It was, of course, precisely because these crimes were so disgusting that I am offended to see them represented by Rosaries, symbols of that purest and most innocent Lady, who would not harm any creature on Earth, least of all a child.

On a further note to JSP about our ultimate evil as pagans, we did not commit genocide in the name of our faith against millions around the world. I did not comment about the rosary simply because it does not invoke any emotional response from me as I am not Catholic. Nor does the accusation of eating the youngest daughter other than to know for Inupiat, as it is factually wrong. My favorite verses to memorize were about hypocrisy. Drove my Sunday school teachers mad.

Sonya knows her exhibit is successful and has generated discussion about a horrible and deadly sin that has left many lives shattered and lost to suicide. IF you had bothered to read the literature provided with the exhibit, you would have known she gave voice to issues not being addressed in our community.

The ‘artist’ in question should learn from her contemporaries in the ‘conceptual art’ field: the viewer’s subjective response is all that is important. There is no objective message or value in this kind of thing, which I why I use inverted commas. That she’s generated a response at all is an indication of success, so she should be jumping for joy.

Alas, the usual subjective response conceptual art generates in the viewer is the thought ‘what a load of rubbish’, which is why so many of them seem to want to vary it by generating the response ‘how offensive’.

If I interpreted the exhibit wrongly, and if Sonya Kelliher-Combs had in fact intended to honor Our Lady and to invoke her protection on the victims of priestly abuse, she (or her friends) would have read my post and responded something like this: “Oh, is that how you understood it? Heaven forbid! We love the Blessed Virgin and would never want to insult her! This is what the exhibit really meant…”

That’s how I (or any faithful Catholic) would want to respond if I realized that something I had written or created was being misunderstood in a way that disparaged the Blessed Mother. But that’s not the reaction this post provoked. Most comments have focused on piling up a multitude of grievances against the Church (although, as Tobias Petrus well observed, these are really the mistakes of particular vile and traitorous churchmen, and not of the Church herself), and on praising the artist for giving these complaints a “voice.” I take this as good empirical evidence that it was not merely my non-Inupiaq ignorance that led me to understand the exhibit as an attack on the Church and on the Queen of Heaven. It was viewed this way by many, many people.

Nobody is denying you the right to “speak out” about the wrongs done to Alaskan children. But please, be careful to denounce those who actually did the wrong. This isn’t the fault of Our Lady, nor of the spotless Bride of Christ.

Of course the ultimate evil of the Inuit people were not these institutional killings of the weak, but the practice of false religion and the worshiping of pagan gods.

From all of this they were saved when the hope of salvation from eternal damnation was brought by those first black-robes, those early 17th Century Jesuit fathers.

The acts of the pervert priests in the 2nd half of the 20th Century are horrible and they will be punished for these crimes, if not in this life then surely the next. But the eternal balance sheet of credits and debits will always show that all people owe God and His Church praise and thanksgiving for saving us from the powers of darkness, despite the actions of some modern day churchmen.

Reviewed Work(s):
· Inuit, Glimpses of an Arctic past by David Morrison, Georges-Hebert Germain
Author(s) of Review: Susan K. Short
Arctic and Alpine Research, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Nov., 1996), p. 532

Of course the Blessed Virgin would be glad that the Rosary was used to fight pedophilia. But this display quite simply equated the Rosaries with the sins. Or if you argue the contrary, then at least admit it created an ambiguous symbol that scandalized the faithful, i.e. us. Itself another sin. No good comes this way. You cannot equate Rosaries with pull-tabs and corks and think that you have made a sufficiently clear “statement.”

Furthermore, Our Lady was betrothed to her husband, St. Joseph. He considered divorcing her, until an angel told him not to do so. She was not an “unwed mother,” per se, at least not in the modern sense. St. Joseph was initially confused as to what to do, but it is not clear that she was publicly known to anybody else as “an unwed mother.”

“It takes bravery to speak out against an institution that has existed for 2000 years and has had billions of followers. It doesn’t take much to imagine how Mary must feel about the priest who gives communion, says the rosary and abuses the parishioners. Maybe Mary would be proud to have her symbol used in the fight agains greater evil.”

