The traditional Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church (1917) explicitly forbids and condemns the practice of cremation: "The bodies of the faithful deceased must be buried; and their cremation is reprobated. (Canon 1203:1) If a person has in any way ordered that his body be cremated it is illicit to obey such instructions; and if such a provision occur in a contract, last testament, or in any document whatsoever, it is to be disregarded." (Canon 1203:2)

A study of anthropology shows that in all ages religious belief has been closely associated with the disposing of the dead. From the very beginning, Christians adopted earth burial for we believe in immortality. The very word cemetery chosen for burial places means in Greek a dormitory or sleeping ground. As Christ was buried and rose again, so our dead are buried until they also rise again with Christ. Through the ages the Christian Church has blessed and sanctified 'God's Acres,' to which relatives may go to kneel and pray for those they loved and whom they are to meet again in a happy eternity. Our cemetery therefore suggests a dormitory in which our departed ones but sleep until they awake to their new life in Christ. Thus, Christians never burned their dead but followed from earliest days the practice of the Semitic race and the personal example of the Divine Founder. It is recorded that in times of persecution many risked their lives to recover the bodies of martyrs for the holy rites of Christian burial. The pagans, to destroy faith in the resurrection of the body, often cast the corpses of martyred Christians into the flames, fondly believing thus to render impossible the resurrection of the body. In order to inculcate in the faithful due respect for their bodies as temples of the Holy Ghost and as instruments through which one can reach heaven, the Church commands her subjects to inter the bodies of deceased Christians. An additional reason for this command is to offset the teachings of certain enemies of religion. Some of these endeavor to spread the practice of cremation in order to destroy belief in the immortality of the soul and in the resurrection of the body at the Last Judgment. The legislation of the Church in forbidding cremation rests on strong motives; for cremation in the majority of cases today is knit up with circumstances that make of it a public profession of irreligious materialism. It was the Freemasons who first obtained official recognition of this practice from various governments. The Church has opposed from the beginning a practice which has been used chiefly by the enemies of the Christian Faith. Reasons based on the spirit of Christian charity and the plain interests of humanity have but strengthened this opposition. The Church holds it unseemly that the human body, once the living temple of God, the instrument of heavenly virtue, sanctified so often by the sacraments, should finally be subjected to a treatment that filial piety, conjugal and fraternal love, or even mere friendship seems to revolt against as inhuman. Another argument against cremation, and drawn from medico-legal sources, lies in this: That cremation destroys all signs of violence or traces of poison, and makes examination impossible, whereas a judicial autopsy is always possible after exhumation, even after some months. The prohibition of the cremation of corpses is not based on natural law. In exceptional cases (e.g., in time of war or epidemic) cremation is permitted, if a real public necessity requires it. The reasons for the anti-cremation law are: the tradition of the Old and New Testaments (Gen., iii, 19; I Cor., xv. 42), and especially the example of Christ whose body was consigned to the tomb; the association of burial throughout the history of the Church with sacred rites and the doctrine of the future life, and the contrary association of cremation both in times past and today with paganism and despair; the sacred dignity of the human body (Gen., i. 26; I Cor. iii. 16, vi. 5), and the feeling of affection for parents, relatives, friends, which is outraged when their bodies are consigned to the furnace. It is not lawful for a Catholic to cooperate with cremation or with any society that promotes the incineration of corpses; it is not lawful for a priest to give the last sacraments or funeral rites to those who ordered the cremation of their bodies. The law of the Catholic Church not only requires that the bodies of deceased Catholics be buried, but it expressly forbids their cremation. Even the bodies of immature babies, of whatever age they may be, are as a rule to be buried. These babies were living human beings, and therefore their bodies should receive fitting burial. The church law demands the interment not only of the entire body of the deceased; but it requires the burial of even notable parts which have been excised from living persons. Cremation symbolizes annihilation and the materialistic idea that all is over at death. "No wonder Catholics oppose cremation," said the Italian Freemason Ghisleri.. "They have good reason to do so. Our crematoria will shake the foundations of Catholic doctrine." The whole liturgy of the Church is adapted to earth burial. It is part of Christian worship to be buried in the Christian way, in consecrated ground. The Church reverences the dead who have been anointed in Baptism and whose bodies have been the temples of the Holy Ghost during life. A Crematorium is but an incinerator under another name. We build incinerators for refuse; and humane instincts rebel against the burning of a loved mother as so much offal. The end is not 'God's Acre,' but a container of ashes. Cremation also symbolizes annihilation, with its rapid and complete destruction of the last visible traces of those whom we knew and loved in life. Atheists and materialists were not slow to perceive this significance. They were responsible for introducing this revival of a pagan custom into Europe, in order to impress on people in a symbolic way that there is no future life and that we perish utterly like cattle. The modern movement in favor of cremation was introduced by men who professed atheism, and unbelief in immortality; and who hoped by cremation to foster in a symbolic way their doctrine that all is over at death. The idea was revived by the atheistic elements in the French Revolution, and was supported by the godless Freemasonry on the continent.