Cemeteries and even some mosques have refused to take his body. His city, Cambridge, has urged family members to bury him elsewhere. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez and local talk radio host Dan Rae want him dumped in the ocean, like Osama bin Laden. Clergy have largely kept mum.
“The only signs of people who are showing some sort of moral conscience are those few who stand with a card near the funeral home saying (burial) is a corporal work of mercy,” said James Keenan, a moral theologian at Boston College. “To say, ”˜we won’t bury him’ makes us barbaric. It takes away mercy, the trademark of Christians. ”¦ I’m talking about this because somebody should.”
I agree, kind of. I say bury him. But in unconsecrated ground separated from the rest of the cemetery. The way suicides and excommunicates were.
The article ignores that there is a real safety issue with burying Tsarnaev’s burial, even with an unmarked grave. Wherever his body is laid risks property damage and vandalism.
Ideally, the media should have given his burial no attention. That way they could have buried him in an unmarked grave where no one could find him.
And the “somebody but not me should do something about this” attitude espoused by the article is not helpful. If those pastors and priests want him buried on local soil then why don’t they do it?
I have already spoken out about the lack of Christian response to this man’s body. But I have to question the other faith involved, Islam, the “religion of peace.” Where are their loving responses to the family, the body, the death?
An Update: It appears that he has in fact been buried and that it was done in secret. Good. Now moving on…