Say a prayer for the good people of Abergele this morning as the top story in the region’s paper causes them to splutter over their cornflakes. Causing the concern is the news that north Wales cemeteries are ‘running out of space to bury the dead’. According to the Daily Post the town’s churchyards are ‘virtually full’ – though if we were allowed to bury people in cyberspace the issue probably wouldn’t arise.

Dig a little deeper (no pun intended there – honestly) into the story and what you find is that the Church in Wales graveyards are the ones filling up. A serious issue, no doubt, but there’s no real benefit in being buried in an official church cemetery compared to a non-church one. Consecrated ground it may be but being buried in it gives you no guarantees that you’ll find yourself in heaven.

Of course, there was a time when the church did suggest that there was merit in being interned in official churchyards. Back in the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries – when the church was being established in communities up and down Britain – some believers were still burying their dead on the sites of the old pagan burial grounds. They were using newer methods of burial brought over by the Romans (the body interned lengthwise in a stone or wooden cist facing the east) but the sites were mainly attached to the older ancestral burial mounds.

The church began to insist on believers using the churchyards for burial when increased status began to be attached to a church which had important people buried in their grounds. Pressure was then applied upon people to ensure that the older, indigenous sites were abandoned. One example of such pressure is the story circulating at the time about the angels returning to heaven sad because they had failed to find the graves of Christians because they were mixed with the pagans. Great touch, that – you know you’re in trouble when the angels are against you.

Returning to the story – things are so bad in Rhyl that they’ve introduced a ‘residency rule’, which presumably means that you have to have lived there before you can die there. Oh the irony!

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