WE ARE CLOSE TO THE FINISH, ONLY THE LAST EFFORT WOULD BE ENOUGH

At the end of this difficult moment which seems to be resolving, I will write an article to explain what the parish priest who rebuilt the church after an earthquake meant by inaugurating it with these words: «It was built with the esteem and ideas offered for free by the rich and the money donated by the poor», but we'll talk about this shortly …

.

Dear Readers,

the 26 August we published this article, in which we explained the need to collect 8.000 euros to cover the annual expenses of the management costs of this magazine for the year 2027, otherwise we would have run the risk of ending this happy experience that has lasted for years 12 year old. From then to now we have collected approximately 5.500 Euro.

The last effort would be enough of those who have not yet accepted our appeal to ensure all expenses for the year 2027.

We anticipate our thanks right now to those who have already contributed, to whom we have not yet sent messages because for a matter of our convenience we will do so after 9 September, once the collection is complete, sending a personal message to each individual benefactor.

At the end of this difficult moment which seems to be being resolved, I will write an article to explain what the parish priest who rebuilt the church after an earthquake meant by inaugurating it with these words: «It was built with the esteem and ideas offered for free by the rich and the money donated by the poor», but we'll talk about this shortly …

To those who haven't done it yet, we ask for a gesture, even small, of generosity.

From the island of Patmos, 3 September 2026

.

HELP US NOT TO CLOSE

Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:

Or if you prefer you can use our Bank account in the name of:

Editions The island of Patmos

n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican

Iban code: IT74R0503403259000000301118

For international bank transfers:

Codice SWIFT: BAPPIT21D21

If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff,

the bank does not provide your email and we cannot send you a thank you message: isoladipatmos@gmail.com

We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.

The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

URGENT NOTICE: THE 7 THE ISLAND OF PATMOS COULD CLOSE IN SEPTEMBER

Now that Vittorio Messori is no longer among us, we are fond of remembering him post mortem and reveal that he was an admirer and precious supporter of ours.

— Ecclesial current events —

.

Dear Readers,

I address you in my capacity as director of this magazine on behalf of all the brother editors thanks to whom The Island of Patmos it has existed and operated for twelve years.

Only once a year, when the deadline for payments for the services we use approaches, we ask for the help of the Readers. We are not used to asking assiduously, let alone insistently: in home page and at the bottom of the articles are links to our bank account and account PayPal, with invitation, to those who want it, to support our work.

Between dedicated server, subscriptions to graphic services, editorial programs and various services within the site, we have to face an annual expense of 8.000 Euro. We do not benefit from any grants or contributions: only offers from those who read us. Who writes for The Island of Patmos it does it for free, because this is first and foremost a pastoral mission through the Internet. However, we cannot - as has happened several times - pay the costs out of our own pockets to offer a service to such a large number of readers, It's not fair or sustainable. We therefore consulted among ourselves and decided that if by 7 September, date on which we have to pay the renewal fees for the year 2027, we will not have collected what we need, we will close this happy experience of over ten years.

Now that Vittorio Messori is no longer among us we are fond of remembering this post mortem and reveal that he was our admirer and precious supporter: on two occasions similar to the current one, In the 2019 It is in the 2021, finding ourselves at risk of closure, provided us with the entire missing amount for payments; and every year he sent us a generous contribution.

For us, his esteem and the exhortation to continue this publicist and editorial work, which he believed, it was more precious than any sum of money, even though the latter is useful and necessary.

If our Christian brothers of the first centuries they died in the Colosseum of Rome during the bread and circus games guaranteed by the emperors to keep the plebs happy, today everything has radically transformed and it is precisely certain Catholics, unfortunately more and more numerous, to show growing disinterest in sound doctrine and in an authentic path of growth in faith, avidly seeking sensationalism, talking madonnas, prophecies from amusement park and trembling secrets about to be revealed.

Nothing new under the sun: the Blessed Apostle had already warned us two thousand years ago in the Second Epistle addressed to his disciple Timothy:

«The day will come, indeed, when they will not endure sound doctrine;, ma, having itching ears they, will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, refusing to listen to the truth to get lost behind fables " (II Tm 4, 3-4).

In these twelve years we believe we have done our duty as priests and theologians, remembering above all the foundations of all those uncomfortable truths of faith that people - devout believers included - increasingly do not want to hear, refusing to please the vices and charms of the world in order to obtain the money of those thirsty for itches and gossip in clerical sauce. If this work of ours will really end, we will at least be able to say in clear conscience together with the Apostle:

«I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I kept faith " (II Tm 4,7).

Finally, let's get to the practical part: our economic availability, as you can see from the Bank and Paypal statements attached here, is equal to 2.135 Euro, a lower amount of 6.000 euros compared to the total amount needed for expenses.

Finally the paradox: considering that July is traditionally a dead month for the web The Island of Patmos recorded approx 270.000 different visitors, beyond 308.000 visit, circa 1.200.000 pages viewed for a total of over 2.000.000 of accesses.

Of this large number of people only a very small part leaves an offering to support our pastoral activity, while it would be enough for 1% of our readers to just offer 3 euros - the equivalent of the cost of a cappuccino and a croissant in a suburban bar - and we would have already fully covered the necessary annual expenses.

Without the support of the Readers The Island of Patmos it cannot survive and exist, we have done our duty, now, the rest of the choice is entirely up to you.

We take this opportunity to express our deep thanks all those who have offered us help over these years.

From the island of Patmos, 26 August 2026

Note the 7 September

The payment has been postponed to us 3 days to give us the opportunity to reach the overall amount that we have almost reached to date. Therefore, the deadline, is to be considered al 10 September. All purely for the sake of precision.

.

HELP US NOT TO CLOSE

Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:

Or if you prefer you can use our Bank account in the name of:

Editions The island of Patmos

n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican

Iban code: IT74R0503403259000000301118

For international bank transfers:

Codice SWIFT: BAPPIT21D21

If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff,

the bank does not provide your email and we cannot send you a thank you message: isoladipatmos@gmail.com

We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.

