The Clergyman's Hand-book of Law: The Law of Church and GraveScanlan, Charles Martin
Religion
The Clergyman's Hand-book of Law: The Law of Church and Grave
Scanlan, Charles Martin
Burial laws -- United States; Ecclesiastical law -- United States
*454.* _Association, Bishop, Stipulation, Certificate, License,
Revocable._—The Germans of Cincinnati formed an association and purchased
ten acres of land for a cemetery “for German immigrants, their families,
and relatives, of Cincinnati and its vicinity, who might be members of the
Catholic Church and in accordance with the doctrine, discipline, usage,
and ceremonies of the same.” They incorporated with fifteen trustees to be
elected annually. Before he would bless the cemetery, the bishop required
and the committee stipulated with him in writing the following: That the
rules of the Catholic Church should always be faithfully observed in this
chiefly: First, that no one should be buried in the ground who had not
been baptized or who died out of communion of the Catholic Church, to
which the bishop or in his absence the clergy of the German Catholic
Church or churches, should be the judge; second, that no poor person
should be denied a place therein because his parents were unwilling to
pay; third, that any money accrued from the ground should be expended for
pious uses and specifically for the relief of the German Catholic poor;
fourth, that the remains of persons interred in Catharine Street
burial-ground might be removed to the new ground. The bishop subsequently
closed the cemetery as a place for burial of Catholics because the
congregation had violated the stipulation: “First, by admitting those to
burial who died out of the communion of the Catholic Church; second, by
refusing to poor persons the right of burial; third, by expending the
funds of the association in other than pious uses and relief of the poor.”
The court held that the corporation had authority to determine that the
cemetery should continue to be used as such, but the conditions might be
enforced by any one interested.(800) Also the question was brought before
the court in a case where a man had fallen away from the Church, and the
court held that the certificate was a mere license giving no property
rights, and revocable; and that the question as to whether the party to be
buried therein was in communion with the Church, was one over which the
Church itself had exclusive jurisdiction.(801)
*455.* _Rules, Diocese._—One who buys the privilege of burying his dead in
a cemetery acquires no general right of property, but only a right to use
the grounds as a place of interment, and the rules governing a cemetery in
force at the time the privilege is acquired measure the extent of the use.
Where a rule of the church having charge of the cemetery forbids the
burial of non-Catholics therein, the bishop of the diocese and the local
priest, who according to the usage of the church were vested with control,
had authority and power to restrain a holder of a lot from interring the
body of his son who was not in communion with the church at the time of
his death, and who committed suicide.(802)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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