Vatican has put itself on a collision course with the rock music industry, after banning the spreading of human ash-ley remains. The declaration that spreading or storing crematoria scrapings, flies in the face of a upsurge of musicians’ innovative re-use of the mortal remains of deceased band members, fans, and indeed …
There are concerns about the ecological impact on some favourite places in the UK for scattering of ashes. That can be avoided by scattering them in an arboretum to preserve trees eg the Woodland Trust
https://www.thebmc.co.uk/ashes-to-ashes-how-human-remains-are-transforming-the-lake-district
... and they are offering deceased band members ashes as an incentive to sell new albums...
Hmmm...I would advise any aspiring metal musicians out there to think long and hard before accepting a position with Negativland anytime soon... At least until the promotion is well and truly dead and buried...
I have thought about my death, I have planned my funeral, arranged the music, everything, the first line in the plan is "At the funeral there should be no priests, vicars, ministers, shamans, witch doctors or other peddlers of superstitious nonsense."
When I'm dead the doctors can take whatever gloppy bits they want for transplant or research, the rest can go as cat food, makes no difference to me as I won't be using them.
After death you will only exist in the memory of those who knew you, asking where you go after that is like asking where the music goes when the band stops playing.
Several years ago one of my friends was unhappy with my plan to have no funeral ceremony - just an offline cremation after any organ donation. She said my funeral would be a chance for her to meet many other people in my life who she only knew by name.
For my 50th birthday I arranged a party and invited all the friends and neighbours who might be expected at my funeral. So my friend had her chance to meet everyone.
Now approaching my biblical span she has again said I should allow a funeral ceremony so everyone could meet. I have pointed out to her that at the current rate of attrition she would not appreciate sitting through the allotted time listening to several tracks from my favourite choir's CDs - in an almost empty room. Anyone from a distance would probably watch the webcast instead.
I've heard enough funeral eulogies to know they rarely combine a good speaker with a personal knowledge of the deceased. People afterwards always say "that wasn't really like her/him" - the skeletons in the cupboard are rarely mentioned even at the funeral tea.
If people want to raise a private glass or make some other acknowledgement that suits them - then that is up to them. That will be a genuine gesture on their part - even if it is "good riddance!".
People often go to a funeral to show support to the family - it is the done thing. The family go - because it is the done thing. The important person no longer exists - and would probably have appreciated the people visiting them when they were still alive.
Several years ago one of my friends was unhappy with my plan to have no funeral ceremony - just an offline cremation after any organ donation. She said my funeral would be a chance for her to meet many other people in my life who she only knew by name.So why a funeral (ceremony connected with the burial or cremation, etc. of the body of a dead person)? Why not a wake where the life of the dead person is celebrated? I seem to be invited to rather more of these recently than I would wish, but they can be fun as well as a time for sadness. My friend Tony had us listening to "Look on the Bright Side of Life" from the Life of Brian, and his wife and kids danced to an Irish jig, much to the consternation of his brother.
My brother-in-law is a registered celebrant, so I asked him to officiate at mine. He agreed, but insists on ten years notice ;-)
Props on the organ donation; there's not enough of this.
"Look on the Bright Side of Life" from the Life of Brian is the music I have chosen to end my funeralYou are much kinder than me then. I want either Jessye Norman singing the liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, or Brahms' Ein Detusches Requiem by the Wiener Philharmoniker (Bernard Haitink cond.). Despite my predilection for Prog Rock, they remain my two all-time favourite pieces of music. Even Pompous Gits like a good cry every now and then ;-)
I guess Cardinal Muller was reacting to the disrespectful treatment of human remains by the aforementioned musicians, and, horrified by human ash being ingested by mosh-pit dancers went a bit too far in reaction. The reason prospective corpses specify cremation is to save their heirs the cost of a burial plot, so renting a holy shelf for the ashes is not an appealing option. The good news is that modern crematoriums do not produce any ashes at all unless artificially throttled down to do so for those mourners who want a souvenir of the dearly departed. Tell them to "set the controls for the heart of the Sun" and there will be no earthly remains to store anywhere, just hot vapour.
