Have you thought what it means to re-use a grave?

[Siduhe]

I don't need them to make sense to anyone else. But it seems to be fine to criticise people for holding beliefs whereas it wouldn't be at all acceptable in this day and age to do the opposite. Have a debate all you want about whether green space is more important than burying dead people but it's the assumption that wanting to be buried isn't and can't ever be legitimate, whereas wanting green space is.

[Otta]

For me it's not green space specifically, but just space. Using land to put empty bodies under the ground in boxes just seems outdated.

[Jeremy]

You can respect somebody's right to hold beliefs, without actually respecting their beliefs.

We all have the right to believe whatever we want. Doesn't mean that society has an obligation to indulge them.

[Alan Medic]

I think beliefs are a lazy man's way of avoiding trying to find out the answers to the questions which bother him.

As for feet first graves, how would gravediggers manage to do that?

[civilservant]

in places like Greece, Italy, Spain, where they believe strongly in the need to preserve the physical integrity of the body after death i.e. bury not cremate, it's quite customary to lease a burial plot for a fixed period of time. When this time is up, the bones are disinterred and re-buried more compactly - hence the catacombs and the ossuaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossuary you see in many European cemeteries - so they can manage with a limited amount of burial space.

It's only in England it seems that it's your bit of green and pleasant land for ever and ever, or at least until they build a car-park on top of you

[Otta]

Totally genuine question here. Why if the body needs to be buried in order to keep it's integrity, is it then okay for that to be time limited? Surely it either needs to be buried in one piece or it doesn't? I just don't understand it.

[civilservant]

Otta Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Totally genuine question here. Why if the body

> needs to be buried in order to keep its

> integrity, is it then okay for that to be time

> limited? Surely it either needs to be buried in

> one piece or it doesn't? I just don't understand

> it.

neither do I and I'm not even trying to understand it because I suspect there's no logic to it

if it's about taking a perfectly decent bit of wooded green space and turning it into a graveyard because the pious are worried about disturbing the long-dead in existing graveyards, then that just doesn't compute - other pious folk have no qualms about digging up their dead and repackaging them to fit the available space; it's done even in the best churches e.g. Westminster Abbey

or am I missing some element of religious orthodoxy here?

[Jeremy]

Is it acceptable to compress the decomposed remains into a 1 ft cube? Or do the bits of bones and mush need to be laid out in a certain pattern?

[edhistory]

mynamehere Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> John K do some research as you're interested in

> local history

>

> http://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/06/recycled-graves

> -coming-soon-to-a-cemetery-near-you/

>

> History is a slippy thing

> Don't stop at the first thing you find. Cross

> check and watch your sources of course

Well, I was going to let this go, but...

Did you read the Spectator article?