The change in the hour is the fulcrum on which we turn towards the dark of winter, and a misty, damp morning strewn with brown leaves is a reminder that there is a time for everything: a time for living and a time for dying. Perhaps it is an opportune time for the Vatican to reiterate the conditions under which Catholics are permitted to be cremated.
I don’t know the name for the law which asserts that when you permit an exception or a concession to something hitherto forbidden, the exception becomes the norm. Communion in the hand, female altar servers (in some places at least) and cremation are all examples of where the Church relaxed a discipline to permit an exception and the exception has become the norm.
