Hi Burt,

Yes, because hundreds of years ago people would get cremated as a way of defying the belief  in the Resurrection of the body.

It was as if they said, Let's see God resurrect this. Of course God can resurrect anything, and the idea that the same molecules that are in our body when it dies, are the same ones in the resurrected body, is something we know we don't have to believe.

Since this act of defiance is less common now and burial plots are more expensive and rare, the Church relaxed this rule.

Eric