‘Temples of the spirit’: A Catholic take on end-of-life plans
“Our belief is that we're temples of the Holy Spirit. The body that we have is where the Holy Spirit has lived,” said the Rev. Tony Wroblewski.
Editor’s note: Managing Editor Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten is a practicing Catholic. Project Optimist will explore advance directives in the LGBTQ+ community and the Muslim community as part of its End-of-Life project.
Catholics can donate their bodies to science and/or be cremated after death, as long as they follow guidelines established by the Catholic Church.
The Pew Research Center released the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study in February. The study shows 18% of Minnesotans identify as Catholic, compared to 22% who say they are Protestant, and 20% who are evangelical Protestant.
The Minnesota Catholic Conference has a webpage dedicated to health care directives. The organization offers advance directive paperwork aligned with church teachings that meet the state’s legal requirements.
Project Optimist spoke with the Rev. Tony Wroblewski, pastor of Our Lady of the Lakes Catholic Parish in Pequot Lakes and director of ministry to priests for the Diocese of Duluth to learn more about Catholic end-of-life practices.
Where to start
Wroblewski said Catholics should first learn the church’s teachings about the sanctity of life and end of life.
He also recommends that people avoid making sweeping decisions in their health care directives.
“Making blanket statements is not in the Catholic mindset. In other words, 'I always want this type of treatment,' or 'I never want this kind of medical treatment' – that's very difficult to do from a Catholic point of view. And the reason I say that is because people's conditions change,” Wroblewski said.
Instead, he said people should make sure their health care agents know the church’s teachings so the agents can make informed decisions aligned with Catholic beliefs.
Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten
Something to keep in mind
A common misconception is that the Catholic Church wants people to prolong their lives no matter what, Wroblewski said.
“You have to look at the circumstances of the individual, where they are in regards to their health, what other issues they have, and then you make changes,” he said.
The Minnesota Catholic Health Care Directive touches on this in the Medical Care and Treatment section. It says, “I wish to receive ordinary and proportionate care as a means of preserving my life. Proportionate means are those that offer a reasonable hope of benefit and do not entail an excessive burden to me – that is, they do not impose serious risk, excessive pain, prohibitive cost, or some other extreme burden.”
Wroblewski gave Project Optimist an example from his work as pastor. He recalled a family that sought guidance on someone who was dying of cancer. Doctors advised the person to have a feeding tube inserted so they could continue to have a “fairly normal life despite the cancer,” he said.
“Then sometime later, their body could no longer process the food, and so then the question came to me, ‘Well, can we remove the feeding tube?’ Well, in that case, there was a time where it made sense that the feeding tube should be used, because they're allowed nutrition. You shouldn't allow them simply to starve to death. Yet, there was another time where the body no longer could process it,” he said. “So it was perfectly ethical and morally acceptable to remove the feeding tube because their body no longer could process the food anymore.”
Lisa McClintick
Catholic views on the body
The body should be treated with care after death, according to church teachings.
“Our belief is that we're temples of the Holy Spirit. The body that we have is where the Holy Spirit has lived,” Wroblewski said. “Jesus Christ himself, we believe was the Son of God, and so God takes on flesh to be able to give us salvation, and we have great belief in the resurrection of the dead, so that not only does our soul live on past our death, but that at one point when the world ends in the second coming of Jesus Christ, our bodies – our resurrected bodies, I should say – will be reunited with that of our soul.
“And so, what we do is we give great care to our bodies, because they were indeed the ones that we carried with our lives. They were the temples of the spirit, and we bury or entomb them as a way to honor them until the great resurrection,” he said.
What about donating a body to science?
The Catholic Church allows people to donate their bodies to science, and Wroblewski said he knew people who made that choice.
However, it’s important for Catholics to have their body or ashes returned for burial or entombment.
Stance on cremation
The Catholic Church allows cremation, but “prefers and urges that the body of the deceased be present for the funeral rites, since the presence of the human body better expresses the values which the church affirms in those rites,” according to the Order of Christian Funerals.
People should treat cremated remains the same as they would a body, Wroblewski said.
“Nowadays, there's so many different things people do with ashes,” he said. “Sometimes they divide them up with family members, or they put them on a mantle, or maybe even put them in lockets … or even scatter them, but the Catholic Church says that the way that you honor the person who's died is to keep their ashes intact and then to bury or entomb them intact in a place that's been consecrated for that purpose.”
Noah Beardslee
Learn more
Get more information at the Minnesota Catholic Conference website.
Catholics can also contact officials at their local churches with questions about end-of-life planning, Wroblewski said.
This story was edited and fact-checked by Nora Hertel.
It is part of Project Optimist’s series on End-of-Life planning. The series is supported by a grant from the Morgan Family Foundation.