The human body is not a piece of trash. It is the essential mode of our existence – we are embodied souls. The soul has no life, self-understanding, or experiences apart from the body. A person is more than his body, but cannot live or be conceived of without his body.
Here lies a duality of thought in this modern era - spend all your energy, care, and resources to keep your body fit and beautiful, but after the body dies -- throw it away like a piece of trash! Does this really make any sense? Is this really what God wants? Why did our ancestors spend so much care with the remains of the dead loved ones? Why did they lay them so tenderly in their caskets and then into the earth? Why make monuments to preserve their names?
Now modern thought tries to couch this idea of throwing away your body in terms of giving your body, now decaying and of no use to the soul, back to 'Mother' earth by allowing it to be composted. The state of New York and five other states have joined in this radical idea. I recently read a post in The Catholic Thing, written by David G. Bonagura, Human Composting is Repulsive. It is worth reading the article. Everyone points out that this is a post Christian era, a post Christian country where we no longer embrace the principles of our forefathers and so they go out seeking a "New" thing - give back to the earth; allow your body to be composted - like last night's leftover dinner.
Here is what the journalist, David Bonagura writes:
Arguments for human composting, as recently articulated by the New York Times, are utilitarian, emotional, and philosophical. It costs less than traditional burial, and, though more expensive than cremation, composting’s version of bone-burning does far less damage to the environment. It satisfies an emotional connection to the earth that includes a desire both to give back to it and to commune with deceased loved ones now enmeshed in it. And it represents a new form of death ritual that has meaning for some, so, in the spirit of moral relativism, we ought to respect each person’s choice.
Sounds so logical, right?
Advocacy for human composting stems from a philosophical dualism that posits a radical separation between soul and body. In this view, the body is accidental, not essential, to human existence... The body can be treated as a mere instrument of one's own volition or it can be thrown away after death since its connection to the person had no real value in the first place.
Human composting erodes human dignity. I have a compost heap in my backyard. It’s where my family and I throw our organic trash: banana peels, tea bags, coffee grinds, eggshells, inedible fruit and vegetable waste, rotted pumpkins after Halloween.
Even outside of Christian circles, civilized people believe each person has an inherent dignity that no one may violate. Because of the essential union of soul and body, respecting the dignity of the person necessarily requires respect for the human body. We cannot, for example, do violence to a person physically and claim that we are somehow respecting his soul at the same time. So, we rightly oppose racism and sexism, for the attacks these prejudices wage on account of a body’s appearance attack the person. In exploiting the body, these prejudices dehumanize.
By withering the human body into formless dirt, human composting is another form of dehumanization. If bodies are worthy of respect in life, they are also worthy of it in death. This is why for millennia so many cultures of varying religious faiths have practiced burying their dead: doing so is an act of homage to the person who was once someone’s son, daughter, brother, sister, spouse, parent, friend, neighbor – and should still be honored as such even in death.
Despite appearances, composting a human body is not accelerating a natural process. Yes, bodies decay over time; but, as if nature itself were teaching a lesson on human dignity, bones do not decay. They remain together, fixed in the ground as the markers of a singular, intact being, a reminder of the person who once lived. We consider cemeteries hallowed grounds because they house something special. We allow the dead to rest in peace as a testament to the fact that these were persons who deserved respect when living, and still deserve respect in death.
Of course, from a Christian perspective, the argument for preserving the body in death is still more profound. With Christmas we celebrate God becoming man, an event that imbued human flesh with divine nobility. The human body is so blessed by God and so essential to human existence that death brings only a temporary separation of soul and body. At the end of time, God will raise our decayed bodies from the earth and transform them into spiritual bodies – just like Christ’s own – with which our souls will reunite. We state this belief each Sunday in the Nicene Creed: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” (David Bonagura)
