Stop family from giving a religious funeral

Grab All Association

When I die I want my remains to be donated to the Royal College of Surgeons to be used by them and then disposed of.

I don't want a funeral, head stone whatever and I know when I die my family will want to do all this. I'm an atheist and they're all bible thumping conservative Catholics.

Is there anyway to stop this happening? I don't want a mass I don't want prayers or flowers and I know it sounds pretty selfish but my body/organs are more use to society than rotting in a box 6ft under.

magicbastarder

make a will and put it in your will.
do you have anything worthwhile to give away in your will? incentivise, if so.

TwoShedsJackson

Make your wishes known to them all, and put it in writing/in your will. Of course this won't stop them if they are really determined, and you'll be dead so you won't know, but if they can't respect you that much, what else can you do...

lazygal

A will often isn't read until long after you're dead. So I wouldn't leave that as your direction after death and it's easy to ignore such wishes anyway. All you can do is make sure you're not eligible for a Catholic sacrament like a funeral by getting yourself excommunicated.

Spanish Eyes

The medical sciences places don't always take your corpse though. Depends on whether they need it or not.

That would annoy me!

You need to confide in a friend (a lot younger than you!) who hopefully will survive you and observe your wishes.

Put a letter of wishes with your will with a solicitor. I have done that already.

Make sure that the executors of your will are likeminded and you trust them to understand and observe your wishes. Tell them beforehand what you want, and put it in writing to them aswell. That way, they can show family members who would want the whole shebang, that this is actually what you wanted.

sheesh

just tell them this is what you want to be done. Don't bother with the parents just tell a sibling or 2 and a couple of cousins if they are around.

Chris___

Chris___ wrote: »

When I die I want my remains to be donated to the Royal College of Surgeons to be used by them and then disposed of.

I don't want a funeral, head stone whatever and I know when I die my family will want to do all this. I'm an atheist and they're all bible thumping conservative Catholics.

Is there anyway to stop this happening? I don't want a mass I don't want prayers or flowers and I know it sounds pretty selfish but my body/organs are more use to society than rotting in a box 6ft under.

Contact the college. They have forms to cover this. You sign it, return one copy to them, one to your doctor and keep the other. That's the way it was 20 odd years ago, when a relative did it. You'll find more info here. https://medicine.tcd.ie/anatomy/donations/

lazybones32

Is it mom and dad who will want the religious ceremonies to accompany your body after you expire? In all likelihood, you will bury them and not them burying you...don't worry about your funeral but maybe concentrate on living for the time being?

I've told my family members they can do whatever they please with what remains of my body when I'm finished with it or furnish me with whatever ceremony they choose to ease their grief

sillysmiles

Surely a funeral is more about the people left behind and while you can talk to your family/next of kin as to your wishes surely once you are dead, you are dead, and what ever eases the pain of those left behind is the most important thing not stomping your foot and making it about the disposal of decaying tissue?

Ted_YNWA

lazygal wrote: »

A will often isn't read until long after you're dead. So I wouldn't leave that as your direction after death and it's easy to ignore such wishes anyway. All you can do is make sure you're not eligible for a Catholic sacrament like a funeral by getting yourself excommunicated.

Just on this, how will the priest know that you have been excommunicated 20+ years previously?


They hardly check a register beforehand, if the family are pushing for funeral with all the trimmings.

Look for Ted_YNWA or Lazygal & see if they are on the list.

Peregrinus

Couple of thoughts:

1. As others have said, both legally and practically final decisions about disposal of your remains will be taken by your next-of-kin, not by you. Ultimately there is nothing you (or anyone else) can do to compel them to make the decisions that you would want. This is their decision, not yours.

2. Leaving your body to the RCSI or similar defers the decision about final disposal for about three years, but does not make it go away. When the medics are finished with you, a decision about respectful disposal is made in consultation with your next-of-kin. And if they’re not minded to do what you would have wanted within a couple of weeks of your death, they’ll hardly do it three years later.

3. In any event, RCSI (and, I think, all the medical schools) organise an annual (or at least periodic) service of thanksgiving and memorial in honour of those who have donated their remains. So if your objective is not to be the subject of any kind of religious liturgy at all, donating your remains may be counter-productive.