The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

 

Italian, English, Español

 

CREMATION OF THE BODY? IT CAN BE AN EXCELLENT CATHOLIC CHOICE

If there are theologians ready to believe and teach that bodies will emerge from the tombs to resume their physical appearance, confusing the mystery of faith in the resurrection with the long production of horror films about zombies, then they might as well resign themselves: that description, complete with bodies recomposed in flesh and blood, they will find it much better illustrated in the Qur'anic Paradise, also including seventy virgins, so as not to miss anything material, both in libations and more.

- Church news -

.

 

.

PDF print format article – article print format – article in printed format

 

.

The Catholic Church allows cremation from 1963, since the Holy Office, with education Pious and constant the 5 July of that year, established that it is not "in itself contrary to the Christian religion" and that the faithful who chose it would no longer be denied the sacraments and funeral services, provided that this choice was not motivated «as a denial of Christian dogmas, or with a sectarian soul, or out of hatred against the Catholic religion and the Church".

Since then the discipline has passed into the Code of Canon Law the 1983 (can. 1176 §3) and in that of the Eastern Churches of 1990. It is a distinction that must be held firm from the beginning: one thing is the lawfulness of the practice, another is the preference for burial. The Church, however, absolutely prohibits the scattering of ashes and their conservation at home, as we'll see.

A historical aside: It is worth remembering that cremation had been condemned by the Church with a decree of the Holy Office of 12 May 1886, in the years in which its practice had been assumed by Freemasonry as an ideological flag with an anti-clerical function, to publicly deny the truths of faith about eternal life and, above all, on the resurrection of the dead.

Theology has nothing to fear from cremation itself. Fire does not touch the soul and in no way limits divine omnipotence in resurrecting bodies: God who took man from the dust can call him back from the ashes as well as from the earth. Or maybe it's not pronounced, precisely in the Ashes liturgy with which Lent begins: «dust you are and to dust you will return» (Gen 3,19)? Cremation may be chosen for hygienic reasons, economic, ecological or even ethical, and it is a completely legitimate choice for a faithful Catholic.

We cannot forget the lack of space in the cemeteries of large cities. Furthermore, it should be considered that, unlike nations inhabited by a few tens of millions of people spread over boundless territories, There are others in the world where the population density is very high: in those cases, cremation, more than desirable it should be recommended. We then fly over the ecomonsters of various cemeteries in which, due to lack of space on the land, height was aimed at by building horrible five-storey buildings to contain the burial niches inside. In most Italian cemeteries there are no longer places for burials on the ground, where it would be natural to place the body through the ancient gesture of returning it to the earth itself. We don't have the spaces that other populations have, for example in the United States of America, in Australia and other places where cemeteries are large green parks, the so-called Rural Cemetery Movement (cemetery garden), called more commonly today Lawn Cemetery O Memorial Park (memorial park).

These places extend over large green meadows with trees, they don't even look like burial places, at least for us Italians and Europeans of Latin origin, accustomed to tombs that vary from ancient monumental funerary chapels of valuable artistic interest to niches and tombs of rare bad taste. In the “garden cemeteries”, to maintain the appearance of a uniform lawn, gravestones are often flat and placed at ground level. There are no walls, individual fences or monumental family tombs that interrupt the view: trees, paths and ponds integrate the cemetery into the natural landscape, transforming it into a place of peace for visitors too, where it is possible to take children or animals for a walk to play. But as we were saying, ground burials have now disappeared from most cemeteries and our population density does not allow us places like Lawn Cemetery O Memorial Park. In certain cases, cremation or burial on the fifth floor of a cemetery condominium is better? Thank God free choice is allowed, also from Holy Mother Church.

It is therefore no coincidence that the recent Magisterium felt the need to intervene precisely in this area, to pastorally accompany increasingly widespread choices without leaving them without a meaningful framework. Taking into account these new needs and related problems, education To rise with Christ issued on 15 August 2016 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, has updated Pious and constant specifying the rules on the conservation of ashes. The document is clear: the ashes must receive the same care and respect reserved for the body, and must be kept in a sacred place: the cemetery, or a church, or an area dedicated to this by the competent ecclesiastical authority (n. 5). The opposition of the Church, so, it is not towards cremation in and of itself, if anything towards what one might want to manifest or openly deny with it.

Christian tradition has always favored inhumation for three reasons that To rise with Christ summarizes precisely. First of all because it recalls the body of Christ placed in the tomb and expresses with greater symbolic force the expectation of the resurrection of the body (cf.. n. 3). Then because the human body, through Baptism, it has become a temple of the Holy Spirit and theology urges us to treat it with the greatest physical proximity possible, also in the gesture of entrusting it to the earth. Finally, because burial preserves the communion between the living and the dead, encouraging remembrance and prayer. It is for this reason - not out of suspicion towards fire itself - that the Church prohibits the scattering of ashes in nature, their conversion into jewelry and commemorative objects and their preservation at home, this is in order to avoid pantheistic drifts, naturalist or nichilist, in addition to the commodification of the memory of the deceased (cf.. n. 7). Only in serious and exceptional circumstances, linked to local cultural conditions, the Ordinary can grant domestic conservation, never divided, But, between different families (cf.. n. 6).

A brief historical overview helps put things in perspective. In archaic Rome, inhumation prevailed. From the late Republic cremation took over: fu Silla, In the 79 a.C., the first member of the gens Cornelia — traditionally faithful to earth burial — to be cremated, perhaps for fear that his corpse would be outraged by his enemies. From there cremation remained the dominant rite throughout the late Republic and the first and second centuries of the Empire: the body was burned on a pyre together with personal objects and offerings and the remains collected in a cinerary urn kept in tombs or columbaria, like the one still visible of Pomponius Hylas on the Appian Way.

It was with Hadrian (117-138 d.C.) that burial gradually came back into fashion — the emperor himself was perhaps the first to be buried rather than cremated — with the construction of sculpted sarcophagi becoming increasingly widespread in the 2nd century and generalized in the 3rd, even in the provinces. Multiple factors - changes in taste - played a role in this turning point, in urbanization and above all in ideas about the afterlife - but the growing spread of Christianity undoubtedly also contributed, who considered cremation disrespectful to a body destined for resurrection.