This shows utter confusion. Yes, the Blessed Virgin must be very much upset at priests and bishops and cardinals and I dare say Popes who betrayed the faithful. Absolutelely. But once again, it is simply not right to speak out “against the Church,” the 2,000 year old institution with a billion followers, because the “Church” never committed pedophilia, the “Church” never covered up. Horrible, wretched, abominable men who abused their office IN VIOLATION OF THE CHURCH’S OWN LAWS AND MORALITY did that. These horrible men deserve to be defrocked, prosecuted, persecuted, hounded, scorned, drowned in the Alaskan waters with millstones around their necks, but the CHURCH is innocent. For the Church says that these men should and will suffer.

Until Kelliher-Combs and her defenders finally get this, they will be guilty of ignorance, of false judgment, of insensitivity. This is truly an evil result of the perverted priests’ depravity, that the victims and their allies confuse the guilty with the innocent.

I may not have known many Alaskan natives in my life, but I’ve known scores of ex-Catholics. I seem to encounter them everywhere — at Notre Dame, in the Peace Corps, in graduate school — and they always seem to want to tell me why they stopped being Catholic. Sometimes it was a bad experience with a priest, (or a loved one’s bad experience with a priest.) Sometimes it was a complaint about some moral teaching they didn’t like (usually involving sex), or just a general feeling that the Church wasn’t very “modern.” I’ve had lots of long, searching conversations with these types of people, so I’m familiar with that complicated mixture of guilt, bitterness and resentment that ex-Catholics carry around with them every day, a grief that they cannot even name, and a loss that they can never get over. In that light, I can look on this exhibit with compassion.

But surely you realize, Angie Demma, that your claim (that the exhibit is not an attack on Catholics) must be a weak one in light of the other comments that have been left here. Ida Hildebrand speaks belligerently about “Recovering Catholics,” Chatty Catty defensively references her excommunicated Grandmother, C.M Gingrich accuses the Church of (more or less single-handedly, it seems) destroying Alaskan culture, and Sandy Gillespie calls it a “church of pharisees.” None of them denies that the exhibit is anti-Catholic, and all in one way or another praise Sonya Kelliher-Combs for “speaking out” about important issues. Obviously they see their many and various complaints echoed in her exhibit. And when I make this observation (”it seems you all agree that the exhibit is attacking the Church”) a friend of Sonya’s quickly replies with “Sonya knows exactly what she is doing.”

You seem to be in a minority in thinking that the exhibit was not an attack on the Catholic church.

In any case, I don’t think even you are denying that it was using Rosaries to represent pedophiles, while the sacred words of a holy Sacrament were ironically twisted into a rebuke. The Rosaries were being put “in company with” corks and gamblers’ pull-tabs, as if that is the level on which they belonged. I don’t think there’s any way to avoid the conclusion that they are thus being used in a disparaging way.

You try to get around this by arguing that the Rosary is powerful and sacred enough that it cannot be disparaged by a mere museum exhibit. This further shows how little you understand about spirituality. It’s rather like those people who defend blasphemy with the argument that “God can handle it.” Of course God will not be damaged by mere human words! And in the case of the Rosary, did you think we were worried about Our Lady’s self-esteem? Trampling sacred things cannot harm them, but it can harm you, and it rightly and properly wounds the feelings of those who love holy things. Our Lady is the one being disparaged, but it is especially for your sakes, and for the sakes of those whose souls are likewise damaged in seeing this exhibit, that we grieve.

The priestly scandals that followed in the wake of Vatican II were a terrible, terrible episode in the history of the Church, and the spiritual damage that these priests did in alienating souls from their Mother Church was tragic. This post was intended to impress that on our readers, but ironically, all of you, by showing us a bit of the hurt and resentment that you harbor against the faith, have illustrated this better than I could ever have done. So for that I thank you, and I will remember you when as I pray my rosary.

Clearly.

(Given how you’re using “judgement”, I understand you to mean something like, “the exercise of the rational faculty”.)

I am saddened that so much ignorance abounds! I grew up in Catholic faith and also managed to learn to appreciate people of other cultures outside of my own (as well as their views). I have visited Sonya Kelliher-Combs’ “Con-Census” at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art and with my Western, Catholic cultural lens and was not offended in her use of the Rosary. In fact, I commend her courageous voice as well as the Anchorage Museum for the open dialogue in our community.