4. You can (and should) put your funeral wishes in your will but, as already pointed out in this thread, in all likelihood your will won’t be read until after you have been burned, buried or wrapped in black plastic and left at a bus-stop, as the case may be. So putting it in your will is not an effective way of communicating your wishes in this regard. You need to talk to your family. Talking to your friends is not enough; they will not be your next-of-kin.

5. I think the way forward here is not to think about what you don’t want, but to think about what you do. Accept that your family and friends do care about you, and will grieve when you die. (If this is not so you have bigger things to worry about than funeral arrangements!) They will likely need, and will certainly want, some kind of ritual to help them do that. Think about what kind of ritual you would like for yourself, and talk to them about it. If you simply present your wishes as angry negativity, they are more likely to be disregarded than if you ask for something positive, that would appeal to you and also meet their need to remember and honour you and to grieve at your loss.

6. If you really want to assert your wishes aggressively, one amusing possibility is to write a will which leaves cash or assets to your next-of-kin, but only on condition that they honour your funeral wishes. Obviously, this only works if you have cash or assets to leave, and if your next-of-kin are not also your dependents, so that you are comfortable to leave them with nothing, or with less than you might. And, equally obviously, you need to tell them while you’re still alive that you have written your will in this way. But this would, of course, piss them off - they’ll resent the implication that they will only honour your wishes if paid to do so - and in fact they might be so pissed off that, just to spite you, they will forego their inheritance and, instead of scattering your ashes at the birthplace of Richard Dawkins as you instructed, have you creosoted and exhibited in a shrine for popular devotion and the occasional miracle. So this is a risky strategy.

magicbastarder

Peregrinus wrote: »

3. In any event, RCSI (and, I think, all the medical schools) organise an annual (or at least periodic) service of thanksgiving and memorial in honour of those who have donated their remains. So if your objective is not to be the subject of any kind of religious liturgy at all, donating your remains may be counter-productive.

if i recall correctly, michael nugent has been making some decent progress on this issue, certainly in terms of the treatment of the grave sites.

jon1981

This is ridiculous, you'll be dead! You will cease to exist. Why do you care?

Let those left behind grieve and celebrate your life.

Quite a selfish act in my view.

kylith

jon1981 wrote: »

This is ridiculous, you'll be dead! You will cease to exist. Why do you care?

Let those left behind grieve and celebrate your life.

Quite a selfish act in my view.

My father is religious and would want a religious funeral. Would it be ok for me not to do this on the grounds that he'd be dead? Is it selfish for him to want his atheist children to provide him with a religious funeral?

I would hope that when I go the final act that my family perform for me wouldn't be pissing all over my beliefs (or lack thereof). Sure, I'll be dead, but aren't you supposed to respect the wishes of the deceased?

SameDiff

Chris___ wrote: »

I know it sounds pretty selfish

You got one thing right at least.

baldbear

You"ll be dead why not just let Whatever makes your family grieve better.

Frank Lee Midere

Presumably unless the OP has some terminal issue right now ( and he didn't say if he did) this will not be an issue when he is 80+. His parents and older relatives will be gone. His siblings might be gone. His friends won't care. And might be gone.

Kintarō Hattori

SameDiff wrote: »

You got one thing right at least.

How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion? A persons own beliefs shouldn't override those of the deceased who've asked for their remains to be treated in a particular way. The decent thing is to always try, where possible, to respect the wishes of the person who has passed on.

Pherekydes

jon1981 wrote: »

This is ridiculous, you'll be dead! You will cease to exist. Why do you care?

Let those left behind grieve and celebrate your life.

Quite a selfish act in my view.

Would it be selfish to make a will dividing up one's estate? Or maybe just let the family fight over the spoils like animals? It happens.

If we respect a person's wishes in regard to their estate, why not their remains too?

Mark Hamill

jon1981 wrote: »

This is ridiculous, you'll be dead! You will cease to exist. Why do you care?

Let those left behind grieve and celebrate your life.

Quite a selfish act in my view.