The profound reasons for this trend reversal However, they remain debated among historians. Already in the 1930s Arthur Darby Nock¹ he observed how the transition to inhumation followed, at least initially, a social fashion that spread from top to bottom rather than a precise doctrinal rethinking on the afterlife; a reading taken up and expanded by Jocelyn M. (C). Toynbee². The fact remains, however you explain it, that precisely in those decades Christians dug the first Roman catacombs, reserving burial for their dead from the beginning, due to a conscious and deliberate distance from the then still dominant use of cremation in Roman society.

This is where it is worth stopping on a broader point, which applies to this as well as other cases: since the early Christian era, attempts were made to draw clear distinctions with respect to what were considered pagan customs. but yet, in other circumstances, numerous elements and symbols of paganites Roman were taken, emptied of their original meaning and filled with Christian symbolism, this much in the liturgical context - think of the adoption of the stole as the symbol par excellence of the ministerial priesthood, or other elements that have become liturgical wallpapers -, to follow in the administrative field with the adoption of terms and organizational structures such as curiae and dioceses, borrowed largely from Roman law. The history of the Church has never been a wholesale rejection of the world around it, but an exercise in common sense in which he evaluated himself, case by case, what needed to be rejected and what could be purified and assumed.

Some theologians who demonize cremation by connecting it directly to the mystery of the resurrection of the dead they take a serious risk, due to excess of zeal, of slipping into a form of inverted paganism: a completely involuntary esotericism. The bodies that emerge from the tombs summarizing their appearance are catechetical images, created for the simple and for those who couldn't even read, let's think of the cycles of frescoes that are still found today in many monumental churches and cathedrals. They are pedagogical images, not theological descriptions of how. Linking the opposition to cremation to such a literal reading of the resurrection of the body denotes — something serious, if theologians do it - an improper understanding of the mystery.

Saint Paul had already clarified this with admirable precision in the Letter to the Philippians:

«​in fact our citizenship is in heaven and from there we await the Lord Jesus Christ as savior, who will transfigure our miserable body to conform it to his glorious body, by virtue of the power he has to subject all things to himself" (Fil 3,20-21).

It is from this Pauline theology which derives from one of the most beautiful formulas of the liturgy of the dead: in the Eucharistic Prayer III, remembering the deceased brother or sister, the Church prays that God, when "he will raise the dead from the earth", «he will transform our mortal body into the image of his glorious body» (Roman Missal, Eucharistic prayer III, quoting Fil 3,20-21).

The heart of the doctrine it lies precisely in these two words: transformation e conformation. And here it must be clarified that it is not a question of the mechanical recomposition of the dispersed physical particles of a corpse, almost as if the power of God depended on the conservation of the original matter: would be, that yes, a magical thought. Rather, it is about the continuity of the person, including identity and history, brought by God to a new condition understood as "conforming" - σύμμορφος (symmorphos), the same word used by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8,29 about the predestination of believers — to the glorious body of the risen Christ. It is the same paschal mystery of death, burial and resurrection which acts in the believer through Baptism and finds fulfillment on the last day, whatever the physical fate of his mortal remains. Or perhaps we want to fear that God may have difficulty restoring a body to the souls of the deceased on the day of the resurrection of the dead?

If not, if there are theologians ready to believe and teach that bodies will emerge from the tombs to resume their physical appearance, confusing the mystery of faith in the resurrection with the long production of horror films about zombies, then they might as well resign themselves: that description, complete with bodies recomposed in flesh and blood, they will find it much better illustrated in the Qur'anic Paradise, also including seventy virgins, so as not to miss anything material, both in libations and more.

From the island of Patmos, 22 August 2026

.

NOTE

¹ A.D. Nock, Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire, «Harvard Theological Review» 25, 1932, pp. 32-59.

² J.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1996.

 

.

.

CREMATION OF THE BODY? IT CAN BE AN EXCELLENT CATHOLIC CHOICE

Should there be theologians ready to believe and to teach that bodies will come out of their tombs to resume their physical likeness, confusing the mystery of faith concerning the resurrection with the long line of zombie horror films, then they might as well resign themselves: that description, complete with bodies reassembled in flesh and bone, they will find far better illustrated in the Qur’anic Paradise, seventy virgins included, so as not to lack for anything material, in feasting and more besides.

— Current Ecclesial Affairs —

.

The Catholic Church has permitted cremation since 1963, when the Holy Office, with the instruction Pious and constant of 5 July of that year, established that cremation is not “in itself contrary to the Christian religion” and that the faithful who chose it should no longer be denied the sacraments and funeral rites, provided that the choice was not motivated “as a denial of Christian dogmas, or out of a sectarian spirit, or out of hatred for the Catholic religion and the Church.”

Since then the discipline has passed into the 1983 Code of Canon Law (can. 1176 §3) and into that of the Eastern Churches of 1990. This is a distinction that must be firmly maintained from the outset: one thing is the licitness of the practice, another is the preference for burial. The Church, however, absolutely forbids the scattering of ashes and their preservation at home, as we shall see.

A historical aside: it is worth recalling that cremation had been condemned by the Church by decree of the Holy Office of 12 May 1886, in the years when the practice had been taken up by Freemasonry as an ideological banner in an anticlerical key, in order to publicly deny the truths of faith concerning eternal life and, above all, the resurrection of the dead.

Theology has nothing to fear from cremation in itself. Fire does not touch the soul, nor does it in any way limit divine omnipotence in raising bodies: the God who drew man from dust can call him back from ashes just as well as from earth. Or does Scripture not say, precisely in the liturgy of Ashes with which Lent begins: “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19)? Cremation may be chosen for hygienic, economic, ecological, or even ethical reasons, and it is an entirely legitimate choice for a Catholic faithful. Nor can we forget the shortage of space in the cemeteries of large cities. It should also be considered that, unlike nations inhabited by a few tens of millions of people spread across vast territories, there are other places in the world where population density is instead very high: in those cases, cremation, far from being merely advisable, should actually be recommended. Let us pass over the architectural monstrosities of various cemeteries where, for lack of space on the ground, height has been exploited, building hideous five-storey blocks to house the niches inside them.

