Sports conflicts are fierce but still somewhat civilized. University of Notre Dame football players celebrate during the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona. (Mark J. Rebilas / Action Images via USA Today Sports and Reuters / OSV News / 2016)
View from the pew
This has been a month in which we have endured stress from many different perspectives.
It has been a time of ever-escalating warfare which brings anxiety even though it is on the other side of the globe.
We are also in a state of escalating apprehension as we count down to an election which is playing out more and more like warfare as we are constantly reminded of “battleground” locations.
Sports fans are also anxious as season finales loom and competition between conflicting teams plays out in a sort-of-civilized manner — but thankfully not deadly results.
I thought of that on a recent Sunday as 11 a.m. Mass ended and the crowd cleared, many headed to watch athletic conflicts on television or a nearby playing field.
At the same time, a small group of people gathered in the school cafeteria to recite that quiet, meditative mantra-like prayer that calms the mind and lowers the blood pressure.
Catholics observe October as the month of the rosary, because Oct. 7 was designated the liturgical feast day of Our Lady of the Rosary. Since the 1500s, when Pope Pius V proclaimed the current prayer form, people have chanted together the prayer addressed to Mary the Mother of Jesus. Not just once but five decades — 50 times — at one sitting, or kneeling.
According to church history, the prayer form evolved in the early Middle Ages when monastic devotions involved reciting or singing Old Testament psalms. But most laypeople in those days could not read. So devotions developed into reciting easily memorized prayers. Early on, it was the Lord’s Prayer.
In the 1200s, St. Dominic promoted it as a prayer to ask the Blessed Mother’s intercession in warfare underway at that time. For all I know, those Hail Mary reciters this month were doing the same thing, seeking outcomes in the plethora of modern conflicts.
Church and state
I flashed back to the serene scene of the murmured-in-unison prayers a few days later when the Hail Mary made the news from a “battleground” location.
Calming, meditative and devout are not descriptions of the political rhetoric that played out at a location near Philadelphia. In the midst of the Oct. 15 event — which was all about glorifying the candidate — an audience member passed out and needed medical attention.
While paramedics arrived and took charge, the support offered from the stage by presidential candidate Donald Trump was to order his crew to crank up the music and play “Ave Maria.”
A short time later, another person was overcome by the heat and Trump ordered the song to be played again.
After that, the event’s question-and-answer format was scrapped for a musical program. The candidate and others on stage swayed to songs from his recorded playbook, including “It’s a Man’s World,” “YMCA” and music by the late Sinead O’Connor whose estate has asked Trump to stop using her music at campaign rallies.
Now, if you are thinking that I was praising that as a prayerful, thoughtful response to an emergency, picture me shaking my head. If I opine that was a calculated intent to please Catholics in his following, I may be giving too much credit.
Let’s just say without a Catholic background, it’s unlikely he knows the words in English, let alone Latin. I give him credit, though, for liking Luciano Pavarotti’s singing.
Just last week, during a Catholic charity fundraiser “roast” which traditionally aims for humor as politicians mock themselves and each other, the candidate said, “Catholics, you got to vote for me. You better,” pointing out that his opponent Kamala Harris had sent a video message instead of a personal appearance at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City. She was campaigning yet again in battleground Wisconsin.
Much of his and others’ ideas of humor were lame or unfit for publication even in secular media.
It was just as off-putting as when, at an earlier rally, he said, “I love you, Christians. I’m a Christian myself.” His words to a conservative group in Florida in July: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
I’m not alone in being alarmed by that perspective of the future and of the presidency. It reminds me of the Middle Ages when people accepted that there was such a thing as the “divine right of kings,” and it was considered sinful to challenge a ruler.
The remnants of the all-powerful conquering Roman Empire prevailed in the Middle East and Europe at the time of Christ and for centuries after.
The evolution from the right of kings to the rights of citizens also involved a switch from the entanglement of church and state in ancient times into democracy and separation of church and state. It was a long, hard-fought revolution as we matured to understand there is a difference between religious belief and political ideology.
Celebrating Indigenous people
Meanwhile, in another October theme, we sort of celebrated the discovery of America.