Surely what would be selfish would be for those you left behind to ignore something you felt very strongly about while alive while working out your funeral arrangements. I also fail to see how the living could be said to be truly celebrating the deceased life while disrespecting the deceased wishes.

Hotblack Desiato

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Surely what would be selfish would be for those you left behind to ignore something you felt very strongly about while alive while working out your funeral arrangements. I also fail to see how the living could be said to be truly celebrating the deceased life while disrespecting the deceased wishes.

Exactly, if I were in charge of the funeral of a religious relative it would be wrong of me to impose my personal preferences on them.

A funeral or similar service should above all be respectful of the deceased and their way of life and their expressed wishes (if any) as to their treatment after death. Its purpose is to remember and offer respect to the life that ended, not soothe the living, although if it does that's a bonus.

Ireland is a society which holds that belief is deserving of respect but non-belief is not.

Hotblack Desiato

For those of us who grew up in the Cold War days, this type of funeral was always a possibility:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGMdnod8VPI

shruikan2553

jon1981 wrote: »

This is ridiculous, you'll be dead! You will cease to exist. Why do you care?

Let those left behind grieve and celebrate your life.

Quite a selfish act in my view.

Dealing with the remains of someone in the manner they wished for tends to be the norm.

jank

Make a will with clear explicit instructions of what can and cannot take place, give a copy to a lawyer/solicitor where it should then be legally binding.

sillysmiles

Even if you give your body to the RCSI will they not eventually have to dispose of it?

Have you spoken to your family about that? A ceremony/mark of respect to the life of the deceased doesn't have to be religious, but eventually something will have to happen to your body be it cremation or burial.

I get that you don't want a religious burial, but your body isn't going to be chuck out with last weeks newspaper, so how about having a discussion about what you do want?

lazygal

jank wrote: »

Make a will with clear explicit instructions of what can and cannot take place, give a copy to a lawyer/solicitor where it should then be legally binding.

It is a no brainer to challenge a will, and it is done all the time especially in terms of the disposal of assets. Not to mention the fact that in most cases a will is read after the funeral takes place. All anyone can really do is make your wishes plain when you are alive, put them in writing for your next of kin and hope they'll respect your wishes.
Remember if you are not married your next of kin are your parents, and after their death, your siblings and their offspring, rather than a partner. Next of kin make the decisions.

jank

Why not then enter into a written and legally binding contract with the RCSI if possible?

magicbastarder

is there such a thing?
i would suspect that if the RCSI got the slightest whiff that the family were dead against it, they're respect the family's wishes.

lazygal

magicbastarder wrote: »

is there such a thing?
i would suspect that if the RCSI got the slightest whiff that the family were dead against it, they're respect the family's wishes.

Families can veto the wishes of the deceased to donate organs so vetoing a funeral would be very tricky.

sillysmiles

lazygal wrote: »

Families can veto the wishes of the deceased to donate organs so vetoing a funeral would be very tricky.

This
Similar to wishing to be an organ donor - you can carry the card and all the rest of it, but if your family/next-of-kin don't want you to be a donor they have the final say.

Brian Shanahan

SameDiff wrote: »

You got one thing right at least.

How is it selfish?

CptMackey

Pick a funeral director and put your wishes in writing with them. Get a copy and give it to your solicitor.

Eeden

jon1981 wrote: »

This is ridiculous, you'll be dead! You will cease to exist. Why do you care?

Let those left behind grieve and celebrate your life.

Quite a selfish act in my view.

What about if you want to leave your body for research, not because you want to make a statement about your religion/lack of religion or deny your loved ones their preferred way of mourning, but because you actually believe that this would be a really good use of your corpse, i.e. furthering medical understanding of human health?

If you want to take this to its conclusion, you could even be said to be helping your left-behind loved ones to possibly live a longer, happier life.

If you make your family aware that this is why you want to do it, then it really can't be called selfish.

nozzferrahhtoo

Chris___ wrote: »

When I die I want my remains to be donated to the Royal College of Surgeons to be used by them and then disposed of.

I don't want a funeral, head stone whatever and I know when I die my family will want to do all this. I'm an atheist and they're all bible thumping conservative Catholics.

