21 August 2012 – The Good Funeral Guide

Please, sir, can I have the skeleton?

The case of Christopher Harris vs Woodstock Town Council focussed the not inconsiderable minds of the GFG workforce on the vital necessity of forwarding all tricky legal enquiries straight to Teresa Evans, thence to John Bradfield if necessary. While we are often to be found curled up with a copy of Davies Law of Burial, Cremation and Exhumation and a nice cup of tea, we have not Teresa or John’s nous nor yet their stamina. To understand the law is to read and re-read til you’ve got it… then (this is the important bit; Teresa told me this) go back and read between the lines.

Christopher’s case focussed our minds on the legal status of ashes. This may well have been determined by the Burial Act 1857 which requires dead people to enjoy eternal rest, and only to be moved with permission:

Except in the cases where a body is removed from one consecrated place of burial to another by faculty granted by the ordinary for that purpose, it shall not be lawful to remove any body, or the remains of any body, which may have been interred in any place of burial, without licence under the hand of one of Her Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, and with such precautions as such Secretary of State may prescribe as the condition of such licence; and any person who shall remove any such body or remains, contrary to this enactment, or who shall neglect to observe the precautions prescribed as the condition of the licence for removal, shall, on summary conviction before any two justices of the peace, forfeit and pay for every such offence a sum not exceeding level 1 on the standard scale. (Source: Teresa; our bold)

What follows could well be plumb wrong, so please correct me as unkindly as you wish. It’d be good to get to the bottom of this.

The state takes charge of the disposal of the dead for two reasons: 1) to protect public health and 2) to maintain public decency. Neither of these reasons would seem necessarily to account for the Burial Act 1857’s insistence on 3) ensuring eternal rest for those who are dead and buried. Is this a Christian thing stemming from the belief that the soul is embodied? Perhaps it simply derives from the Roman prescript that ‘the only lawful possessor of a dead body is the earth’.

Anyone wanting to engage in a rite of secondary treatment, as many Greeks do (they dig up the skeleton after 3-5 years, wash it and take it away for reburial), is forbidden. You can only dig up a dead person if you have a faculty from the bishop or a licence from the Home Office (or is that the MoJ?). Having done that, to the earth it must return.

The Burial Act 1857 preceded the Cremation Act of 1902, and did not envisage cremated human remains. When cremation became the alternative to burial it became the practice to allow applicants for cremation to have possession of cremated remains to do with as they saw fit. This makes sense — up to a point. Ashes are neither a threat to public health nor are they an affront to public decency. But what about the requirement for eternal rest? What about ‘the only lawful possessor of a dead body is the earth’?

Well, that requirement seems to have persisted in the case of ashes which are interred in a cemetery. Local Authorities Cemeteries Order 1977, which applies to public cemeteries, defines “burial” as including both “human remains” and “cremated human remains”. These interments are recorded in the burial register and there can only be an exhumation with a faculty or a licence. An exception, it seems, is Northern Ireland, where the recording of an ashes burial is at the discretion of the cemetery manager.

Germany followed a more consistent line and insists that ashes, almost without exception, are buried in a sealed container in a cemetery — yet it interrupts eternal repose for buried bodies after around thirty years to make room for someone else. In England and Wales (don’t know about Scotland), all we have to do to arrange for the interment of ashes is to produce the (easily opened) container together with a certificate of cremation. The identity of the ashes is not verified; they could be cat litter. As Jonathan Taylor has oberved: “I’ve buried some dodgy-looking fine yellowish dust that looked to me nothing like cremated remains, and which was found on a bookcase and had a cremation certificate ‘found’ for it at a nearby crematorium by a conscientious sleuthing undertaker but with absolutely no evidence of any connection between the two.”

If you scatter ashes, you are not required to record the location, even in a cemetery. What, then, constitutes an interment? Again, as I understand it, the MoJ’s clarification of the Burial Act as it applies to cremated human remains is that they must be in a container and constitute a ‘discernible mass’. Scatter them in the bottom of a spouse’s coffin, and no permission is required; tuck them in a container under the spouse’s arm and you need someone’s say-so.

If you know better, please say.