In most Italian cemeteries there are no longer any burial plots in the ground, where it would be natural to lay the body through the ancient gesture of restoring it to the earth itself. We do not have the space available to other peoples — for example in the United States, in Australia, and other places where cemeteries are vast green parks, the so-called Rural Cemetery Movement (garden cemetery), now more commonly called the Lawn Cemetery or Memorial Park. These places, spread over broad tree-lined lawns, hardly even look like burial grounds, at least to us Italians and Latin Europeans, accustomed to tombs ranging from ancient funerary chapels of considerable artistic value to niches and tombs of rare bad taste. In these “garden cemeteries,” to maintain the appearance of a uniform lawn, headstones are often flat and set at ground level. There are no low walls, individual enclosures, or monumental family tombs to interrupt the view: trees, paths, and small lakes integrate the cemetery into the natural landscape, turning it into a place of peace even for visitors, where it is possible to bring children to play or walk pets. As we were saying, however, ground burial has by now disappeared from most cemeteries, and our population density does not allow for places like the Lawn Cemetery or Memorial Park. In certain cases, is it better to be cremated, or entombed on the fifth floor of a cemetery apartment block? Thank God, free choice is granted, even by Holy Mother Church.

It is therefore no coincidence that the recent Magisterium has felt the need to intervene precisely on this terrain, in order to pastorally accompany increasingly widespread choices without leaving them devoid of a framework of meaning. Taking account of these new needs and their related problems, the instruction To rise with Christ, issued on 15 August 2016 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, updated Pious and constant by specifying the norms for the preservation of ashes. The document is unambiguous: ashes must receive the same care and respect given to the body, and must be kept in a sacred place: the cemetery, or a church, or an area dedicated to this purpose by the competent ecclesiastical authority (n. 5). The Church’s opposition, then, is not to cremation in and of itself, but rather to what one might wish to express or openly deny through it.

Christian tradition has always favored burial for three reasons that To rise with Christ summarizes with precision. First, because it recalls the body of Christ laid in the tomb, and expresses with greater symbolic force the expectation of the resurrection of the flesh (cf. n. 3). Second, because the human body, through Baptism, has become a temple of the Holy Spirit, and theology urges that it be treated with the greatest possible physical closeness, even in the gesture of entrusting it to the earth. Finally, because burial safeguards communion between the living and the dead, fostering remembrance and prayer. It is for this reason — not out of any suspicion toward fire in itself — that the Church forbids the scattering of ashes in nature, their conversion into jewelry or commemorative objects, and their preservation at home, in order to avoid pantheistic, naturalistic, or nihilistic drifts, as well as the commodification of the memory of the deceased (cf. n. 7). Only in serious and exceptional circumstances, tied to local cultural conditions, may the Ordinary grant domestic preservation, though never divided, however, among different family units (cf. n. 6).

A brief historical excursus helps put things in perspective. In archaic Rome, burial prevailed. From the late Republic onward, cremation gained the upper hand: it was Sulla, in 79 BC, the first member of the gens Cornelia — traditionally faithful to burial in the earth — to be cremated, perhaps for fear that his corpse would be desecrated by his enemies. From then on cremation remained the dominant rite throughout the late Republic and the first two centuries of the Empire: the body was burned on a pyre together with personal belongings and offerings, and the remains gathered in a cinerary urn kept in tombs or columbaria, such as the one still visible belonging to Pomponius Hylas on the Appian Way.

It was under Hadrian (117–138 AD) that burial gradually came back into fashion — the emperor himself was perhaps the first to be buried rather than cremated — with the construction of carved sarcophagi becoming increasingly widespread in the second century and generalized in the third, even in the provinces. Several factors weighed on this shift — changes in taste, in urbanization, and above all in ideas about the afterlife — but the growing spread of Christianity, which considered cremation disrespectful toward a body destined for resurrection, undoubtedly contributed to it as well.

The deeper reasons for this reversal of trend remain, moreover, debated among historians. Already in the 1930s, Arthur Darby Nock¹ observed how the shift to burial followed, at least initially, a social fashion that spread from the top down rather than a precise doctrinal rethinking of the afterlife; a reading later taken up and expanded by Jocelyn M. (C). Toynbee². What remains true, however one explains it, is that in precisely those decades Christians were digging the first Roman catacombs, reserving burial for their own dead from the very outset, in conscious and deliberate distance from the then still dominant use of cremation in Roman society.

This is where it is worth pausing on a broader point, one that holds true here as in other cases: from the earliest Christian era, an effort was made to draw clear distinctions from what were considered pagan customs. And yet, on other occasions, numerous elements and symbols of Roman paganites were taken up, emptied of their original meaning, and filled with Christian symbolism — this occurred both in the liturgical sphere, as with the adoption of the stole as the preeminent symbol of ministerial priesthood, or other elements that became liturgical vestments, and in the administrative sphere, with the adoption of terms and organizational structures such as curiae and dioceses, largely borrowed from Roman law. The history of the Church has never been a wholesale rejection of the world that surrounded it, but an exercise of good sense in which, case by case, what had to be rejected and what could be purified and assumed was weighed.

Some theologians who demonize cremation by directly linking it to the mystery of the resurrection of the dead risk seriously, out of excessive zeal, sliding into a form of inverted paganism: an entirely involuntary esotericism. Bodies emerging from tombs and resuming their former appearance are catechetical images, created for the simple and for those who could not even read — one need only think of the cycles of frescoes still found today in many monumental churches and cathedrals. These are pedagogical images, not theological descriptions of the how. Linking opposition to cremation to so literal a reading of the resurrection of the body betrays — a serious matter, when it is theologians who do so — an improper understanding of the mystery.

Saint Paul had already clarified this with admirable precision in the Letter to the Philippians:

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we also await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body by the power that enables him also to bring all things into subjection to himself” (Phil 3:20-21).

It is from this Pauline theology that one of the most beautiful formulas of the liturgy for the dead descends: in Eucharistic Prayer III, making memory of a departed brother or sister, the Church prays that God, “when from the earth he will raise up in the flesh those who have died,” will “transform our lowly body after the pattern of his own glorious body” (Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer III, citing Phil 3:20-21).

