Not too far from my house there is a large cemetary, which, in my limited experience with matters of the deceased, has an unfamiliar attribute: there are no tombstones. Not a single one, in the entire cemetary. Instead, each grave has only a metal vase for flowers. (I must assume that are stones flush with the ground that I can’t see from the road, otherwise how would one know which grave is which.)
My questions are:
(1) Is there a religious faith, which this cemetary may be aligned with, that does not allow or discourages above-ground tombstones? Or is it simply the policy of this cemetary to not allow them, presumably for aesthetic reasons?
(2) What are those buildings called, where instead of being buried in the ground, bodies are, for lack of a better description, sort of interred into a wall that ends up looking like a large filing cabinet, with a grid of rectangles facing the outside that bear inscriptions and flower holders? Are these mausoleums, or are those just when the building houses only one person?
Many cemeteries these days have specific rules allowing only flat grave markers/headstones, preumably both for maintenance (easier to mow, etc.) and for uniformity of appearance (think of old graveyards you see in Europe or America – the jumble of stones and columns and plinths looks kind of neat and gothic, but definitely not terribly tidy or uncluttered).
“Columbarium.” Cool, I’ll have to remember that. According to Dictionary.com, however, a columbarium holds urns with cremated remains. I think that chriszarate is talking about when they put the whole coffin into an above-ground niche. Dictionary.com defines a mausoleum as “A large stately tomb or a building housing such a tomb or several tombs.” Sounds like it could apply, but there might be a more specialized term.
Since I’ve been around a cemetery a lot this past week unfortunately (my father passed away), I can say that the large filing cabinet thing you described is a mausoleum. People are entombed in them. If you are buried, you are interred.
I also visited the new Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles and there is a mausoleum below the cathedral that matches the description given in the OP. Only a few slots have been taken in it so far, two of them for Cardinal Mahony’s parents.