Mary Adamski: Monumental musings

VIEW FROM THE PEW

Here we are at the annual holiday/holy days when we deliberately remember the dead. When we mark All Saints Day and All Souls Day, we Catholics celebrate being linked in the body of Christ with those who have gone before us. A lot of people think that’s just too grim or mysterious to contemplate — but it’s still fun to roll out the images of skeletons and zombies and demons and pretend to be scary or very, very scared at Halloween. So I’ve had bodies and bones on my mind, but the dead aren’t the scary part of the story.

It started out with a happy event, honoring musicians who lived and died in Kaupapa. Some of today’s prominent musicians performed in the online concert that is still viewable on the Ka Ohana O Kalaupapa Facebook page. The organization made up of former Hansen’s disease patients, their supporters and descendants of people who lived there during the century of government-enforced quarantine, created the show as a fundraiser. Their goal is to help fund a monument which will carry the names of the 8,000 people who lived and died in Kalaupapa.

Thanks to the meticulous record-keeping of the health department of the kingdom, territory and state of Hawaii, there is a record of the names. Thanks to the care and work of St. Damien, St. Marianne and hundreds of government workers, medical professionals, Catholic nuns and priests and others who came to help, those 8,000 people overcame being just victims of a dread disease and created a community. Their lives were a testimonial of strength, resilience, spirituality and hope, the best that humans can be. The sheer impact of that many names — the huge majority being Hawaiians — is meant to be a history lesson as well as a replacement for grave markers that have disintegrated and graves that were never marked at all.

The touching concert music faded, leaving me to ponder the whole monument thing. Here we are in a moment in history when tearing them down has become a trend, an expression of hurt and anger and revenge. What a page of history this is, harking back to the Dark Ages, vandals bent on destroying other cultures, berserkers working themselves into a fury of killing and burning. As if defacing a monument to a past event could delete the history and erase the impact of past civilizations and beliefs. This surely is not the best that humans can be.

One hopeful theme in these troubled times is that people are coming face-to-face with the worst of our history. Maybe some monuments should be used as lessons in how humankind failed and faltered, a warning sign against repeating the errors of ancestors.

When it’s a monument from ancient days, such as all the ruins of the Roman Empire, it is easier to just be a spectator, not emotionally engaged. All you Catholics who have toured the Colosseum in Rome: did it wrench your soul to think of the early Christians killed there? Or was it just a point of interest among the dozens on the tourist bus route? Scholars say more than 400,000 people died during the 400 years the amphitheater was open; the majority were gladiators, mostly slaves from captured lands, forced to perform in bloody competition for the entertainment of those civilized Romans. In the demolition spirit of our times, should we avenge those slaves and martyrs by tearing down that landmark ruin?

Closer to home and recent enough to be personal and hurtful are those statues of generals who lost their war 150 years ago being toppled and torn from the Dixie landscape in the vandal spirit of our time. Romanticizing the Confederacy was how some white southerners identified as special among all the varieties of American. Now we are finally forced to think about it, to confront what those images mean for Black Americans, a demoralizing and degrading tribute to a society that institutionalized slavery and racial prejudice, glorifying the worst humans can be. You can tell that I’m not sorry to see images of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis removed, at least from public squares.

California targets

But I do join the outrage and anguish of California Catholics about another demolition derby underway targeting images of Father Junipero Serra. The Spanish Franciscan friar was building Catholic missions in New Spain along the West Coast at the same time our founding fathers were defeating and driving out the English colonizers on the East Coast.

Serra was doing what we believe is the role of Christians, bringing the teaching of Jesus to all the world. Nowadays we are hearing from indigenous people who feel their culture was suppressed when their ancestors became converts. And some blame missionaries as agents of European explorers and conquerors who were cruel, greedy and destructive.

That angst was the theme of an Oct. 12 demonstration at the San Rafael Mission north of San Francisco on Indigenous People’s Day, formerly celebrated as Columbus Day. Protesters toppled and sprayed with graffiti a statue of the saint on the private property of the church. Among previous incidents was the July 11 arson fire that gutted the Mission San Gabriel in Los Angeles which Father Serra built 249 years ago.

