If the article Lew links to is true, then I suppose we can add desecration of human corpses to the list of white-trash-type behavior we've come to expect from the Bush family. If Prescott Bush really was party to digging up a corpse, stealing pieces of it, and scattering those pieces in the basement of his college club for infantile rich boys, then old Prescott should forever be reviled as a truly despicable figure.
The longer I've been a religious man, the more I've become disturbed by people digging up and using human remains for amusement or personal gain of any kind. I'm reminded that the Catholic Church lists "burying the dead" as a "corporal act of mercy." Surely, digging up someone's dead body and putting it on display or studying it for no good reason constitutes a "corporal act of malice."
Putting mummies on display, digging up Indian corpses for study, and any other use of bodies that is not absolutely imperative for the sake of justice or safety, or which is not done with the prior consent of the deceased strikes me as extremely troubling. The fact that studying the bones of a hapless human being who lived 5,000 years ago will supply me with some useless piece of trivia about the fellow's civilization, is not a good enough reson to desecrate his remains. I certainly don't want to be dug up a thousand years from now just so that the anthropologists of some future age can learn the fascinating fact that I was buried in a suit with a metal zipper (or whatever).
Care and respect for the dead used to be a sign of civilization and humanity. We're all too good for that now.