Columbus Day is still a federal holiday. But in the spirit of doing penance for past sins, better know as political correctness, it is now Indigenous Peoples’ Day, celebrating those who got here long before 1492 when “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”
Hawaii was ahead of that trend when, in 1977, the state version of the holiday was dubbed Discoverers’ Day to give recognition to all explorers and navigators who found their way to Hawaii. It was widely embraced as honoring the Polynesians who sailed here from the south Pacific — not so much loved as an accolade for Captain Cook and his journey of discovery centuries later.
In 1998 it was officially deleted from state holidays in favor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Meanwhile, back to old Christopher Columbus. Did you happen to see or hear the timely little story about Spanish researchers who have determined that Columbus was Jewish? Forensic scientists examined DNA from remains buried in his tomb at the Catholic cathedral in Seville and from his son Hernando. A traditional theory was that he was from Genoa, Italy.
What an ironic twist in history. He succeeded in persuading the Spanish monarchs to pay for his westward exploration voyages which sought a route to gold mines in Asia but found Caribbean islands instead. At the time they were supporting this Jewish explorer, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were devoted to creating a Catholic country.
Jews and Muslims who had migrated from Mediterranean countries were forced to convert to the Catholic faith or leave the country. Many emigrated to other countries and the distinction of “Sephardic” Jews — a Hebrew word for Spain — is still used to distinguish Jews from European roots.
Explorers who followed the route westward eventually did find gold galore on the South American continent. But the Spanish conquerors were a dark shadow on world history for cruelty and genocidal war with Indigenous people. Priests accompanied soldiers and spread Christian teaching to the Western Hemisphere, but it was an unholy combination of church and state.
As for how the news about Columbus affects the misguided American people who are infected with antisemitism, they are on a dark path and I won’t go there.
It is time to detour back to the Blessed Mother, who was deemed the patron saint of the U.S. by American bishops more than a century ago.
The Dec. 8 observance of the Immaculate Conception of Mary is the only holy day of obligation beside Christmas observed in Hawaii. Other states and countries observe several other days as well.
Another special Marian feast celebrates a miraculous event especially meaningful to people in this Western Hemisphere.
The appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe to a devout peasant is celebrated on Dec. 12. Mary appeared to Juan Diego in 1531 in Tepeyac, Mexico, identifying herself as the mother of God and of all humanity. When the skeptical archbishop demanded proof, Mary told Juan Diego to gather flowers and tuck them in his cloak to present to the cleric. When the flowers spilled forth, the cloak bore an image of Mary.
The cloak is still venerated by 20 million pilgrims each year at the Guadalupe basilica near the site of the apparition. And Juan Diego was canonized in 2000, the rare Indigenous American saint.
Troubling history
Another harbinger of anxiety that has arisen in recent years is the idea of “Christian nationalism.” We’re Christian and we follow Christ’s teachings, so that would be a good thing, right? Except if you look at modern political ideologies, not every Christian believes in the idea of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming strangers, etc.
Just read letters to the editor from the folks who balk at government money going to support low-income people, providing shelter and medical care to homeless. And heaven forbid we open our borders to immigrants who an aforementioned candidate vilifies as a criminal horde.
As the proud descendant of immigrants, I found that disturbing, even disgusting. It arouses memory of the stories told by Irish immigrants about signs they found in East Coast cities where jobs were available, but “no Irish need apply.”
That attitude was based partly on anti-Catholic prejudice in the minds of the first Protestant immigrants to take root in America.
Next month’s Thanksgiving holiday is when we remember the first European settlers to North America, the pilgrims, whose version of Christianity was to “purify” it from such beliefs as saints, sacraments and ordained clergy. Fleeing the Anglican religious bigotry that targeted them in England, they brought their own bigotry to the New World.
They forbade Catholics to settle in Massachusetts so they moved to Maryland, led Quakers to choose Pennsylvania instead, and didn’t think Anglicans were true Christians either. For one thing, they didn’t consider sprinkling water on heads to be baptism, because John the Baptist famously baptized by full immersion in a river. The Puritans and many other non-Catholic Christians veered away from any focus on Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Reflect on what we know about Muslim nationalism, in which governments impose religious rules and punishments on people for what they wear, what they eat and drink, and otherwise publicly observe their religious beliefs.
What might that mean for someone outside the mainstream version of Christian? Statues out, rosaries banned, Mass in secret. I vote for separation of church and state.
