New York, USA - Just as they fought over Terri Schiavo's life, her husband and her parents did battle over her body.
Michael Schiavo, who had the legal right to make decisions about Terri's remains, arranged for her cremation on Saturday after an autopsy. Her ashes were to be placed in a cemetery in Pennsylvania.
But her parents, who are traditional Roman Catholics, wanted her buried, not cremated, recalling the church's age-old antipathy to cremation. The practice was forbidden until 1969.
Now, however, the official Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “cremation is permitted so long as it is not chosen as a denial of faith in the resurrection of the body.”
Roman Catholics today are choosing cremation at a higher rate than the national average.
In 2003, about 30% of Catholic deaths resulted in cremation, while the national average was 28.6%, says Jack Springer, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America.
Catholic cemeteries now have niches for cremated remains, and Springer addressed the National Catholic Cemetery Council last fall.
“One priest told me that 20 years ago they would have run someone like me out of the room,” he says. “Now I'm invited and they're all taking notes.”
Springer says the rate at which Americans have chosen cremation rather than burial has risen steadily. It was 12% in 1985 and is now projected to rise to 35% by 2010 and 43% by 2025, according to a study in 2003.
A survey sponsored by the association found that 47% of 1,000 people over age 40 said they probably would choose cremation for themselves. Springer also cites funeral industry studies that find most people who say they want cremation cite one of three leading reasons: It is less expensive, it is less “environmentally invasive” or it is easier to arrange.
Statistically, states with the highest number of retirees who have moved to a new area and have fewer ties to communities — and churches and cemeteries — than in their younger years have some of the highest rates of cremation: Nevada at 61%, Arizona at 57% and Florida at 49%.
“The lowest rates for cremation are in deep Southern states such as Tennessee (3%) and Alabama (4%), where people have generations of families and traditions of burial,” Springer says.