Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

In case you missed what I was getting at in the Hopi post, over at the ever-fascinating Reditus: A Chronicle of Aesthetic Christianity, our blogger Arturo notes:

I’m so Catholic …I pray to saints even the Pope doesn’t recognize. When we went to the cemetery as children, we used to visit the graves of my brother and sister who died a few days after birth. Because they had been baptized, my mother said they were angels (not true, but a common belief in Mexico… heck, close enough). It was kind of cool having a brother and sister who were angels.

In Latin America, it is hard not to think at times that the graves are shrines and not places of mourning. Maybe it’s “Catholic ancestor worship”, but people feel that they are helped from beyond the grave by even the suffering souls in Purgatory (there are holy cards for the “Anima Sola”, and people can seach my site for an English translation of the prayer.) Down there people have all sorts of “Catholic spiritual helpers”, some good, some bad, some not so clear: Sarita Colonia, Juan Soldado, La Milagrosa, Gauchito Gil, Pedro Jaramillo, etc.

All canonization does is say that a public cult can be celebrated for a person, and indeed it should. But I am beginning to think that, scratch the surface a bit, and PRIVATE cults are just as necessary. I pray to my deceased grandmother and some of her “folk saints”. I knew one blind woman who was a pillar of the Legion of Mary in my town who I consider a saint. Saints from long ago, reigning in glory both in Heaven and in the hearts of all the faithful, serve as an example of emulation and intercession that tie us into the mystery of the Universal Church through the ages (the Virgin, St. Jude, St. Michael, St. Joseph), but those “uncanonized” saints make it all real and tangible in the here and now. Both are very much needed, and both should be propagated both from the pulpit and in the Catholic home.

A Kachina

Maidie and I went on a Kachina tour of Arizona, under the aegis of Crow Canyon and under the leadership of the archeologist Chuck Adams (above), who has worked on the Hopi mesas for thirty years. We started off in Phoenix at the Heard Museum, and then went up to Flagstaff, to the Museum of Northern Arizona, where we were joined by Michael Kabotie, a Hopi artist. Chuck and Michael gave us a tour of the museum and of the mural that Michael has painted in imitation of a kiva.

The mural reads from left to right. On the right, through the rungs of the ladder, you can see some of the problems of the modern Hopi: alcoholism, diabetes, drug usage, and suicide. Michael himself, as he explained, at one point was a down-and-out alcoholic. But his kachina spoke to him, not so much in words as in feelings and ideas. Michael is in recovery, and an extraordinary artist. Here is one of his rings:

We then visited the ruins at Homol’ovi, which Chuck Adams had helped excavate.

Below Homol’ovi were rock art panels, one of which showed a kachina.

From there we drive north through dust devils and Navajo country to reach the mesas where the Hopis live. We stayed at the Cultural Center, which has an inn attached.

One of our local guides Micah Loma’omvaya, still plants his fields using a digging stick. But he said that only 15% of the arable fields were planted. Other Hopis rely on food stamps,

The Hopis were very open about the difficulties that have adjusting to the modern world: alcoholism, poverty, and a weakening of traditions.

But what they do have are the kachinas, the spirits of nature and the spirits of the dead, who bring rain and other blessings upon the Hopi.

One of my hopes has been to see a kachina dance, and we did. The Hopis feel that that cultural heritage has been exploited, so they strictly limit photography in the villages and absolutely forbid it at the dances. The few images I had seen did not prepare me for the dance. I had seen such images as these:

We entered a plaza similar to the one in the first picture and sat in a corner. The plaza was ringed by chairs filled with Hopi women and scores of children. The rooftops were also full of adults and teenagers. There were a handful of Anglos.

We sat for a while (the kachinas dance when they are ready) and then heard a few hoots in the distance. The kachinas, similar to the one in the first image, wearing ruffs of cedar and bells around their legs, started entering the plaza, 3, 5, 15, 25, 50, 100, and they kept coming. They milled around, making turkey-like noises for a while, and then formed a double oval line that filled the plaza. Then the kachinas in the center  started drumming, and all the kachinas started singing and dancing in unison, waving their headdresses and their triangular turquoise wands, and smell of the cedar and the sound of the bells filled the plaza.

They sang and sang and sang and danced and danced and danced. After about twenty minutes the singing stopped and the kachinas started milling around, going to the heap of food in the center of the plaza and starting to give the food to the crowd: candy and doughnuts and cookies and popcorn for the children, and big baskets of groceries for the elderly grandmothers who needed food. Then they started throwing carrots and apples and oranges and cookies into the crowd (my wife was tossed a sweet star biscuit) and to the people on the rooftop. The air was filled with a rain of food. The children, who know these are the real kachinas come down from the clouds, were delighted.

