Case 1. Mixed Cemeteries

Caius, rector of the Catholic church in a certain English town, proposed certain difficulties concerning the cemetery to Titius, his confessor. For the cemetery, common to the inhabitants of the whole town, is divided into three parts, of which one is assigned to Non conformists, another to Anglicans, and the third, duly consecrated by the Bishop, to Catholics. Now it sometimes happens that a Catholic spouse desires to be buried with a non-Catholic spouse in the non-Catholic part of the cemetery, or that a non-Catholic woman desires to be buried in the Catholic part with her Catholic spouse; often also surplus earth is taken from Catholic graves and used to fill a hollow in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery, contrary, as it seems to Caius, to the reverence due to a sacred thing. Caius therefore asked his confessor whether these things are lawful. Hence it is asked:

1. What is ecclesiastical burial, and to whom must it be denied?

2. How do a simple blessing of a grave and the consecration of a cemetery differ?

3. What is to be said of the case?

1. What is ecclesiastical burial and to whom must it be denied?

Ecclesiastical burial consists in being buried with the rites of the Church in consecrated ground. Catholic burial is to be denied to all who died out of communion with the faithful, and to those who on account of their crimes are forbidden it by the Church in the Ritual.¹

1 Manual of Moral Theology, vol. ii, 385.

2. What difference is there between simple blessing of the grave and the consecration of the cemetery?

The simple blessing of the grave is given by a priest when a Catholic is not buried in consecrated ground. It is invocativa, not consecrativa, and it does not make the grave a sacred place.²

2 Many, De Locis Sacris, n. 143.

The consecration of a cemetery is performed by a bishop, or by a priest specially delegated by a bishop, with the rite contained in the Pontifical or Ritual.

3. The case. When they ask it for good reason it would seem that Caius with the leave of the bishop may bury Catholics with their non-Catholic spouses in the unconsecrated portions of the cemetery, 3 although per se there is a grave precept that Catholics should be buried in consecrated ground. It would seem also that he may bless the grave for the Catholic party. Non-Catholics must not be buried in consecrated cemeteries set apart for Catholics exclusively by ecclesiastical and municipal law. A Catholic cemetery is polluted by the burial in it of an excommunicated person who was vitandus.

There is no reason why the refuse from the graves in the Catholic part of the cemetery should not be taken to level other parts. The cemetery is made a sacred place for the burial of Catholics by its consecration; such consecration does not make the separate portions of earth and stones in the cemetery sacred objects. There is then no ground for the scruple of Caius.

3 Concil. Baltim., III, n. 317 seqq.; Génicot, vol. ii, n. 627,