For those worried about the Almighty's ability to raise you from the dead on the last day; worry no more. As a Pan-dimensional being living outside of time, He can recover your body from any point in your 4-dimensional existence, before you were cremated.
For those worried about the Almighty's ability to raise you from the dead on the last day; worry no more. As a Pan-dimensional being living outside of time, He can recover your body from any point in your 4-dimensional existence, before you were cremated.If God is indeed timeless (existing outside of time) and therefore changeless then he must be frozen in a state of suspended animation. He must be doing nothing, and thinking nothing while in that timeless state, so He could not have come up with the idea to create time and the physical Cosmos.
The idea to create the Cosmos must have already existed while God was in that timeless/changeless state. Herein lies a contradiction since ideas by their very Nature are temporal i.e. ideas are a change-of-state. If you have an idea that implies that there was a before when you didn't have that idea. The transition of non-idea to idea is a change and a temporal change to boot.
Never mind what God did do or didn't do, or could do or couldn't do while in a timeless state, tell me what God has done post Creation? What in Hell (so-to-speak) does He actually do with all of Time? If He has no beginning while He exists in a timeless state that's a fucking long time to do... what?
God must be bored out of His timeless (albeit huge) mind. Or fast asleep at the wheel. I'm rather glad I'm not a God.
I intend leaving instructions that my remains, together with some specially commissioned artefacts, are interred in a manner designed to baffle future archaeologists.
"We don't know who he was, or why his ashes were placed in a concrete replica of a bouncy castle, and heaven knows what he did with that thing. We think it's probably a ritual object ..."
While I was asked for and gave citations for my claim that the Church(es) did not "stifle scientific advancement", I note that there have been no attempts to justify that stance. Consider:
The great universities were established by and for the church. E.g. Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, etc.
France did not secularise its universities until 1905, England followed in 1914. Note that London University was established as the first secular university in England in 1826, but that can hardly be claimed to be the earliest example of a university teaching science*.
Presumably, the science conducted by for example Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle at Oxford and at Cambridge by Isaac Newton, either never took place, or was ruthlessly suppressed in your alternate universe.
* Science used here in its modern sense. Prior to 1867 it was called Natural Philosophy.
"The great universities were established by and for the church. E.g. Oxford, Cambridge,"
You could not gain entrance to Oxford University unless you signed up to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith. That meant it excluded atheists and non-conformists until 1854.
This reminds me of a dinner conversation with friends a couple of years ago.
While we had arrived at the cheese stage, the topic of our conversation had somehow meandered towards death, funerals, cremation, what to do with the ashes... suddenly there was a pause and as if on cue everybodies eyes turned to look at the Morbier on the cheese platter...
It amuses The Git that it's common knowledge among historians that when the Universities were being run by and for the Holy Roman Church that science was a compulsory part of the curriculum. Since the Universities became secularised, you are no longer required to study science. Perhaps it's no wonder then that people today get their "knowledge" about science from works of fiction. So it goes...
At the Pope's recent visit to Poland for the Youth Festival - the English boychoir Libera was invited to give a concert for the assembled throng. The apparently secular choir is regarded by some as somewhat Anglo-Catholic.
It is interesting that one of their oft repeated songs is a setting of the poem "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep" by Mary Elizabeth Frye. It embodies the spirit of everything that the Pope is apparently condemning. It would be my atheist funeral closing track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag_vltbWHz8
"Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there.
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow. "
Do Not Stand at My Grave and WeepSublime. Many thanks and back at you.
Richard Wagner "Tristan Und Isolde" - Prelude & Liebestod, Jessye Norman, Herbert von Karajan
"....In the heaving swell,
in the resounding echoes,
in the universal stream
of the world-breath -
to drown,
to founder -
unconscious -
utmost rapture!"
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