To decide that the Rosary was used in a disparaging way is one interpretation, and frankly judgmental on your part. Judgement is not a Christian value that I was taught. The dialogue, “Forgive you Father, for You Have Sinned” lets the viewer know exactly who is being chided for their reprehensible behavior.

I was offended by your ignorance in many other remarks related to “Con-Census” including your assumption that Sonya was not Catholic and when you don’t see a clear connection between abuse and suicide and alcoholism. You’ve obviously never been near to someone who has been victimized in such a heinous act or can’t empathize with what this might be like.

I’m embarrassed that Catholics like yourself, Dr. VanNostrum, and Disciplus have such a tenuous relationship with the Rosary to think that one person’s use of it in an exhibit (to shed light on a subject that needs to be dealt with to move beyond)could disparage it’s meaning.

I found Dr. VanNostrum’s remarks hateful and beyond ignorant.

I hope you do some more research before writing callous and insensitive remarks like this in the future.

Angie Demma

That is interesting, thank you.

To a Roman Catholic, a rosary is a holy thing, and the means by which we honor and love the blessed lady who bore and raised our Redeemer. Meanwhile, the priestly offenses in question were (to quote myself from the post above to which you are reacting), “the truest example of the depths to which the newly liberalized American church could sink.” Our Lady is, for a Catholic, our truest mother, the help of Christians, the Queen of Heaven, the morning star, and the cause of our joy. The priest in question were (again quoting myself) “base and depraved” and “monsters in priestly garb.” Can you see how representing this terrible crime with a sacred symbol is deeply insulting and hurtful to Catholics?

And no, I really don’t think that I was “missing the point.” There are times, of course, when very holy symbols are juxtaposed against evil deeds, with the idea being to emphasize the blackness of the bad through a contrast to something very good. Think of the ending of The Godfather, for example. The Church is not being mocked in the famous baptism scene; rather, the holiness of the words of baptism allow you to feel more keenly the depravity of the evil deeds that are simultaneously being done. But that wasn’t what was happening in this exhibit. I can perceive this through 1) the deliberate choice to use cheap plastic rosaries instead of more beautiful ones, 2) the fact that the rosaries were placed in company with corks and gambling tabs, items obviously intended to directly represent pernicious influences, and 3) the irreverent and ironic title. The cheapening of a sacred Catholic symbol, and the rebuke to the Church as a whole were clearly deliberate.

I was not, as one poster claimed, “unbelievably upset” by the exhibit. I assumed that Ms. Kelliher-Combs was more thoughtless than deliberately sacrilegious. (It is interesting, though, that a person can be thoughtless in that way without making much commotion; as I’ve said before, you couldn’t get away with doing that to just any group of people.) And if you actually read through the original post, you’ll see that my primary purpose was not to comment on native Alaskan issues, nor to critique this exhibit in general, but to urge Catholics to pray fervently for the victims of this abuse, as well as for the perpetrators. I certainly have not, at any time, tried to defend these traitorous priests, nor to deny that the suffering of their victims has been acute.

But I am not trivializing that suffering when I say that you all need to get some perspective. Here I am being accused of bigotry and ignorance, and I never even voiced any criticisms of native Alaskans. Meanwhile, several of you obviously feel justified in venting your rage against the Catholic church as a whole without seeming to care, in the first place, that the Catholic faithful absolutely do not support the terrible actions of pedophile priests (our people have suffered from the same crimes!), and secondly, that this is a miniscule part of the total history of our Church. When you disrespect the rosary, you’re not just taking a knock at these pedophiles (who probably didn’t use theirs much anyway.) You’re insulting Fr. Damien, the leper priest of Molokai who spent his life ministering to lepers and eventually died of the same disease. You’re disrespecting Mother Theresa, who picked up the dying from the streets of Calcutta. And St. Vincent de Paul, and St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Nicholas, and St. Padre Pio, and many, many other great humanitarians, from all through history, who all loved Our Lady and the holy Rosary. And behind these great saints stand legions of humble Catholics, scattered across the world from Poland to Peru, cherishing their rosaries as symbols of hope and grace and tender love shown to their dear Mother. When you pile rosaries up and plunk them down next to a bucket of wine corks, you’re taking a shot at all of those people. But you probably didn’t think about any of that. You’re fixated only on one group of people, one time, one place. And yet, Ida Hildebrand feels fine about calling me ethnocentric.

