The BBC has an interesting – if not slightly ghoulish – article about a new technology for disposing of corpses.

Two methods are described. First is called alkyline hydrolysis – which basically turns the soft tissue into sludge, which is then sluiced away into the sewage system; the remaining bone and metal are sorted, and reduced to dust – ready to be returned to the family. Second is “promession” or freeze drying. This method is as described on the box – the corpse is subjected to liquid nitrogen, agitated to break it down, dried, and returned to the family.

Over the centuries humans have had many “technologies” (can we use that word in this context?) for disposing of the dead. Egyptian mummification, being one of the more famous, involves eviscerating and drying the corpse, while also preserving key organs to be interred outside the body. In the Himalayas there is (increasingly rare) sky burial – the body is broken up by a specialist and fed to vultures. Cremation – long popular in pre-christian Europe and the Mediterranian was revived (I think I have the time-line right) in the 19th century – and “industrialised” very quickly thereafter. Charnal houses are another method – the body is buried for a period, exhumed, the bones cleaned and sorted, and in some cases (I think this is still occasionally done on Athos) the biography of the individual written on their skull. In Indonesia one community wraps the dead in layers and layers of cloth and keeps them “resident” at home for up to five years before moving them to a communal storage facility. We humans have many ways of ditching the dead.

Each method reflects that community’s approach to an individual’s place in the community, the link the living community shares with its dead, death in general, as well as that community’s understanding of the nature of the body – and indeed the corpse.

So here’s my question – what do these “new technologies” for corpse disposal say about some fo these deeper questions we have about relating to the living, and the dead?

From a Christian standpoint how does liquifying granny’s corpse fit into our theology of the body? Our sense of respect for the life and identity of that individual?

The BBC article puts these new technologies in the context of being increasingly green in our approaches to corpse disposal. I’ll be the first to support that – but I wonder is something lost when it becomes a purely sterile, industrial process? Do we who remain loose out on important psychological and spiritual stepping stones when the corpse is “processed” whether by modern industrial cremation, liquifaction, or freeze drying?

And is this really any different from sky burial, and mummification? I suspect one thing is very different – there is no “ritual” linked to corpse liquifaction – thus, the process of saying goodbye seems somehow disjointed or interrupted. Likewise with modern industrial cremation.