The secrets of the Pope’s shoes

National Post ^ | Feb 16, 2013 | Jane Macdougall

[TSgt]

It is a stretch to compare long-term gawking of a corpse to a brief funeral layout.

Or the gawking at human remains.


In fact, when a body is too badly damaged the casket is closed out of respect.

Burials are mentioned in the Bible as early as Genesis 23.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I was not equating these rituals point for point, but illustrating that a practice may be reverent and in harmony with Christian faith and morals, without being mandated explicitly by Scripture.

None of our modern funerary customs are mandated in Scripture; I don't think my conclusion can be coherently denied.

To make an even more general point, I would say our culture needs to recover a regard for the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit which will someday glorify Jesus Christ in the resurrection. The Catholic Church does not use motal remains as a sick display, but rather as a memento mori and a call to prayer.

An example would be the 16th-century Chapel of Bones in Portugal, created to encourage Christians to contemplate the transitory nature of life and think soberly of the Final Judgment and future life to come. A sign over the entrance reads, "Our bones that are here await yours."

[TSgt]

My Lord is alive so I celebrate life not death. I also don’t need a rotting corpse to remind me that He is risen or to pray.

Your argument is invalid since my dispute is not with funerals but the perpetual display and adoration of corpses. If the soul and spirit are no longer with the body why adore the flesh? The Bible repeatedly refers to the flesh negatively.

Ritual has so overtaken the Catholic faith that it is given greater stature than simple biblical principals.

That’s the beauty of salvation, it’s so simple. No religion, church, ritual or intermediary is needed.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You again are making incorrect assumptions about Catholicism.

First, you incorrectly assert that Catholics adore corpses, adore flesh. This is a falsehood: we adore God alone. He is the Supreme Being, the Creator of heaven and earth: He alone is adored.

Second, the respectful memorialization of a Christian's mortal remains is commended by the fact that the body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Even if a person is dead, his body retains that special dignity in that it was a dwelling place, and will again be a dwelling place, of Almighty God. No flesh is contemptible, certainly not since the Incarnation, when Jesus came in the flesh. The Word was made Flesh, and dwelt amongst us.

The Bible refers to many words paradoxically, both positively and negatively, For instance:

• "the world hates Me because I testify that its works are evil" (John 7:7) vs "God so loved the world.." (John 3:16)

• "The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing" (John 6:63) vs "The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us" (John 1:14) and "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life." (John 5:54)

I could go on (and on and on) but my point is that words are often used in different senses. Sometimes "world" means fallen nature (bad); sometimes it means the material world which the Creator said was good. Sometimes "flesh" means fallen human nature (which includes the fallen mind), dominated by sinful passions (bad); and sometimes flesh means human nature in its special dignity because we were made by God in His image and likeness (Creation); because God became Man and took on our nature (Incarnation) and redeemed us, and because "the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body" (Redemption).

Read discerningly. God gives great dignity to our bodies, since He, "by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." (Philippians 3:21).

Thus we adore the Body of Christ, because Christ is God and God is to be adored; and we show reverence for the body of a human being, because the body itself will be transformed by Him.

[TSgt]

And whosoever toucheth one that is slain with a sword in the open fields, or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall be unclean seven days. - Numbers 19:16

I follow Christ, the greatest Christian, and He wasn’t paraded around in a glass box after He was crucified.

This ghoulish and ritualistic behavior is non-biblical.

But hey, if that’s what floats your boat...

[Mrs. Don-o]

There are (as I must say as I examine my own conscience) three principal sins against the good name of another: rash judgment, slander, and detraction. They differ somewhat from one another, but one thing they all have in common is this: a penchant for putting the worst interpretation upon someone else's words or deeds. It's choosing among possible explanations, and settling upon the one that casts blame and imputes some moral or spiritual fault.

This is what's happening here. Some Christian people have a custom intended to convey respect for the mortal remains of brothers or sisters in Christ, to encourage a sober consideration of human mortality, and to show forth a belief in the Resurrection through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

But a stranger to this custom, without a sympathetic insight, derides this as simply macabre and ghoulish, and frails to see a larger, better meaning even when it is explained.

This is a fault of rash judgment and, even, slander. It makes participation in further discussion futile, because there is no charitable sharing of perspectives.

Have a good Lent, TSgt.