Not burying my conscience

By Ken Burrows

Preplanning one’s post-death rituals is never fun. Religious intrusions can make it even less so, as this true account will show.

I grew up in a Catholic household with parents of sincere faith and practical foresight who early on bought cemetery plots for our family of four. In a Catholic cemetery, naturally. When I decided to arrange my interment details in advance with this cemetery, I was asked to sign some documents, one of them with a clause stipulating that memorial markers on graves are mandatory and they must display a Christian symbol.

Long ago I concluded I could not in good conscience still practice religion without personally living a lie. So I contacted the cemetery’s agent, Dustin (a pseudonym, to protect his privacy), requesting an exception to this symbol requirement, since it would constitute a false expression of who I am. I cited the Catholic church’s stated emphasis on the sacredness of a free conscience, saying, “It would be inconsistent, and disingenuous, to require this Christian symbol on a marker for someone who, conscientiously, does not adhere to the Christian faith.” 

Dustin said the requirement was non-negotiable. He would reluctantly grant my parallel request for a secular committal service, but the marker must have Christian iconography.

I replied: “I appreciate your agreeing to a secular committal service, which is in keeping with my convictions. Note, however, that such a service is brief and impermanent, whereas a grave-identifying marker has physicality and is, theoretically, everlasting. So you’re allowing me to follow my conscience on a fleeting ritual but demanding I compromise that same conscience on an enduring symbol. Will this cemetery literally exclude me from the family plot unless I falsely profess, via memorial marker symbol, belief I do not hold? What compelling purpose is served by such a policy?”

Dustin’s answer: “From Catholic Cemeteries’ perspective, the purpose of the memorial marker is to serve both the deceased and the living. None of us deserve God’s mercy, so all of us are hypocritical when we associate ourselves with a Christian symbol. However, a Christian symbol is a reminder of God’s love and forgiveness, and we pray that even a simple cross or praying hands might deepen the faith of those who come to visit.”

As a private religious enterprise that sets its own rules, the cemetery might arguably have been within its rights to deny my interment there simply on the grounds that I am irreligious. I would have considered that callous, but principled in its rigid way. Instead Dustin was pushing me to engrave a religious pretense on my marker as a way to somehow promote religious fervor in those who happened by. He would abet a lie if I were willing to go along. This seemed at odds with Catholic teaching that deems it sinful to bear false witness, but he didn’t appear troubled by that.

I was initially brought into the church in an unaware state, via infant baptism. I left it later in life for fully aware, well studied, sincerely held reasons. At my life’s end this cemetery wanted my grave marker to convey, deceitfully, that I had apparently returned to the church.

As I saw it, they were willing to bury my cremains provided they could also bury my conscience. That is something I refuse to let them do.

Ken Burrows' essay, Not burying my conscience, appeared in the November 1, 2017 edition of the Colorado Springs Independent with the quotation below.

"In matters of conscience, the majority has no place."

Mahatma Gandhi