An order of Benedictine monks are being told they can’t sell their handmade coffins because they don’t have the proper licenses.
This is a huge problem with BIG GOVERNMENT colluding with BIG BUSINESS. You get those who have made a lot of money in an industry then turn around and create some kind of licensing requirement for people to get in their industry and they lobby for government approval making it increasingly difficult for competitors to get started.
In this case, the monks are being required to pay an application fee, take classes, pass an exam and serve an apprenticeship that is a “primary form of employment” to earn a funeral director’s license.
And this has nothing to do with the fact that the caskets the monks are buulding are less expensive and better than most of the caskets being sold elsewhere?
“We need the income … from the caskets to survive,” said Abbot Justin Brown, the head of the abbey in a news conference held this week after filing a lawsuit. Mark Coudrain, the woodshop’s director, also said, “We just want to do our work without the threat of prison time.”
The monks of the 121-year-old St. Joseph Abbey, in St. Tammany Parish north of New Orleans, charge the state Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors is attempting to maintain a casket cartel, and that board members are mostly engaged in industry they regulate.
They claim the regulations are unconstitutional.
The monks planned to sell their wooden caskets for $1,500 or $2,000 to support the abbey.
They tried to get an exemption from the regulations in 2008 and 2010, but legislators rejected the requests.
So the death industry is colluding with government? Ah…death and taxes together at last.
August 13, 2010 at 4:42 pm
The brothers of Abbey St. Joseph are kind enough to put up with me for a few days most every year. They are good men who serve the communities around Covington through the Mass and through numerous charities, as well as living for all of us a life of physical work, study, and prayer according to the Rule of Saint Benedict. The liturgies and the Divine Office are open to all and well-attended, and many folks from the area volunteer in many ways becaue the Abbey is a very happy, welcoming place. The brothers, many of them quite young, are a blessing to all who know them, and in their apostolic poverty are hardly a financial menace to anyone.
— Mack Hall
August 13, 2010 at 4:44 pm
And I didn't even mention Fr. Raph, about whom a book could be written! I hope you get to meet him someday.
— Mack
August 13, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Back in '77 when selecting a casket for my father I was advised by the funeral director (my cousin) that going for the least expensive made sense. The things are normally covered with flowers at the wake (are those even done anymore?), are seen very briefly by mourners before internment and eventually rot no matter how well built.
Nor is the guy inside likely to complain.
All the more expensive ones were sold just to fill the pockets of funeral directors and ease the minds of the family that they sent a loved one off in style.
I figured he would know what he was talking about. We went for the economy box.
Five gets you ten the undertaking establishment doesn't want inexpensive competition from outsiders.
August 13, 2010 at 6:31 pm
I work in the funeral service industry and agree, cheaper is better. Even though I'm not one of those "green" people, I do feel that steel caskets and concrete vaults are a waste and do nothing but litter the earth under us. It's not like they protect the body inside from decomposition anyway.
What very few people know is that a grave plot is not owned indefinitely. Once a cemetery has been filled, the land is only protected and "reserved" for 99 years from the date the last body is buried. After that time, the land may be sold and used as seen fit by the new owners. This means all of those bodies in their coffins and vaults can be dug up and disposed of.
Personally, I feel being buried in a simple wood casket directly into the ground without any type of vault would be the most natural and logical way to be put people to rest. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This idea of preserving the body after death seems a bit ludicrous, especially when you consider for thousands and thousands of years people buried their dead with nothing more than cloth wrapped around their bodies. The way it is now, we're going to start running out of land to bury in, or older cemeteries will be emptied and refilled…
It's clear that the vault manufacturers have had their way (at least in the US). Most states have regulations that caskets must be interred within an outer burial container of some sort, the least of which is a very basic concrete box. So, the vault manufacturers get their money one way or another. It really makes me sick to think about it.
August 13, 2010 at 8:48 pm
Again, these laws that erect barriers to entry were not made to protect the people. Yet, another pathetic revelation of how the government does a disservice. And if people were not vigilant, the government will slowly sell them out in bits and pieces. It is disgraceful. I thought Pelosi was draining the swamp or sweeping corruption out. Why do I bother believing anything that comes from the mouth of Democrats. (BTW, did you hear how Waters was blaming Bush for her corruption? Mindless beyond parody)
August 13, 2010 at 11:01 pm
What???? Favoritism, collusion and corruption in New Orleans?? Now I've heard it all.
IMHO the whole concept of funeral plots/burrials is pase' and anachronistic in the US, given the shift in human demographics. How many people even live in the same area their parents live in, let alone where they are burried? We have a family tomb back in the old country, and the wife and I have really put some thought into the expense of getting our carcasses there vs simply donating to a local monastery to be interned (note: not burried) among the deceased there where we know our remains will not be moved (unlick in cemeteries, as was pointed out).
August 14, 2010 at 3:48 pm
"You get those who have made a lot of money in an industry then turn around and create some kind of licensing requirement for people to get in their industry and they lobby for government approval making it increasingly difficult for competitors to get started." I can completely relate to that quote in every way possible. There's a really interesting debate that I thought would be of interest on evolution vs. intelligent design going on at http://www.intelligentdesignfacts.com
August 15, 2010 at 1:51 am
When my husband died–bankrupt and heavily in debt–I chose to bury him in a pine box. He had told me long before he did not care what he was buried in, even if it was a pine box. However his widowed mother and brother protested with a loud out cry. They wanted something "nicer". I gave in and it was a mistake I've always regretted. His mother and brother never offered to contribute a cent, my own parents paid the expensive burial costs, God rest their souls. So, don't listen to others, do it your own way, as has been said—the coffin is made to rot.Fancy coffins DO NOT matter!
August 18, 2010 at 4:53 pm
I think I have a way around this problem. Built the coffins in such a way that they can be easily taken apart and reassembled. Then sell them a kits. I see that there are already coffin kits on the market.