'neath this esteeméd earth

Today, we're going to talk about the Cadaver Synod.

The Catholic Church has gotten up to a lot of silly nonsense in its 2000-ish year history,  Sinecures, simony, and sex abuse are the most common complaints, but I think the Cadaver Synod destroys them all in the realm of "crazy Church actions that start with S."

In case you're too busy to read that article, here's how it went:  a pope died, the next pope decided the previous had been a Bad Dude, they dug up his body, put it on trial, retroactively nullified his papacy, and threw his body in the river.  (Throwing bodies in the river is, in fact, a traditional method of burial for people you hate in Rome.)

Had you been Pope Formosus (the Stiff), would it bother you to think your body would be so ill-treated after your demise?  What do you hope happens to your body when you die, anyway?  I'm not too concerned about mine; I'm pretty sure I'll have other things to think about by then.  But then, I'm not too concerned about what happens to my body right now, and last I checked, I still have a pulse.

More than the body's desecration, though, is it worthwhile to spend your time living protecting your legacy?  Should that really be your focus?  What's a legacy, anyway?  It's how you're remembered by people who once knew (or knew of) you, I suppose; but with that definition in mind, you don't need to die to have a legacy.  You'll have a legacy in every person to whom you're nothing more than a memory.  But while people seem to spend a lot of effort protecting their reputations when death is near, they're often also remarkably indifferent to the impressions they make on those they never expect to meet again.  But that's silly in itself.  Every stranger is a potential friend; every friend a potential stranger.  If there's a person in the world whose opinion of us we hope to maintain in death, then we ought to be consistent in the way we treat that person and the way we treat everybody else.

But you shouldn't listen to me.  I'm a dyed-in-the-wool solipsist; the only reason I'd say this stuff is to change the way you'll act.  With that in mind, as I get older, I'll probably just get more obnoxious; be ye warned.