https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-woke-left-lets-dispense-with-christian-funerals/
There’s been a radical shift in society when it comes to funerals. The shift goes much deeper than cheaper, more economical funerals but includes an attitudinal change regarding how we choose to mourn the dead.
This process of mourning now has a decidedly secular cast.
It is now commonplace for people to be cremated instantly after death, and then to have a memorial or Celebration of Life ceremony “down the line.” This form of “mourning” generally occurs among secularists or non-religious people who have a tendency to believe that when you die, you die. There is no Heaven or Hell; there is only sublime forgetfulness and nothingness, an eternity of blackness and unawareness.
Prayers for the dead are useless among this group because they have no belief in a soul, making it much easier to dispose of the deceased as quickly as possible. This is done by scattering the ashes of the deceased around a neighborhood tree or keeping them on the mantle beside Fido, the family dog. As for the memorial service that is held weeks or months after a death, they almost always lack the pathos of a funeral service that is held immediately after a death.
These late memorials often have the feel of a Chamber of Commerce meeting, or they morph into beer/buffet bashes where the “mourners” tell jokes about the deceased while paying homage to Bacchus. Immortality, if it is mentioned at all during these non-religious gatherings, is only mentioned in the context of the deceased’s earthly life—“Her contributions to Democratic Socialism and Choice will live on forever!”—or, as in the case of the very wealthy, in the renaming of a building on a university campus.
It should be mentioned that in the Catholic world, the acceptance of cremation as an alternative to ground burial (for centuries the Catholic Church forbade cremation under pain of mortal sin) has caused a great deal of confusion among Catholics. The popular concept of cremation includes the freewheeling scattering of ashes afterwards, whether in a river, on a golf course, or in the ocean.