The heart of the doctrine lies precisely in these two words: transformation and conformation. And here it must be clarified that this is not a matter of the mechanical reassembly of the scattered physical particles of a corpse, as though the power of God depended on the preservation of the original matter: that, indeed, would be magical thinking. It is rather a matter of the continuity of the person — identity and history included — brought by God to a new condition understood as “conformed” — σύμμορφος (symmorphos), the very word used by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:29 regarding the predestination of believers — to the glorious body of the risen Christ. It is the same paschal mystery of death, burial, and resurrection that works in the believer through Baptism and finds fulfillment on the last day, whatever the physical fate of his mortal remains may have been. Or shall we perhaps fear that God might have difficulty in restoring a body to the souls of the departed on the day of the resurrection of the dead?

If not, should there be theologians ready to believe and to teach that bodies will come out of their tombs to resume their physical likeness, confusing the mystery of faith concerning the resurrection with the long line of zombie horror films, then they might as well resign themselves: that description, complete with bodies reassembled in flesh and bone, they will find far better illustrated in the Qur’anic Paradise, seventy virgins included, so as not to lack for anything material, in feasting and more besides.

From The Island of Patmos, 22 August 2026

NOTES

¹ A.D. Nock, Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire, “Harvard Theological Review” 25, 1932, pp. 32-59.

² J.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1996.

.

.

DOES THE CREMATION OF THE BODY? IT CAN BE AN EXCELLENT CATHOLIC OPTION

if there are theologians willing to believe and teach that bodies will come out of the tombs to regain their physical appearance, confusing the mystery of faith about the resurrection with the long production of horror films about zombies, then they better resign themselves: that description, with bodies recomposed into flesh and blood included, You will find it much better illustrated in the Koranic Paradise, seventy virgins included, so that they do not lack anything material, both at banquets and elsewhere.

- Ecclesial news -

.

The Catholic Church allows cremation from 1963, when the Holy Office, with the instruction Pious and constant the 5 July of that year, established that cremation is not "in itself contrary to the Christian religion" and that the faithful who had chosen it would no longer be denied sacraments and funerals., provided that such a choice was not motivated "as a denial of Christian dogmas.", or with sectarian spirit, or out of hatred against the Catholic religion and the Church".

Since then the discipline has passed to the Code of Canon Law of 1983 (can. 1176 §3) and that of the Eastern Churches of 1990. It is a distinction that must be held firm from the beginning: one thing is the legality of the practice, another is the preference for burial. However, the Church absolutely prohibits the scattering of ashes and their preservation at home., as we will see.

A historical incident: It is worth remembering that cremation had been condemned by the Church by decree of the Holy Office of the 12 May 1886, in the years in which its practice had been assumed by Freemasonry as an ideological flag of an anti-clerical nature., to publicly deny the truths of faith about eternal life and, above all, about the resurrection of the dead.

Theology has nothing to fear from cremation itself. Fire does not touch the soul and does not in any way limit divine omnipotence to resurrect bodies.: God, that brought man out of the dust, can call him back from the ashes just as from the earth. Chance does not proclaim itself, precisely in the liturgy of Ashes with which Lent begins: "You are dust and to dust you will return" (GN 3,19)? Cremation may be chosen for hygienic reasons, economic, ecological or also ethical, and it is a completely legitimate choice for a faithful Catholic. Nor can we forget the scarcity of spaces in cemeteries in big cities.. Besides, it must be considered that, unlike Nations inhabited by a few tens of millions of people distributed over immense territories, There are others in the world where the population density is very high.: in those cases, cremation, more than advisable, should be strongly recommended. Let us ignore the eyesores of several cemeteries in which, due to lack of space on the land, has opted for height, building horrible five-story buildings to contain the niches inside.

In most Italian cemeteries there are no longer burial places on land, where it would be natural to deposit the body through the ancient gesture of its restitution to the earth itself. We do not have the spaces that other populations have, for example in the United States, in Australia and other places where cemeteries are large green parks — the so-called Rural Cemetery Movement (garden cemetery), called today more commonly Lawn Cemetery O Memorial Park (memorial park). These places, spread out over wide green wooded meadows, They don't even look like burial places, at least for us, Italians and Europeans with Latin roots, accustomed to tombs that vary from ancient monumental funerary chapels of notable artistic interest to niches and tombs of truly rare bad taste. In the "garden cemeteries", to maintain the appearance of a uniform meadow, Gravestones are usually flat and placed at ground level.. There are no walls, individual fences or monumental family tombs that interrupt the view: trees, Trails and small lakes integrate the cemetery into the natural landscape, transforming it into a place of peace also for visitors, where it is possible to take the children to play or walk the animals. As we said, however, In most of the cemeteries the earthen graves have already disappeared and our population density does not allow us places like the Lawn Cemetery O Memorial Park. In certain cases, Is cremation or burial on the fifth floor of a cemetery building better?? Thank God free choice is granted, also from the Holy Mother Church.

It's not, well, coincidence that the recent Magisterium felt the need to intervene precisely in this area, to pastorally accompany increasingly widespread decisions without leaving them deprived of a framework of meaning. Taking into account these new needs and the related problems, the instruction To rise with Christ, promulgated on 15 of August of 2016 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, updated Pious and constant specifying the rules on the conservation of ashes. The document is clear: the ashes must receive the same care and respect reserved for the body, and must be kept in a sacred place: the cemetery, or a church, or an area dedicated to it by the competent ecclesiastical authority (n. 5). The setback of the Church, therefore, It is not towards cremation in and of itself, but rather towards what one might want to openly manifest or deny with it..

