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Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Back issues
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The church closed. What happens to its graveyard?

The new owners can’t just dig up the bodies, the Massachusetts Appeals Court has ruled, but beyond that the answer is unclear.

BOSTON (CN) — A Coptic church that bought a defunct Episcopal church can’t just dig up the bodies in the church’s cemetery and move them, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled Thursday. 

At a time of dwindling church attendance when more and more churches are closing each year, the question of what to do with burial grounds is taking on increased importance. A ruling from the state with the oldest cemetery in the U.S. could prove persuasive nationally. 

Every week, another 75 to 150 religious congregations in the U.S. close their doors, according to a study by the United Church of Christ. Of those that remain, half the congregations have 65 people or fewer and two-thirds have fewer than 100, the nondenominational group Faith Communities Today has reported

The Massachusetts case involves the Church of the Holy Spirit of Wayland, an Episcopal parish founded in 1961 and shuttered in 2015. 

In 1967 the church opened a small cemetery area for parishioners who had been cremated. Eventually some 51 people were buried there. 

When the parish sold the property to a Coptic church for $1.8 million in 2016, it did so with the understanding that the cremated remains would be removed because cremation is not allowed in the Coptic faith. The families of 36 deceased people in the cemetery agreed to a disinterment, but 15 families objected and went to court. 

Undergirding the case are contracts signed by the families that state the Episcopal church could amend its regulations for the cemetery at any time but that also promise that the church would provide “perpetual care.” 

“We conclude that in executing those contracts, the parish did not reserve the unilateral right to decide whether the churchyard would continue to exist,” Justice James Milkey wrote Thursday for a three-judge panel.  

“Nothing in the language or context of the contracts suggests that this was intended," the 35-page opinion continues. "To the contrary, the fact that the regulations provided for ‘perpetual care’ at the time the contracts were executed supports the families' contention that all parties intended the churchyard to be the final resting place of those buried there.” 

If the church wanted the right to close the cemetery, Milkey observed, “it would have been a simple matter” to say so.

Although some earlier Massachusetts court decisions have allowed bodies to be disinterred, those cases were different because they involved bodies that had become a public health hazard or graveyards that had been completely abandoned for years, the court explained. This case was different because “the closing of the parish was a foreseeable voluntary act, not some exogenous development such as the opening of a sink hole.” 

Given its objection to cremation, the Coptic church argued that allowing the remains to remain would violate its right to free exercise of religion. But the court disagreed and said the issue was a “purely secular matter.” 

The Coptic church “freely took title to the property,” Milkey wrote, and in fact “the unilateral disinterment of the remains potentially might implicate the families' own free exercise of religion.” 

Issued for the Superior Court include who will have the right or obligation to maintain the graveyard once it becomes the Coptic church’s property, and what to do about two people who bought plots and still hope to be buried there when they die. 

Massachusetts is home to numerous ancient graveyards including the country’s oldest, the Old Burying Ground in Duxbury that dates from 1638 and contains the remains of Myles Standish and other Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. 

Wayland, about an hour away, was settled in 1638 and more than 100 of its citizens fought in the battles at nearby Concord and Lexington. The town was the home of the abolitionist minister Edmund Sears who wrote the Christmas carol “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” in 1849. 

Categories / Appeals, Religion

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