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Show PAGANISM TOWARDS THE DEAD. When the New York World newspaper, a few years ago, advocated the burning of the bodies of the dead, we suspected a Bohemian trick worthy of that most unprincipled of Xew Yorw dailies. A half a century ago or more there was a Lord Spencer, Spen-cer, a leader of fashion, possessed of a cynical contempt con-tempt for "public opinion." One day this Lord Spencer made a bet with some of his club companions com-panions that if he wore his vest outside of his coat, the fools of fashionable life would make asses of themselves by copying his example. He won his bet and the "Spencer" for a time became the vogue with the fast set of fashionable society. When we read the World article favoring incineration or burning of the dead we thought it was some such foolery the Xew York World was playing with. Now comes a Brooklyn minister, in all seriousness, preaching the revival of the pagan custom. This crusade against the established and traditional method of disposing of their dead by Christians is a conspiracy against the salutary practice of Christian Chris-tian burial. It is but another attack, and an insidious in-sidious one, on Christianity itself. ' A pastoral letter let-ter of the late Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Car-dinal Guibert, on the desecration of cemetery customs cus-toms in the infidel city of Paris, awoke the attention of his diocesan charge to the gravity and seriousness serious-ness of the attack of infidelity on the dead. Soon after the timely warning of the saintly Archbishop appeared, from the pen of the Abbe G-tump, that pulverizing book entitled "Le Cimtiere. au XIX Siecle" "The Graveyard in the Nineteenth Cent tury." The learned author went back in his researches re-searches to remote times and proved that from the time when Abraham was buried by his sons, Isaac and Ishmael, in the cave at Machpelah. down to the interment of the Body, of Our Blessed Lord in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and on through the centuries, carrying the human race to the threshhold of the twentieth century, the "way" of disposing of the bodies of their dead distinguished the "Children of Light" from the "Sons of Darkness." T. r- W(m 'venietery" is 0f Christian origin a Greek vord, signifying that it is a place where the dead who are to rise again take their "sleep" or rest, and also means that for the Christian there is an awakening to "eternal life." Those in favor of human body burning, we are told in the French press, are increasing in numbers, num-bers, which means the opposition to the religion of Jesus Christ is increasing, which means again that the human tide of the French sea is ebbing back to paganism and to the slime of paganism. Those, in France or America, preaching incineration are instigated by a diabolic spirit and they do not know it. It is a conspiracy against "Christian" burial, an attack on Christ. A true Christian cemetery is. in itself, a preacher. preach-er. Inequalities of life are settled in it; disagreements disagree-ments in life are composed here. The rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, are supposed to have their bodies lie side by side, awaiting the glorious resurrection of the body. The Christian cemetery ought to be a great preacher of the equality of men before God. "They lie in the grave together, and together return to dust" and, except the saints, the memory of them is forgotten. - But the Catholic graveyard preaches another consoling doctrine. doc-trine. It teaches the dignity of the sacramental body of the "anointed dead." The dead body has been the temple of the Holy Ghost. It shares in the glory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and will rise again, and is not altogether dead and gone like the body of the beast. This is Christian teaching. Christian tradition. Adam, our first father, knew the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The burial of the body was so universal a tradition in the patriarchal ages that the ''law of Moses" took it for granted and does not mention it. It was only in those vilest and most dissolute of pagan ages, the times of the Greeks and Romans that some, not all, consented to the horrible practice prac-tice of burning dead human bodies, to do away with the primeval tradition of the dead "rising again." It is worthy of this day, when all vestiges of Christian Chris-tian teaching are disappearing from among secret societies of Catholics condemned by the Church and from among many Protestant sects, to renew the customs of the most depraved nations and of the ' I i most awful times, and to propose a phm for fnr, 1 ting our dead. Epicurus, the atheist, tauirii h's ,;; 1 ciples to try and forget their dead. th;n ;';,,v rn: , 1 also forget death itself. But it -tamls :; of all of us; and except we be fools w.. the teaching of Epicurus and be win'm- ; n the advice of the inspired author of Kr. !.,;., . to "go to the house of mourning" : , j ' the end of all us rather than to tl.-. . feasting." |