Christian tradition has always preferred burial for three reasons that To rise with Christ accurately summarize. Above all because it remembers the body of Christ deposited in the tomb and expresses with greater symbolic force the expectation of the resurrection of the body. (cf.. n. 3). Then because the human body, through Baptism, It has become a temple of the Holy Spirit, and theology encourages treating it as physically close as possible., also in the gesture of entrusting it to the earth. Finally, because the grave guards the communion between the living and the dead, promoting remembrance and prayer. It is for this reason — not because of a suspicion of the fire itself — that the Church prohibits the scattering of ashes in nature., their conversion into jewelry and commemorative objects and their conservation at home, this in order to avoid pantheistic drifts, naturalists or nihilists, in addition to the commodification of the memory of the deceased (cf.. n. 7). Only in serious and exceptional circumstances, linked to local cultural conditions, the Ordinary can grant domestic conservation, never divided, however, between different family units (cf.. n. 6).

A brief historical excursion helps put things in perspective. In archaic Rome burial prevailed. Since the late Republic, cremation took the lead: it was Sulla, in the year 79 a.C., the first member of the gens Cornelia — traditionally faithful to ground burial — in having one cremated, perhaps for fear that his corpse would be violated by his enemies. Since then, cremation continued to be the dominant rite throughout the late Republic and during the first and second centuries of the Empire.: The body was burned on a pyre along with personal objects and offerings., and the remains were collected in a cinerary urn guarded in tombs or columbariums., like the one still visible of Pomponius Hylas on the Appian Way.

It was with Hadrian (117-138 d.C.) when inhumation gradually came back into fashion – the emperor himself was perhaps the first to have himself buried rather than cremated – with the construction of sculpted sarcophagi becoming more widespread in the 2nd century and widespread in the 3rd, even in the provinces. Several factors weighed in this shift — changes in taste, in urbanization and especially in ideas about the afterlife — but the growing spread of Christianity undoubtedly also contributed., who considered cremation disrespectful toward a body destined for resurrection.

The deep reasons for this trend reversal they continue, otherwise, debated among historians. Already in the thirties of the 20th century, Arthur Darby Nock¹ I observed how the passage to the burial continued, at least initially, a social fashion spread from the top down rather than a precise doctrinal rethinking of the afterlife; a reading taken up and expanded by Jocelyn M. (C). Toynbee². The fact remains, explains itself as it explains itself, that precisely in those decades Christians excavated the first Roman catacombs, reserving burial for their own dead from the beginning, by conscious and deliberate distance from the then still dominant use of cremation in Roman society.

Here it is worth stopping at a broader point, What is valid for this case as for others?: Since the first Christian era, attempts have been made to draw clear distinctions regarding what were considered pagan customs.. And yet, on other occasions, numerous elements and symbols of the paganites Roman were taken, emptied of their original meaning and filled with Christian symbology, this both in the liturgical sphere - think of the adoption of the stole as a symbol par excellence of the ministerial priesthood, or other elements converted into liturgical ornaments —, as in the administrative field, with the adoption of terms and organizational structures such as curias and dioceses, taken largely from Roman law. The history of the Church has never been a wholesale rejection of the world around it., but an exercise of common sense in which it was valued, case by case, what had to be rejected and what could be purified and assumed.

Some theologians who demonize cremation relating it directly to the mystery of the resurrection of the dead they run the serious risk, due to excess zeal, of slipping into a form of inverted paganism: a completely involuntary esotericism. The bodies that emerge from the tombs recovering their appearance are catechetical images, created for the simple and for those who did not even know how to read; Let us think about the cycles of frescoes that are still found today in so many monumental churches and cathedrals.. They are pedagogical images, not theological descriptions of how. Linking opposition to cremation to such a literal reading of the resurrection of bodies denotes something serious., if theologians do it - an improper understanding of the mystery.

Saint Paul had already clarified it with admirable precision in the Letter to the Philippians:

"US, instead, we are citizens of heaven, from where we wait for a Savior: the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform our humble body, according to the model of his glorious body, with that energy he has to submit everything" (Flp 3,20-21).

It is from this Pauline theology from where one of the most beautiful formulas of the liturgy of the dead descends: in the Eucharistic Prayer III, remembering a deceased brother or sister, The Church prays that God, when he "brings forth the dead from the earth", "transform our fragile body into a glorious body like yours" (Model Romano, Eucharistic Prayer III, quoting Flp 3,20-21).

The heart of the doctrine It is precisely in these two words: transformation and conformation. And here it must be clarified that it is not about the mechanical recomposition of the dispersed physical particles of a corpse., as if the power of God depended on the conservation of the original matter: that would be magical thinking. It is more about the continuity of the person, identity and history included, brought by God to a new condition understood as “conforming” — σύμμορφος (symmorphos), the same word used by the Apostle Paul in Romans 8,29 regarding the predestination of believers — to the glorious body of the resurrected Christ. It is the same paschal mystery of death, burial and resurrection that acts in the believer through Baptism and finds its fulfillment on the last day, whatever the physical fate of his mortal remains may have been. Or are we to fear that God may have difficulty in restoring a body to the souls of the deceased on the day of the resurrection of the dead??

Otherwise, if there are theologians willing to believe and teach that bodies will come out of the tombs to regain their physical appearance, confusing the mystery of faith about the resurrection with the long production of horror films about zombies, then they better resign themselves: that description, with bodies recomposed into flesh and blood included, You will find it much better illustrated in the Koranic Paradise, seventy virgins included, so that they do not lack anything material, both at banquets and elsewhere.

Desde The Island of Patmos, 22 of August of 2026

NOTES

¹ A.D. Nock, Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire, «Harvard Theological Review» 25, 1932, pp. 32-59.

² J.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1996.

.

Father Ariel's latest books

book store WHO

.

______________________

Dear Readers, this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:

Or if you prefer you can use our Bank account in the name of:

Editions The island of Patmos

n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican

Iban code: IT74R0503403259000000301118

For international bank transfers:

Codice SWIFT: BAPPIT21D21

If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff,

the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message: isoladipatmos@gmail.com

We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.

The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

IN THE DEATH OF A SENIOR PRIEST

«Ongoing formation must also concern those priests who due to their advanced age are referred to as elders and who in some Churches are the largest part of the presbyterate. This must give them gratitude for the faithful service they have reserved for Christ and the Church and concrete solidarity for their condition".

.

PDF print format article

 

.

The news of the discovery in his rectory (who) of the lifeless body of a priest takes us by surprise and fills us with dismay at the circumstances.