The kachinas reform their double line and do a different dance and song. Their song and their dance is a prayer, for rain and a good harvest and peace and blessings for the Hopis and for all people, black, white, yellow, throughout the world, for Hopiland is the center of the world.

The Hopis seem to have a strong sense of transiency. Masau is the spirit of this earth, and the spirit of death. But is the sadness rather than the cruelty of death that the Hopis seem to feel.

We saw two carved figures, both star beings, but of different colors. They symbolize the male and female principles. We were told that seeing one shooting star was wonderful, but to see two shooting starts go through the sky together and disappear into eternity is even more wonderful. Such are husband and wife, or friend and friend, passing briefly through this word together until they enter eternity.

The Hopis believe that when they die they become kachinas, spirits that carry prayers to the Creator and bring his blessings back to the earth, especially the blessing of rain. The kachinas therefore appear as clouds. A small Hopi child overheard us talking about kachinas and said “There are many kachinas today.” We asked where, and he pointed to the sky which was filled with white puffy clouds.

The Hopis feel their losses, and say that it has been prophesied they will one day lose everything and go on their wanderings again, but it has also been prophesied the kachina dance will be the last thing they lose. May it be many, many years before that happens.

Priests who crack jokes during the Divine Liturgy are on my little list, and none of them will be missed. I know that priests have long been given the bad advice to begin the sermon with a joke to crack the ice with the congregation – but a sermon is not public speaking at a banquet, and the jokes usually fall flat. Even worse are those who make jokes throughout the liturgy.

A friend attended Palm Sunday serves; the celebrant began mass by saying ho much he enjoyed Holy Week and Paschaltide because he got to smack people in the face with water. My friend shared my reaction: Just the way to begin the week when we remember the death through torture of the Son of God and his conquest of Satan for the salvation of the Human race – a lame joke.

Some bishops share my reaction. The Sydney Morning Herald reports: 

LAUGHTER may be the best medicine, but God is no joke, according to an Anglican bishop who has chided Christian church leaders who think of themselves as stand-up comedians and resort to making jokes during sermons.

The Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, says there is nothing funny in “lame-fisted attempts” to crack jokes and be funny during services and church meetings. Humour has its place, but God and church, he says, is no laughing matter.

“I am frankly sick of ‘leaders’ ruining the atmosphere of the meeting/service and disrupting the focus on God with half-baked comic lines,” he wrote for a Sydney Anglican online ministry resource guide. “Or they detract from my reflection upon some important point made in the sermon with smart cracks or attempts to make funny comments about the preacher or the sermon.”

Another bishop feels the same way: 

Sydney’s Catholic Auxiliary Bishop, Bishop Julian Porteous, agreed with the sentiment, saying that Mass was not the venue for the priest to indulge his own personality.

“A religious ceremony, for Catholics a Mass, is a sacred event, and therefore the whole context of celebration should be one that engenders respect, appreciation of the divine and a whole sense of reverence for holy things - that is always got to be the ground in which a priest approaches his duties.

“There has been a tendency for people to feel a joke at the end of the Mass is something to leave people with a smile, but I personally don’t think it is appropriate.”

Preserving the dignity of the occasion should be uppermost in the mind of a priest. “There can be place for a comment which may be a truth or insight into the foibles of humanity, but jokes, if they are corny and self-serving, are inappropriate.”

Now if they could only get priests to stop acting like Vegas MCs.

The abortionist George Tiller was apparently killed by a pro-lifer. This has led to attacks on the pro-life movement at innately violent.

The widespread denunciations of the Vietnam War as illegal, unjust, cruel, and criminal, led students at Brandeis to plot the violent overthrow of the government.

On Sept. 23, 1970, Brandeis University woke up to another day of classes, cool fall weather and news of a murder and bank robbery at the hands of three of its students.

There were five people suspected of murder and robbery, three of whom were associated with Brandeis. According to the Sept. 29, 1970 issue of the Justice, the suspects included Robert Valeri, 21, a student at Northeastern University; William Gilday, 41, also a student at Northeastern; Kathy Power ‘71, 21, a senior at Brandeis; Susan Saxe ‘70, 20, a Brandeis graduate and admitted Brandeis graduate student; and Stanley Bond, 25, also a Brandeis student. The five were accused of murdering Boston patrolman Walter A. Schroeder during a robbery that gained the group $26,000 from a Brighton, Mass. bank. Schroeder, 42, had nine children; he died from a gunshot wound in the back.

