Your Ash is Mine

Ever since the Saviour failed to draw any precise distinction between the flesh and the spirit, the Catholic church has been doing its best to clear matters up with the faithful, who are self-evidently too stupid to work out the difference on their own. Having graciously permitted cremation since 1963, the Vatican has now decided that its congregation might require a bit of guidance on how to dispose of the results. Dead meat being more sacred than organic ashes, burial and rot are still the preferred option; and some people are taking undue advantage of the Church's liberalism by doing unauthorised things with the remains of their loved ones. Accordingly, the prefect of the Inquisition has proclaimed that practices such as scattering, keeping at home or conversion into memorial objects are all forbidden, since they lead to "pantheistic, naturalistic or nihilistic misunderstanding" and all manner of heretical naughtiness. Instead, ashes should be kept, doubtless at no more than reasonable expense, in a place that has been properly mumbled over and thus rendered holy, in virtuous contradistinction to the hideous blasphemy of Matthew 18 xx, which implies that the mumbling might sometimes be unnecessary.