Sunday, November 06, 2016

Bob Wakeham's Article on Cremation Shows a Profound Lack of Understanding of the Catholic Church

Bob Wakeham recently wrote an article in the local Telegram in St. John's Newfoundland Canada. In it, he bemoans the Church's teaching on cremation. He says his dad wanted his ashes spread in the ocean and his father's brother also wanted to keep some of the ashes.

So of course, as usual, when Bob found out his actions violated Church laws, he started bashing the Church. Typical Catholic. Now, Bob says he left the church long ago, but he was afraid some of his relatives stilled cared what they church taught.

Bob is a typical modern-day Catholic. They do whatever they feel like, and when they find out they are violating a church rule, they lash out at the Church. They should listen to St. Augustine who said if you only follow the parts of the Church you agree with and reject the rest, it's not the Church you're following but yourself.

At least Bob decided to leave the Church. Others will linger on and try to "change it from within". But although he has left the Church, he cannot leave it alone. To him, and many like him, the Catholic Church is the source of all life's troubles. Everything would be so great if only the Church would get out of their way. Well, if they were truthful they'd realize it's not the Church that's in their way but their own conscience.

Instead of realizing they must change or improve, they blame the Church. It's called projection. You do something wrong. You feel guilty. You look for a target to blame.

Bob obviously learned next to nothing from his childhood exposure to Catholicism. He makes one mistake after another in his virtually unreadable opinion piece. He is so proud of himself for being such an independent thinker. He really has to get over himself big time. He's not as clever as he thinks.

There are so many errors in what he said, it's hard to know where to begin. One thing he says is:

Last week’s proclamation from the Pope — I presume this was one of those “ex cathedra” announcements, meaning the pope is infallible on “matters of faith or morals” — also ordered that Catholics not keep the ashes of loved ones in private homes.


Why would he "presume" it was ex cathedra. Obviously he has no idea what that means. He went on Wikipedia for 2 minutes, looked up infallible, it said one condition was it had to be a pronouncement that was done "ex cathedra", and instead of even looking into what ex cathedra statements were, he "presumed" the statement met that criterion (which it does not).

There isn't even any point trying to educate someone like that on what an ex cathedra statement is, or on the other types of infallibility within the Church.

It seems Bob sees cremation as some kind of individualistic, do-it-yourself ceremony to give things your own personal meaning. I'm so sick and tired of this modernist attitude. People have it for everything including baptisms, weddings, and every other sacrament. They have no desire to follow God's laws. Rather, they want to make up their own laws and just follow those. How convenient.

I've heard this so often. People getting married demanding the right to marry on a beach, in a tropical location, with their best friend officiating and then not following Church teaching on marriage after the wedding. WHY ARE YOU EVEN GOING TO A CATHOLIC CHURCH?? Same goes for baptism. They have no desire to listen to the Church. They just want to have a personal self-affirming event where they are the center of attention and make up whatever rules they want.

It's like people go and essentially create their own religion and then whine and gripe when the Catholic Church doesn't let them do whatever they want.

As his namesake suggests, Bob WAKEham needs to wake up. If you don't like the Church, don't listen to it. You're only going to do whatever you want in life anyone. No one will ever tell the infallible Mr. Wakeham what to do, he's just so above correction or guidance. Did your father express a desire to violate Church law when he asked to be cremated? If not, you should follow his desires and keep his burial within Church guidelines.

Also, you should be man enough to grow up and take personal responsibility instead of trying to blame the Church for everything.

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