Should the anti-war demonstrators have kept quiet, for fear of causing some people to become violent in their actions against violence?

Edward Abbey’s denunciation of the rape of the West in The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired some of his readers to become eco-terrorists, burning property to prevent development. The Unabomber was also motivated by fears of technology and its effects on freedom and the ecology. Should Al Gore tone down his rhetoric for fear of causing people on the fringe of rationality to become violent?

As a teenager Dontee Stokes was sexually abused by the Rev Maurice Blackwell. Years later, the stories of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church filled the media. Dontee obsessed over them, got a gun and confronted Blackwell, demanding an apology. Blackwell refused, and Dontee shot him. Joseph Druce had been sexually abused as a child; he had murdered a homosexual who had tried to pick him up. Druce was on the same cell block as the convicted molester the Rev. John Geoghan. Druce watched the months of television exposes of sexual abuse in Boston and heard the denunciations of the molesting priests as monsters. He overheard Geoghan planning to get out on appeal and to go to South America to molest children there. Druce murdered Geoghan so that Geoghan would never again molest. Should the Church have been allowed to cover-up its crimes forever for fear of a revelation of its iniquity inspiring private vengeance?

Bush administration officials have been denounced as torturers and war criminals. Suppose someone decides to kill one to punish a torturer?

Any denunciation of evil has the potentiality to inspire someone to decide to become judge, jury, and executioner. Therefore should evil never be denounced, for fear of inspiring vigilantism?

Father Gerald Fitzgerald in the 1950s and 1960s warned American bishops and Pope John XXIII and Paul Vi about abusers. A sample of his opinions: 

In a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop, Fitzgerald said, “These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary layization [sic].” The letter, addressed to “Most dear Cofounder,” was apparently to Archbishop Edwin V. Byrne of Santa Fe, N.M., who was considered a cofounder of the Paraclete facility at Jemez Springs and a good friend of Fitzgerald.

Later in the same letter, in language that revealed deep passion, he wrote: “It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished the island retreat — but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle Master said it were better they had not been born — this is an indirect way of saying damned, is it not?”

The response: Fitzgerald was removed as head of the order he had funded, which was then run by abusers and suspected murderers.

Father Edward Flanagan, founder of Boys Town, in 1946 returned to teh land of his birth and  warned the Irish about their reform schools. The Irish also would not listen.

But Fr. Flanagan was unhappy with what he found in Ireland. He was dismayed at the state of Ireland’s reform schools and blasted them as “a scandal, un-Christlike, and wrong.” And he said the Christian Brothers, founded by Edmund Rice, had lost its way.

Speaking to a large audience at a public lecture in Cork’s Savoy Cinema he said, “You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it.” He called Ireland’s penal institutions “a disgrace to the nation,” and later said “I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character.”

Flanagan  added

What you need over there [in Ireland] is to have someone shake you loose from your smugness and satisfaction and set an example by punishing those who are guilty of cruelty, ignorance and neglect of their duties in high places . . . I wonder what God’s judgment will be with reference to those who hold the deposit of faith and who fail in their God-given stewardship of little children.”

However, his words fell on stony ground. He wasn’t simply ignored. He was taken to pieces by the Irish establishment. The then-Minister for Justice Gerald Boland said in the Dáil that he was “not disposed to take any notice of what Monsignor Flanagan said while he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance.”

A hardened heart is deaf to the words of God; it is a stone which the Holy Spirit cannot touch – and many Catholics have this heart, and think that carrying outteh pope’s commands and obeying canon law assures their salvation as they let children be abused and tortured.

Canadians are not sentimentalists about animals. Fur is not a luxury in Canada, but a necessity for surviving the winters. Europeans are trying to punish Canadians for killing seals (although the Europeans do not express any sorrow over the fish that the seals eat).

Matt Gurney at the National Post has HAD ENOUGH!

Barbaric European food practices, Part I: The snail

The European Union is close to banning all Canadian seal products, and a grassroots campaign to boycott Canadian fish and seafood is gaining momentum. But what of Europe’s own barbaric culinary practices? In response, Full Comment will call attention to European hypocrisy and demand an immediate end to the brutal slaughter of helpless creatures. Today’s poor victim of continental cruelty: snails.

To be a snail born in the EU is a very poor fate indeed. The terrestrial land snail, found throughout Western and Central Europe, is a harmless creature. Subsisting on a diet of algae and plant life, they pose no threat to anyone, and are certainly not hunters.

Practically defenceless, they rely entirely on their hard shell for protection from predators. When confronted by a hungry animal, all they can do is pull themselves into their armour, hunker down, and cower in terror, hoping for the best. [Read more →]