The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-07-11
PAGANISM TOWARDS THE DEAD.

When the New York World newspaper few
years ago, advocated the burning of the bodies of
the dead, we suspected Bohemian trick worthy of
that most unprincipled of New Yorw daiIies. A
half century ago or more there was a Lord Spen-
Ger, leader of fashion, possessed of a cynical
tempt for public opinion" One day this Lord
Spencer made bet with some of his club 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 time became the vogue
with the fast set OF fashionable society. When we
read the World article favoring incarceration or
burning of the dead we thought it was some such
foolery the New York World was playing with.
Now comes 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
conspiracy against the salutary practice of Chris
tan burial. 1t is but another attack, and in
sidious one. Christianity itself A pastoral let
ter of the late Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, Car
dinal Guibert on the dissertation of cemetery Gus
toms in the infdel city of Paris awoke the attention
of his diocesan charge to the gravity and serious
of the attack of infdelity on the dead Soon
after the timely warning of the sanity Archbishop
appeared, from the pen of the Able Gaume, that
pulverizing book entitled lie Cimtiere au XIX
Siecle"-"The Graveyard in the Nineteenth Cen
fury" The learned author went back in his re-
searches to remote times and proved that from the
time when Abraham buried by his sons Isaac
and Ishmael, in the cave at Machpeah down to the
interment of the Body of Our Blessed Lord in the
tomb of Joseph of Armathea and on through the
centuries carrying the human race to the Threshold
of the twentieth century the 'way" of disposing of
the bodies of their dead distinguished the children
of Light" from the Sons of Darkness
7 word cemetery" is of Christian origin-a
Greek word, signfying that it is place where the
dead who are to rise again take their sleep" or
rest. and also 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 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
pagansm and to the slime of paganism Those.
in France America preaching incarceration are
nstigated by diaboic spirit and they do not know
it 1t is conspiracy against "Chrstian" burial.
du dIJdck on OnflSt.
true Christian cemetery is, in itself, preach
er. Inequalities of life are settled in it: disagree
ments in life 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 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 breaches another consoline doe
trine. 1t teaches the dignity of the sacramenta
body of the "anonted dead" The dead body has
been the temple of the Holy Ghost 1t 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 so universal tradition in
the patriarcha ages that the "aw of Moses" took #
for granted and does not mention it,
1t was only in those viest and most dissolute
of pagan ages the times of the Greeks and Romans
that some not all, consented to the horrible prac
tice of burning dead human bodies. to do away with
the prmeval tradition of the dead "rising again.
1t is worthy of this day, when all vestiges of 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