Is there anyway to stop this happening? I don't want a mass I don't want prayers or flowers and I know it sounds pretty selfish but my body/organs are more use to society than rotting in a box 6ft under.

If there is anyway to look after your own remains, there is only one way to be sure of it.

Make sure you leave friends behind who will do it just right

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxCHybM6Ek

endacl

lazygal wrote: »

A will often isn't read until long after you're dead. So I wouldn't leave that as your direction after death and it's easy to ignore such wishes anyway. All you can do is make sure you're not eligible for a Catholic sacrament like a funeral by getting yourself excommunicated.

Rather a simple process, as it happens. Simply drop the phrase "Jesus' foreskin" into conversation, and you're automatically out.

Strange, but true.

branie2

there is a two-part documentary on donating your body to science starting this Thursday on RTE 1

cooker3

sillysmiles wrote: »

Surely a funeral is more about the people left behind and while you can talk to your family/next of kin as to your wishes surely once you are dead, you are dead, and what ever eases the pain of those left behind is the most important thing not stomping your foot and making it about the disposal of decaying tissue?

I look upon it as the opposite. My funeral, my rules. I see funerals/end of life services as all about the person who passed, their personality and wishes. If you respected them as a person when alive you should be able to deal with whatever wishes they had.

In the same respect if someone I know who dies is a hardcore christian, muslim or whatever I have no issue attending their service or respecting those wishes.

Cantremember

The emerging value of this thread is that it may be revealing the need to copper fasten legally the right to dictate ones funeral rites. (For the benefit of the law students present save yourselves some typing, this is about change, not interpretation...got it? And yes we can all see difficulties but that's part of anything so don't be frightened. )

Fear123

when I die, I want people to bury me in a grave. The grave should not exist any graveyard associated with religion. It should be a unique location. My remains will fertile the soil and a tree of knowledge will grow. Its shadow protect people against they rays of Sun. People will rest in its shadows. It will bring oxygen to the people of land of dust. But there is problemito, beware of the old serpent in that tree.

Peregrinus

Cantremember wrote: »

The emerging value of this thread is that it may be revealing the need to copper fasten legally the right to dictate ones funeral rites. (For the benefit of the law students present save yourselves some typing, this is about change, not interpretation...got it? And yes we can all see difficulties but that's part of anything so don't be frightened. )

Ah, but who would enforce this on your behalf after your death?

BarryD

OP and others might consider this place if you're looking for a site to locate your remains: http://www.greengraveyard.com/index.php/woodbrook

Edited to add: discussion re donating bodies on Sean O'Rourke RTE1 this morning, promo for some sort of TV documentary coming up this week.

Cantremember

Peregrinus wrote: »

Ah, but who would enforce this on your behalf after your death?

Ah, but that could be established. Ah.

Turtwig

I'll move this stuff to a new thread later.

SameDiff

The whole point of the OP's post is so juvenile. It is to 'stick one in the eye' of his "bible thumping catholic conservative" family, like some protest against catholicism.....when he's dead.

Is is quite pathetic. I hope he is in his early teens for his sake.

I am not a catholic myself, but so what.

This whole forum is laughable, a group of people congratulating and back-slapping each other on what they DON'T believe in.

Peregrinus

SameDiff wrote: »

The whole point of the OP's post is so juvenile. It is to 'stick one in the eye' of his "bible thumping catholic conservative" family, like some protest against catholicism.....when he's dead.

Seems a bit harsh.

He cares about how he is remembered and mourned when he dies. He's hardly alone in caring about that.

You might argue that it's irrational for an atheist materialist to care about this - how can the form of his funeral possibly affect him when he doesn't even exist? And perhaps on one view it is irrational. But it's also extremely human. Atheists are allowed a bit of human sentiment and human vanity as much as the next bloke.

SameDiff wrote: »

This whole forum is laughable, a group of people congratulating and back-slapping each other on what they DON'T believe in.

If you find the forum so laughable, I wonder why you take the time to post to it? It seems to me that the nature, varieties and implications of non-religious views of the world and our place in it are as much worth discussion as religious views are.

