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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.

Can Catholics be cremated? I was taught that cremation is a pagan ritual and therefore forbidden.

Question:

Can Catholics be cremated? I was taught that cremation is a pagan ritual and therefore forbidden.

Answer:

Early Christians opposed cremation because pagans often cremated their dead as a sign of disdain for the Christian’s belief in the physical resurrection of the body. To protect belief in this doctrine of faith, the Church forbade cremation. That prohibition was lifted in 1963.

The Church still recommends that the faithful be buried, but Catholics may be cremated so long as cremation does not demonstrate a denial of belief in the resurrection of the body (CCC 2301).


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