In fact, it seems to have been a voluntary gesture, still in the assessment and definition phase. The priest was called Lino Zatelli, of years 75, per 24 year old, from the 2001, parish priest of the Clarina community (Trento), but also chaplain of the State Police and organizer of multiple pilgrimages.

The condolences for his passing were unanimous and it came from all the representatives of the communities where Don Lino lived, also because he left a positive testimony everywhere. But the newspapers also speak of a transfer of the parish which should have taken place next November and which, always according to what the newspapers report, it would have been poorly digested by the priest who expressed himself thus when giving the news: «We will stay together until November, we don't pull the oars on the boat, much less me. I never asked to leave, nor from Vallarsa, right from Meano, nor from here. These 24 years cannot be forgotten" (who).

His own parishioners with other admirers they had contested the change of parish, even launching an online petition that reached hundreds of signatures, so long as, according to the promoters of the initiative, Don Lino couldn't understand the reason for the transfer, which was supposed to happen in the fall. In front of this, as with other painful circumstances, the best path is that of silence and prayer, in this case of suffrage for the soul of this priest. But, if we are allowed, we just add a few quiet words and a short testimony.

The Code of Canon Law all no 538 and paragraph 3 so it goes:

«I turned seventy-five years old, the parish priest is invited to present his resignation from office to the diocesan bishop, who, considering every circumstance of person and place, decide whether to accept it or defer it; the diocesan Bishop must adequately provide for the support and housing of the renouncer, awaited the regulations issued by the Episcopal Conference".

Don Lino had precisely 75 year old and was about to be transferred to another position, perhaps less burdensome than the previous one, we do not know, but still a pastoral role. An event that happens more and more frequently due to the lack of priests, therefore even elderly priests are called to remain in the breach, how do you say, for the good of the faithful, even just to carry out essential tasks such as administering the sacraments and of course, among these, the celebration of the Eucharist, often in so-called pastoral units or areas. And it was precisely to one of these that he was about to be transferred.

The Supreme Pontiff Francis in September of 2021 he wrote that elderly priests are not «just an object of assistance, but active protagonists of the community" because they are "bearers of dreams full of memory and therefore very important for the young generations". From them, added the Pontiff in the letter written for the Fraternity Day of the Lombard clergy: «the sap comes to flourish in Christian life and ministry». The Pontiff concluded: «I ask you, please, to pray for me who am a little old and a little sick but not too much!». «You are living a season, old age, which is not a disease, but a privilege", the privilege of "resembling Jesus who suffers" (who).

For further information you can also read the «Directory for the ministry and vision of priests» issued under Benedict XVI in 2013, which refers to the Pastores dabo vobis of the Holy Pontiff John Paul II, the 1992, which at no 77 so it goes:

«Ongoing formation must also concern those priests who due to their advanced age are referred to as elders and who in some Churches are the largest part of the presbyterate. This must give them gratitude for the faithful service they have reserved for Christ and the Church and concrete solidarity for their condition".

Words are always important and comforting, but perhaps some older priests, after many years of ministry they also need concrete gestures of closeness, of understanding their difficulties and listening to their wishes, even if it was not to be transferred, after having served one or more communities for a long time and where you are still well-liked and respected. Of course, each case is different, Precisely for this reason, especially towards the most fragile, that personal care is needed, which sometimes borders on patience, but which always takes into account personal and priestly dignity, especially when dealing with someone who has spent his entire life for the church, sometimes in a dark and hidden way, doing good.

Without judging, I therefore allow myself to report a first-hand testimony. An old priest from a Tuscan diocese past the age of eighty, 37 of which lived in the service of the same parish, asks his Bishop to be able to withdraw. The prelate understands, but he continually sends the elderly priest back, who to be honest still shows a good temper and enviable ability to resist. Until he just can't take it anymore and the Bishop finds himself forced to accept the resignation. The old priest moves to a facility for the elderly not far from his old parish. What do lay people do about this, in agreement with the new parish priest who, among other things, finds himself managing his own parish and also that of the now former parish priest and having to celebrate four Holy Masses every Sunday? They draw up a list of volunteers who go to pick up the elderly priest every Sunday and take him back to his old parish where he can celebrate the afternoon Eucharist, meeting again the people he knew and all those who had shared the joys and sorrows of the pastoral ministry with him. You can imagine what happened after Mass? How many greetings, how much advice and smiles he could still distribute? And because he was an intelligent person, he did not judge the changes brought about by the new parish priest, happy to still enjoy his parish with that freedom given by being exempt from the obligation of service.

When after a few years he suffered a stroke and transferred to a facility that takes care of non-self-sufficient elderly people, the laity continued every Sunday, in turn, to go and see him. Of course, the family took care of the essential things, the nephew, but it was never abandoned, not even a Sunday. When the younger parish priest who had replaced him went to visit him once, he saw him arrive in a wheelchair pushed by a healthcare worker. In his hand he held a cigarette. To the stupid question from the younger priest about his resumption of an ancient vice that he had abandoned many years ago, here's how the old man replied: «What do you want me to have a cigarette every now and then, that kills me?». And they both smiled.

When he died and his funeral was celebrated in his old parish with the Archbishop, much of the presbytery, family members and a large crowd of people. His remains still rest in the small church in the cemetery not far from that parish where he had officiated for more than 37 year old.

It's just an example, a fact that is neither newsworthy, nor does it argue in favor of a general rule of conduct. He just wants to tell you that it is possible to take care of our elderly, considering an old priest as one of the family, or turn around, still part of a community, even if he left her. So that what the Scripture says is true and credible:

«love each other intensely, from the heart, each other, regenerated not from a corruptible but an incorruptible seed, through the living and everlasting word of God." (1PT 1,22).

From the Hermitage, 15 August 2026

.

.

 

.

Visit the pages of our book shop WHO and support our editions by purchasing and distributing our books.

.

______________________

Dear Readers,
this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:

Or if you prefer you can use our
Bank account in the name of:
Editions The island of Patmos

n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican
Iban code:
IT74R0503403259000000301118
For international bank transfers:
Codice SWIFT:
BAPPIT21D21

If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff, the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message:
isoladipatmos@gmail.com

We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.