Dean Hoaglin, chairman of the Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin, told a Fox News crew, “This is a continued reminder of the impact of colonization and genocide of our people.” Five women of his tribe were arrested in San Rafael; no arrests yet in the arson.

A California archeologist said that Serra specifically advocated for the rights of native peoples, at one point drafting a 33-point “bill of rights” for the native Americans living in his mission settlements. Ruben Mendoza, a professor at California State University-Monterey Bay, told the Catholic News Agency that the priest walked from California to Mexico City to present it to the Spanish viceroy. “Unlike many of us today, Serra was a man on a mission. He was absolutely determined to engage in the salvation of indigenous communities,” Mendoza said. “And while for some, that may be seen as an intrusion, for Serra in his time, that was seen as one of the most benevolent things one could do — to give one’s life over to others, and that’s what he did.” The 21 mission settlements in California, nine of which Serra built, were a communal venture between friars and native leaders, he said.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said, “This kind of behavior has no place in any civilized society.” He encouraged people to learn more about Serra.

“There is no question that the indigenous people of our continent suffered under Europeans who came here and their descendants, especially after the mission era ended and California entered the United States. But Father Serra is the wrong symbol for those who wish to address this grievance. Father Serra and his fellow Franciscans renounced all worldly pursuits to give their lives to serving the native peoples and so protected them from the abuses of their fellow Spaniards.”

The archbishop went to the San Rafael Mission on Oct. 17 where he performed an exorcism, according to the Catholic News Service. “We pray that God will purify this place of evil spirits, that he might purify the hearts of those who perpetuated this blasphemy, that he might envelop them in his love.” Many other venues aren’t counting on hearts being turned by God and have tucked their Serra images and artifacts away for now in California cities whose names reflect their mission roots, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Carmel.

An exorcism

But whoa, back up the train of thought. An exorcism? Really? You don’t hear about that much in real life, just in scary movies and the dark TV series “Evil.” What does it look like? Look it up online and you’ll find exorcisms are in vogue. Archbishop Cordileone also performed one in July at Golden Gate Park where another Serra statue was targeted.

The archbishop of Portland, Oregon, recently followed suit with an exorcism to clear out spiritual garbage at a site of riots there. It’s being done around the country at an appalling number of Catholic churches and shrines that have been targeted. The rite at San Rafael involved holy water, Gospel readings, Latin prayers, but was not quite the same format as driving a demon from a specific person, according to news accounts in several newspapers. Too late to detour down that track, food for thought in another column.

I did come away from the research on images under assault with a pang of anxiety about that beautiful, ugly cubist block of a statue of Father Damien at our State Capitol. His life in service in Kalaupapa and death from leprosy is a recent chapter of Hawaii’s history. Surely the spirit of the patients he served are a shield against any evil intent toward it, aren’t they?

Maybe you’ve read that my prayer may be wishful thinking. A New York legislator has advocated that the copy of the Damien statue in the Congress statuary hall should be removed. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez charged that the Belgian missionary priest represented white colonialism and white supremacy, according to a story in the Jesuit magazine America. She got vehement push-back from Damien’s family, descendants of his sisters and brothers, in Belgium. I haven’t heard any murmuring here. I hope it’s because of the aloha spirit we claim, welcoming and accepting each other.

Speaking of monuments and indigenous people and white colonialism, they all figure in a new memorial that’s in the planning stages by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The skulls of 12 women warriors who died in the 1795 Battle of Nuuanu will be encased in the structure to be erected at the Pali Lookout wayside park. They were among more than 700 Oahu warriors who jumped or were pushed from the 1,200-foot pinnacle by the forces of Kamehameha I in his drive to conquer all the islands. The Big Island chief succeeded and became king of the united island chain and the subject of the most famous statue in Hawaii.

British colonizers, who provided muskets and ammo for Kamehameha’s forces, collected souvenirs wherever they traveled, and occasionally some Hawaii artifacts — feather capes, wood and stone weapons and utensils — are returned. That’s true of the warrior skulls, which eventually were held by the Cambridge University Duckworth Laboratory. In response to a request years ago by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Brits returned the bones in February.

I look forward to seeing the new monument and I’m glad to hear it’s women warriors being honored. But I just hope there isn’t someone who decides to avenge the defeated Oahu forces by toppling a statue.