8/27/2010— The Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece on the Louisiana Funeral Board’s embarrassing crusade to put the Benedictine Monks out of the casket business. Some LA undertakers offered some choice quotes:
“They’re cutting into our profit,” says Leonard Dunn, the owner of Serenity Funeral Home, located a short drive from the abbey. He adds. “I don’t think the monks are actually making the caskets—I think it’s a marketing gimmick.”
Boyd Mothe Jr., a member of the fifth generation of his family to run Mothe Funeral Homes outside New Orleans, says Louisiana’s law should remain on the books because licensed directors have the training to sell caskets—transactions he calls “complicated.” For instance, he says, “a quarter of America is oversized. I don’t even know if the monks know how to make an oversized casket.”
Some in the industry complain that Funeral Consumers Alliance unfairly smears the industry’s reputation. We don’t need to, since funeral directors are doing such a competent job themselves.