The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

.

.

.

.

.

FRANCESCO GUCCINI IS DEAD BUT GOD NO

Using "God is dead" as a premise and "God rises again in what we want" as a solution simultaneously betrays two thoughts that both deserve greater respect: traditional Friedrich Nietzsche, reducing his tragic diagnosis to a lyrical pretext; and betrays the Christian theology of the Resurrection, reducing it to a collective inspiration of good intentions.

- Church news -

.

.

PDF print format article

 

.

Given that the topic could lend itself to easy misunderstandings and sterile controversies, it is appropriate to clarify things immediately: the target of these lines is not Francesco Guccini, passed away today in Pavana, fraction of Sambuca Pistoiese.

One can not appreciate the thought of this singer-songwriter — and who writes, in truth, he never shared it - even though he unreservedly recognized his talent and the place he deserves in the history of Italian songwriting. It's not him, today, the problem, but an article appeared on Future, newspaper of the Italian Episcopal Conference, the signature of Umberto Folena (see article who), who in commemorating the musician writes a sentence that would deserve much more caution from those who publish in the newspaper of the Bishops of Italy. Quoting the famous song God is dead (cf.. text who), this colleague observes that in the text in question «God is no longer at the center of man's thoughts […] but God rises again: “In what we believe, in what we want, in the world we will make”». And he adds, of his own, that it is «a hope that is neither vague nor vain, but supported by a faith". Statement, this, which is not a neutral paraphrase at all: it is an approval.

Like this, directly from the columns of Future, we ignore that the Resurrection is not a human project. Let's try to be surgical, because the material requires it: the Resurrection of Christ, in the Catholic faith, it is not an event that depends on our belief, by our will, or from the world we will build. It's exactly the opposite: it is a historical-salvific fact that precedes faith and establishes it, not that it depends on it. Christ was resurrected on the third day, really and physically, regardless of who believed it and who didn't. Incredulous and terrified, the apostles themselves had to surrender to the evidence of an empty tomb and a living Lord (cf.. LC 24,36-43), not the other way around.

«The formula cited by Umberto Folena — «in what we believe, in what we want, in the world we will make" — overturns this logic: makes the Resurrection a projection of the human will, an immanent project, something that happens within history and at the hands of man. It is theology reversed: not God who saves man, but the man who, believing and wanting intensely enough, “rises up” God within his own collective project. In other words: if the Resurrection really depended on what we believe, we want or build, At that time “It gave” it would merely become the name we give to our best collective intentions, that is, something that exists as long as we continue to want it and which would disappear if we stopped believing in it or committing ourselves. It is the exact opposite of the Christian faith, for which Christ was truly resurrected, Once for all, regardless of who knew it, believed it or wanted it, as demonstrated precisely by the initial disbelief of the apostles in the face of the fait accompli (cf.. LC 24,11). And all this, which from a theological point of view is an authentic aberration of the entire mystery of salvation, it certainly cannot be called "a hope supported by a faith", because without a line of distinction, without a single reference to the Creed, it is an operation that any newspaper could also afford, the official organ of the Bishops, absolutely not.

There is more and it concerns the other side of the coin: the death of God, not his resurrection. When that genius Friedrich Nietzsche wrote «God is dead» (God is dead), he was not composing a consolatory song about the ultimate destiny of the sacred, but I was diagnosing, with ruthless clarity, the collapse of the moral foundations of the modern West. His was a tragic announcement, not a springboard for an optimistic humanism. He knew well that the man who killed God has no idea how to bear the weight of that act:

"God is dead! God remains dead! And we killed him! How will we console ourselves, the killers of all killers? […] It's not too big, for us, the greatness of this action? We must not become gods ourselves, to at least appear worthy of it?» (F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, aphorism 125).

A man forced to become god just to support the void left by God: nothing but cheap consolation like the They're just songs, as another very talented singer-songwriter sings, Edoardo Bennato.

Use “God is dead” as a premise and "God rises again in what we want" as a solution simultaneously betrays two thoughts that both deserve greater respect: traditional Friedrich Nietzsche, reducing his tragic diagnosis to a lyrical pretext; and betrays the Christian theology of the Resurrection, reducing it to a collective inspiration of good intentions, careless about it, as the Apostle Paul teaches, our faith can be born or it can die:

"But if Christ has not been raised, therefore our preaching is in vain and your faith is also in vain" (1Color 15,14).

It is therefore not up for debate whether Francesco Guccini had faith, he didn't have it, or cultivated - as Umberto Folena writes in his conclusion - "an ever cultivated hope". It's his business, now entrust yourself to the judgment of God, the true one. The question that remains and which concerns not Guccini but whoever commemorated him in this way is another: can a newspaper that presents itself as the voice of the Italian Bishops publish, without a single word of doctrinal distinction, an equivalence between the Resurrection of Christ and the collective good will of man? Such an equivalence is not theologically neutral: expresses a clearly heterodox thought of modernist origin condemned by Saint Pius Feeding of Dominic's Sheep (1907), that is, the reduction of dogmatic truth, objective and revealed, a projection of the immanent religious feeling of the believing subject. And if this happens without anyone, in the editorial office of the Bishops' newspaper notice this, where we should look for a healthy ecclesiology today, maybe on the Manifesto, maybe up Micromega? Undoubtedly, the third page of Manifesto as well as the culture articles of Micromega are and remain of a highly superior level to those of Future.

Francesco Guccini is dead. Dio no.

From the island of Patmos, 7 August 2026

.

.

Father Ariel's latest books

book store WHO

.

.

______________________

Dear Readers, this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below:

Or if you prefer you can use our Bank account in the name of:

Editions The island of Patmos

n Agency. 59 From Rome – Vatican

Iban code: IT74R0503403259000000301118

For international bank transfers:

Codice SWIFT: BAPPIT21D21

If you make a bank transfer, send an email to the editorial staff,

the bank does not provide your email and we will not be able to send you a thank you message: isoladipatmos@gmail.com

We thank you for the support you wish to offer to our apostolic service.

The Fathers of the Island of Patmos