IN A CEMETERY, the dead own a bit of real estate.
Each plot is, you might say, a little home. The tombstone says something solid and important exists here. The bereaved visit the dead in a realm set apart from the hectic world. One remembers at the grave the face and the living personality. One’s thoughts are drawn to eternity. Fortunately, praying for the dead is a two-way street. What one gives, one gets back.
The cemetery is an ancient institution — so ancient we take it for granted. But more and more, the dignity and reverence it accords the dead are condemned. The cemetery is guilty of elitism, environmental wastefulness, extravagance and other Marxist sins. Five states in response have already legalized a new practice for disposing of the dead: human composting.
There is a pseudo-scientific name for every new form of dehumanization and in this case it’s Natural Organic Reduction. This is the wave of the future — the environmentally correct mass grave.
Composting a body in Seattle
In NOR, the body is reduced to dirt by the application of voracious microorganisms and through rotation in straw, woodchips and dirt — as you would turn the eggshells and tea leaves in your backyard compost pile with a pitchfork. It takes about six weeks and creates enough dirt to fill a pick-up truck, about 800 pounds in all. That’s a lot more to dispose of than cremated ashes because the body needs to be aerated with soil supplements to speed decomposition. The practice has been used for years with livestock.
The promotional literature is filled with inspiring green imagery. There are no photos of staff members spading the deceased into bins or crushing the bones that won’t break down quickly.
Since most survivors of the deceased cannot pick up or dispose of that much dirt in their gardens (and who truly wants to shovel grandma into a pickup?), those processed into compost will in most cases be disposed of in nature preserves. As the World Economic Forum put it, “You will own nothing and be happy.” Not even a grave.
Kathleen Domingo, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, said the use of a body composting method originally developed for farm animals creates an “unfortunate spiritual, emotional, and psychological distancing from the deceased.” In addition, she said, the process “reduces the human body to simply a disposable commodity.” Source
It’s true that open space is precious in big cities. But with modern, earth-moving equipment, it is possible to bury many bodies economically in a small space. And human composting is not as cheap as you might think it is. (Composting is $7,000 in Seattle.) Where there’s a will to bury, people always find a way.
Here is the tragic story of a relatively young woman whose body was composted in February. Will she become a bush or a tree someday? In this new incarnation she won’t commit unforgivable sins of environmental ruin. Trees are truly sacred. Human beings are not.
Will human composting be mandatory some day? Perhaps it will — to save the earth, of course. But who will go to human soil and truly pray for the sacred dead?