All cemeteries experience Monday morning molehill syndrome: the appearance of wee freshly dug mounds on graves where, who knows, ashes have been interred while no one’s looking. It may be the case that some good-hearted funeral directors encourage or conspire with their clients to do it, depriving our cemeteries of valuable revenue stream.

Footnote: The Burial Act 1857 also “exempt[s] from Toll every Person going to or returning from attending the Funeral of any Person who shall be buried in any Burial Ground provided for the Parish, Township, or Place in which he died.” So you know what to say next time you want a free ride over the Clifton suspension bridge or along the M6 Toll.

Body or ashes at the funeral?

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

As a blogger, I may seem as impervious to the ways of secular funerals as a civil celebrant is to the customs of Catholicism. But as a reader, I’ve mulled over ideas presented here to find they’ve struck a chord. While unprejudiced readers will already realise I value choice, whether religious or non-religious, it’s perhaps less obvious I can hold more than an ‘each to their own’ attitude, that instead of simply ‘agreeing to differ’, I sometimes ‘agree to agree’.

Poppy Mardall’s ‘Free yourself and take your time’ is a recent example of a blog that’s provided food for thought—for which I’m grateful. Discussing the service of her company, Poppy’s Funerals, she wrote that, after a simple cremation, ‘we then deliver the ashes to the family so they can hold the funeral ceremony, celebration of life or memorial with the ashes wherever, whenever and however they want’.

As someone who reveres Church teaching, who tries (but sometimes fails) to obey the fundamentals of the faith, a funeral without the body is not something to be embraced lightly.

The Order of Christian Funerals directly links funerals to the Baptism and Confirmation journey: ‘This is the body once washed in Baptism, anointed with the oil of salvation, and fed with the Bread of Life’. It goes on to say ‘the human body is so inextricably associated with the human person that it is hard to think of a human person apart from his or her body. Thus, the Church’s reverence and care for the body grows out of a reverence and concern for the person whom the Church now commends to the care of God.’

Many here, of course, won’t give a fig about the granting of Church permission for steps taken at funerals. A non-Catholic has no need to consult an oracle which he/she doesn’t hold as a theological authority, and no doubt finds anathema such willing resignation of independence. As a Catholic though, I felt the need to check with doctrinal teaching to see if my sympathy with the option of a funeral without the body was okay or an error.

Until just 50 years ago, the Church forbad cremation due to the belief in the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. In 1963, she waived this law, an example of how rituals of the Church adapt to the cultural needs of members as long as this doesn’t sacrifice basic beliefs. The Church continues to prefer and encourage the faithful to bury the dead, but supports the faithful in honouring the life of the departed in this different way. She accepts ‘one hat doesn’t necessarily fit all’, and this alternative isn’t a rejection of core values.

When the Church accepted cremations, she initially still required they be carried out only after the actual body was present at the funeral Mass. Ashes were not allowed in church as substitute for the body due to reverence for the body which carried the oils from Baptism and Confirmation.

However, in 1997, the Church recognised the need of relatives of those who had chosen cremation to have a tangible presence of the deceased during a post-cremation funeral Mass. She lifted the ban on having ashes present during the service.

This lenience was triggered by cases such as a person who dies suddenly a long way from home, and the family can’t afford to repatriate the body. The body is then cremated near the location of death, and the urn of ashes transported home more affordably. It then seemed insensitive to refuse those mourners a funeral mass with the ashes present. A memorial mass may be a comfort but some feel there’s something missing at the funeral mass without the presence of deceased in at least some form.

Despite condoning cremations and funeral masses with ashes—although still preferring burial of the body—the Church continues to forbid the faithful from scattering cremains or displaying them at home, insisting they be buried within an urn in a cemetery.

Footnote: Rome had to make minor revisions to liturgy to accommodate the new choices. The Order of Christian Funerals prescribes three separate rites to celebrate the journey from this life to the next, and to help mourners through this period of separation and letting go. The ideal sequence of this trio of rites is vigil (short prayer service at the bedside or funeral home), funeral mass (full mass in church), committal (short prayer service at the graveside or crematorium). Cremation before the funeral requires the vigil, committal (of sorts), funeral mass with urn of cremains present instead of body in coffin, committal proper (in cemetery). Prayers, therefore, no longer make specific reference to the body that was washed in Baptism, but to ‘earthly remains’.