Later this year, the Vatican will canonize
Káteri Tekahkwí:the, a/k/a Catherine Tekakwitha, a/k/a "Lily of the Mohawks." Born in 1656 to a Mohawk father and Algonquin mother,
some are celebrating the canonization of the first North American indigenous saint. For others, the news is bittersweet,
inciting mixed reactions derived from complex emotions, especially to those of American and Canadian Native ancestry, for whom the news represents a painful reminder of the dark history of European colonization of North America.
The compelling survival story of Tekakwitha (or "the Clumsy One") has long been cherished as a religious conversion story by non-Natives of European descent, particularly Catholics, who claimed her as one of their own and held her out to the world as a model of piety and Christian values. In her classic 1890 biography of Kateri,
The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha, The Lily of the Mohawks, 1656-1680, Ellen Walworth documents Kateri's ascetic lifestyle - which included self-flagellation, frequent fasting and even sleeping on a bed of thorns - in vivid detail. Describing her interest in Tekakwitha as sparked by "the thought of a mere Indian girl reared in the forest among barbarians," Walworth's spin on Kateri's tragic life seems to echo the pro-Indian assimilation line which was
typical of the Assimilation era of federal Indian policy. However, in more recent years, some authors have attempted to reclaim her story by digging deeper into her dark history from more diverse secular and non-secular perspectives. For example,
Mohawk author and biographer Darren Bonaparte argues for painting a more complex portrait of a future saint which more fully incorporates and appreciates her Mohawk roots.
posted by Dr. Zira
on Feb 10, 2012 -
39 comments
Both an ingeniously choreographed crime film and a moral drama influenced by Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment
, Pickpocket
marks the apotheosis of Bresson's stripped-down style. There’s little or no psychological realism or conventional drama at work in Martin La Salle’s portrayal of a master thief who plies his trade at the Gare de Lyon and easily outwits the cops who seek to ensnare him. See it once to appreciate the spare elegance of the pickpocketing scenes, and then a second time to appreciate how subtly Bresson accomplishes the story of a man’s self-willed corruption, his liberation through imprisonment and his redemption through love, all in less than 80 minutes.*
[more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Jan 6, 2012 -
11 comments
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is arguably the most influential American Catholic author of the twentieth century. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold over one million copies and has been translated into over fifteen languages. He wrote over sixty other books and hundreds of poems and articles on topics ranging from monastic spirituality to civil rights, nonviolence, and the nuclear arms race.
posted by Trurl
on Dec 29, 2011 -
8 comments
"So I admire those artists that are actually spiritually concerned. And have the balls to be concerned about that, and not concerned with fuckin’ George Bush’s dick. It’s very hard to sing when you’ve got someone’s dick in your mouth.”
She shoots a mischievous grin before adding, 'I’ve tried.'"
Sinéad O’Connor on the pope, her music, dating, buying condoms, and everything in between.
posted by the young rope-rider
on Dec 12, 2011 -
28 comments
In October 1963, the Brazilian movie writer, director, and actor José Mojica Marins was having trouble with a movie he was working on, and fell asleep at the dinner table.
He dreamed of being dragged to a cemetery by a creature in black, who showed Marins his own tomb stone, with the dates of his birth and death (YT: 9 min). That dream lead to the creation of
Zé do Caixão (anglicized as
Coffin Joe), the main character in Brazil's first horror movie, and Marins' first big movie success:
À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma (YT: 1hr 22min w/English subs) (
At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul). This was one of the up-ticks in a life of
some ups and lots of downs for the South American Roger Corman or Ed Wood (NYT), and the birth of a character who would become Marins public persona.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Oct 28, 2011 -
11 comments
A scathing grand jury report accused the Philadelphia Archdiocese of providing safe haven for as many as 37 priests who have been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Most of those priests remain active in the ministry. 'The possibility that even one predatory priest, not to mention three dozen, might still be serving in parishes — “on duty in the archdiocese today, with open access to new young prey,” as the grand jury put it — has unnerved many Roman Catholics here and sent the church reeling in the latest and one of the most damning episodes in the American church since it became engulfed in the sexual abuse scandal nearly a decade ago. The extent of the scandal here, including a cover-up that the grand jury said stretched over many years, is so great that Philadelphia is “Boston reborn,” said David J. O’Brien, who teaches Catholic history at the University of Dayton, referring to the archdiocese where widespread sexual abuse exploded in public in 2002.'
[more inside]
posted by VikingSword
on Mar 4, 2011 -
127 comments
ReturnTheDVD.org "Dear Archbishop Nienstedt,
We write to you as a small group of faithful Catholics. This letter, however, represents the voices of thousands of families who were as disheartened as we were by the DVD Preserving Marriage in Minnesota..." [more inside]
posted by jillithd
on Dec 10, 2010 -
31 comments
The source
Fr. Amoth refers to, according to
Fr. Fortea, is the demons who are being
exorcised. Of this, the Spanish priest wrote that knowing whether or not the
demon is telling the truth "is in many cases impossible." "We can know with great confidence when a demon tells the truth in the subject directly related with the exorcism. That is, the number of demons, their name and similar things. But we cannot be confident in what regards concrete news relating to people."
[more inside]
posted by ServSci
on Mar 16, 2010 -
57 comments
When I was growing up, I did not dress up as a nun for Halloween. When I was a young, impressionable Catholic school girl, I did not secretly (or otherwise) pine for the veils, habits, odd religious names, and overall mystique of the nuns who taught me. The whole “nun” thing kind of snuck up on me when I wasn’t paying much attention. A Nun's Life is the eclectic personal blog of
Sister Julie, a
Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and a
Star Wars fangirl.
posted by amyms
on Oct 4, 2008 -
18 comments
Constantine's Sword (google video) A former priest's personal journey through the tangled and sometimes violent history between Christians and Jews.
posted by empath
on Oct 2, 2008 -
14 comments
Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High As summer vacation begins, 17 girls at Gloucester High School are expecting babies—more than four times the number of pregnancies the 1,200-student school had last year. Some adults dismissed the statistic as a blip. Others blamed hit movies like Juno and Knocked Up for glamorizing young unwed mothers. But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town.
posted by swift
on Jun 19, 2008 -
209 comments
From a Time magazine article: A new, innocuously titled book,
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist."
Previously on Mother Teresa's doubt,
more generally.
posted by ibmcginty
on Aug 23, 2007 -
110 comments
Say what you want about Tom Monaghan, he thinks big. He built a
big company, he's got a
big agenda , he wanted to build a
big Jesus, and now he's building a whole new town. That would be the town of
Ave Maria, Florida, -- home to
Ave Maria University, , but
that's not all - welcome to America's newest mini-theocracy: "You won't be able to buy a Playboy or Hustler magazine in Ave Maria Town. We're going to control the cable television that comes in the area. There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town. If you go to the drug store and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception,
you won't be able to get that in Ave Maria Town." aturally, this has run him afoul of
Florida's ACLU.
posted by contessa
on Feb 28, 2006 -
101 comments
