Death is tricky, but burials are fairly straightforward. Secure a cemetery plot, buy a coffin, order a headstone and hope for a sermon with a fortifying Robert Frost poem. In 2013 the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey sought to simplify this process further by selling headstones and mausoleums directly to parishioners shopping for a plot at one of its 11 cemeteries. This was convenient for mourners and provided a handy income for the church. The problem, the archdiocese would soon learn, is that this was someone else's turf. Within months of the archdiocese's first headstone sales, the Monument Builders Association of New Jersey, a trade group, sued the church, alleging foul play. The association lost its battle in court-the church was not doing anything illegal-so took its case to New Jersey's legislature. The lobbying paid off: in March Governor Chris Christie signed into law a ban on religious cemeteries operating funeral homes or selling memorials or mausoleums. The law, which takes effect next year, applies to any religious cemetery, but it was crafted to curb the Newark archdiocese's sudden burst of funerary entrepreneurialism.
展开▼