We’ve now had comments from several native Alaskans, telling us how much they loved the exhibit, and telling me how ignorant I am. But not a single person has even tried to argue against my basic claim: that this exhibit was disrespectful to my faith. So I’m going to take it that you agree, and that most of you are okay with that. Anyway, thanks for writing; it was interesting to get input from some native Alaskans.

I concur with Clara here.

Yes, the priests came to save the Alaskans’ souls. Yes, they opposed pagan practices, JUST as they ended the paganism of my Germanic, Scandinavian, and Celtic ancestors. I hope that they were duly respectful of those aspects of Native Alaskan religion that were in synch with natural religion, but let’s face it, the position of the Catholic Church is that it’s here to evangelize people.

Some of the priests, perhaps many, were abusive. I’ll take your word for it. For that they should have been locked up. They will pay in hell or purgatory for what they did. But the “art” in question identified a wholly good symbol — the Rosary — with a wholly evil thing — sex abuse. This is unjust. This is literally throwing out the baby with the bathwater. No one here is making excuses for the horrible child molesters! No one here is diminishing the victims’ anguish! But please, please find some other way to exhibit this outrage than to identify OUR sacred religious symbols with the horrible acts of those who *defied their own religion* by abusing children. Did the Blessed Virgin Mary harm Alaska? Did her Son harm Alaska? Well, the Rosary honors the Blessed Mother and her Son. It represents what is good and right with Catholicism, not the sometimes horrible sins of the Church’s clergy.

Very powerful commentaries and opinions expressed herein. Sensitive, yes. Hurtful, definitely, and yet, quite insightful in a human mindset sort of way. You know, how we are ever judgmental of other humans “in the name of God”.

I am very proud of my neice Sonya’s creations. Is the Father likewise proud of his creations (man and woman)?? I would like to believe it is so. Or is the Father there just to exercise forgiveness for their sins and other transgressions, of which there any many indeed?? Answer that if you must, but I choose to listen to my heart, which God has filled…….

With love,
Assaingatak (my Inupiat name, after Ahna).

Secondly, you know nothing of the extent of Catholic Priests abuse in Rural Alaska. Entire generations in some villages were sexually abused, and once complaints were made the priests were moved to different villages to continue the cycle of abuse. I felt offended by your trivialization of this abuse “There were some cases of missionary priests abusing native Alaskan children, which would, I suppose, put the issue within the scope of Ms. Kelliher-Combs’ “native issues” theme.”, and “But a few particular members once hurt some native Alaskan children.” Without being more specific, I am speaking of many of my relatives and friends. The Catholic church “Here we have a two-thousand-year-old organization that, at least in the eyes of, I don’t know, some-billion people in the history of the world represents the human race’s only hope of salvation,” worked very hard to “educate” and “save” the natives of Alaska, particularly on the Yukon River. By doing this, in a few short decades, they almost single handedly annihilated a culture and belief system that has been around for ten thousand years. You talk about people not respecting your religion, “I’m already well aware that a large portion of the world doesn’t respect my religious views.” Where was the Catholic Church’s “respect” for an older, ancient belief system? Other church groups did not do this. They translated the bible into native languages, and educated natives to be leaders in their churches. They respected Alaska native traditional ways and did not forbid them from practicing them. I can understand Ida’s mistrust of the Catholic Church.

I was not offended by the exhibit. I was thankful that something was being said about the abuse. Every person I have talked to, whether white or native, catholic or not, from Alaska, found the exhibit strong and powerful, speaking about a people who adapt and persevere and the issues that we are now facing. You seem to have missed the point. I thought a church was its people, not its symbols. You seem to be unbelievably upset about what you perceive as a slight to the “symbol” of your religion. God is the sacred here, not the rosary.

As for Dr. VanNostrum’s comments, I believe that there is no room in any religion for closed minded, ignorant, bigotry. Get your facts straight. I am Alaska Native and I do not hate white people. Generalizing about a group of people is always perilous, and in my point of view short sighted. And finally, you completely misunderstand the special relationship between indigenous peoples and the Federal Government. Maybe you should do some research, or go out and meet some Alaska Natives.