Cantremember

Peregrinus wrote: »

Seems a bit harsh.

He cares about how he is remembered and mourned when he dies. He's hardly alone in caring about that.

You might argue that it's irrational for an atheist materialist to care about this - how can the form of his funeral possibly affect him when he doesn't even exist? And perhaps on one view it is irrational. But it's also extremely human. Atheists are allowed a bit of human sentiment and human vanity as much as the next bloke.


If you find the forum so laughable, I wonder why you take the time to post to it? It seems to me that the nature, varieties and implications of non-religious views of the world and our place in it are as much worth discussion as religious views are.

Starting in reverse order:
Extraordinary to see a supernaturalist claim that "atheists are allowed". Very revealing. Of course how you are remembered won't affect you either once you're dead because you won't know. The point is that the arrogance of a religion that can reclaim someone's funeral and claim to have some magical effect of interceding with a god through its words when the dead person regarded that stuff as nonsense, that arrogance is mind boggling. It's not confined to the RCC btw. It's not irrational to wish that your human body be disposed of as you wish: it simply extends the oppostion to supernaturalists to the disposal of your remains.

Cantremember

SameDiff wrote: »

The whole point of the OP's post is so juvenile. It is to 'stick one in the eye' of his "bible thumping catholic conservative" family, like some protest against catholicism.....when he's dead.

Is is quite pathetic. I hope he is in his early teens for his sake.

I am not a catholic myself, but so what.

This whole forum is laughable, a group of people congratulating and back-slapping each other on what they DON'T believe in.

To help you along:

Chris___ wrote: »

When I die I want my remains to be donated to the Royal College of Surgeons to be used by them and then disposed of.

I don't want a funeral, head stone whatever and I know when I die my family will want to do all this. I'm an atheist and they're all bible thumping conservative Catholics.

Is there anyway to stop this happening? I don't want a mass I don't want prayers or flowers and I know it sounds pretty selfish but my body/organs are more use to society than rotting in a box 6ft under.

You dismiss this part of his OP. You said "it is quite pathetic" about his OP. You hardly meant this too?

To understand the backlash against the RCC in Ireland you have to understand the way it claimed to govern every aspect of people's lives. The older generation who have stepped out from its beliefs find it extraordinary that they ever suffered it and want, even in death, to assert their independence of it.

robindch

SameDiff wrote: »

This whole forum is laughable [...]

Instead of writing something laughable, why not contribute something worth reading?

SameDiff

robindch wrote: »

Instead of writing something laughable, why not contribute something worth reading?

You are a mod of atheists and skeptics. What are you here to discuss? You have the absence of an opinion, you believe in nothing.

What is your motive here? To shout down what others believe in? What difference does it make to you? Why aren't you over in the paranormal forum slagging them off too? Is it just the religious you enjoy harassing?

Pherekydes

SameDiff wrote: »

You are a mod of atheists and skeptics. What are you here to discuss? You have the absence of an opinion, you believe in nothing.

What is your motive here? To shout down what others believe in? What difference does it make to you? Why aren't you over in the paranormal forum slagging them off too? Is it just the religious you enjoy harassing?

There is a thread set up specifically to give feedback on the forum. It's called A&A feedback.

Having said that, this is a forum for atheists and agnostics. We don't harass anyone about their beliefs. We discuss topics that we find interesting or important.

Also, to describe someone as believing in nothing is quite incorrect, but to then further conflate that with them having no opinion is just provocatively offensive.

For the record, we tend to believe in facts and testable hypotheses and evidence.

And if you stick around you'll find we have opinions on everything!

Turtwig

SameDiff wrote: »

You are a mod of atheists and skeptics. What are you here to discuss? You have the absence of an opinion, you believe in nothing.

What is your motive here? To shout down what others believe in? What difference does it make to you? Why aren't you over in the paranormal forum slagging them off too? Is it just the religious you enjoy harassing?

Mod:
Hi,

Here's a slight suggestion, if you want your time on this forum, nay, this website, to be a long and productive one don't tell others what their opinions are. Listen and communicate with them.

This isn't your personal soapbox. One more post like this and you'll be taking a holiday.