Day of the Dead

 In recent years, the Mexican celebration of the Day of the Dead (November 2) has gained visibility in the USA and around the world, thanks in great part to media and movies including Pixar’s animated feature Coco. It is a colorful part of Latin American Catholic culture.

For Americans, and perhaps people from other countries where this celebration is not a longstanding tradition, this folkloric holiday could simply seem like a “Mexican Halloween,” in the worst possible sense. It could appear as a pagan celebration that invites people to celebrate the darkness of death or even worship it (associating it with the “Santa Muerte” or “Saint Death” cult). Some even feel it is to seek to communicate with the dead through pre-Colombian rites and rituals.

This is the danger of learning about other cultures from movies, on one hand, and on the other, of misunderstanding the process of inculturation which the Church has practiced since its founding and in all the different forms of the Catholic Church.

Let us begin with what the Day of the Dead is not. To quote a 2019 article from Vatican News: “It must be made clear that in Mexico this celebration is not a ‘satanic cult’ or something related to a ‘cult of death.’” Nor is it generally understood exactly as it was depicted in the film Coco. This movie did incorporate many real elements of Mexican culture. But let us be honest here, subsidiary Pixar is not a reliable source for information on the way Catholics in Mexico celebrate the Day of the Dead.

 Using a well-written passage from Aleteia, let me quote them on what it is. First of all, returning to the Vatican News article, “it forms a part of a belief that has its roots in the Prehispanic world.” Among the cultures that existed in what is now Mexico before the coming of Europeans, the article goes on to explain, there was a general belief in an afterlife, including something analogous to Purgatory. For the dead to reach their destination in the afterlife, they needed certain essential objects, and once a year they visited the earth. During this occasion, the living could offer them food and objects to help them along.

At this point it is still possible to object, being easy to state, “See? It’s a pagan celebration that Catholics should avoid.” However, let us consider this; when Catholic missionaries arrived in the Americas, they realized that in these beliefs and celebrations there were elements of truth that were a common ground that could help the indigenous peoples understand the Catholic faith. These partial truths are what the Church calls “semina verbi” or the “seeds of the Word”—a term coined by St. Justin Martyr in the second century (originally in Greek, “logoi spermatikoi”).

The missionaries engaged in what is known as inculturation: they took the elements of truth they found and some of the cultural manifestations that accompanied them, and infused them with the Catholic faith, transforming the feast of the god of the underworld into a celebration of All Souls Day. In this way, the missionaries introduced Catholic teaching, and this helped transform the culture as a whole.

Inculturation is something that had been used in some form or another since St. Paul. St. Paul himself, when speaking at the Areopagus in Athens, did not say, “Forget everything you know, because it’s all wrong.” Instead, he quoted a pagan poet and referred to a pagan altar “to the unknown god,” saying, “What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” (Acts 17:22-31)

Many folkloric traditions surrounding Catholic feast days have been adopted over the centuries from non-Christian traditions as part of inculturation. Even some aspects of Catholic iconography, terminology, and philosophy (used to elucidate theology) have non-Christian origins, such as Greco-Roman mystery cults and Neoplatonism.

While anti-Catholic rhetoric from atheists and non-Catholic Christians often exaggerates how much the Church has adopted from these sources and claims it has harmed the faith, the fact of inculturation is undeniable and quite positive. Grace builds on and perfects nature. In His providence, he has guided humanity towards the truth and prepared us to receive the Gospel. When human beings strive forward, even with some mistakes, God takes what is good and makes it better, while purging what is mistaken or evil.

We must recognize the feast as an essential element of Mexican tradition and identity and warn against the corrupting influence of … none other than the United States, with its distortion of Mexican culture and its confusion of Day of the Dead with Halloween. At the same time, we must warn against the cult of Santa Muerte, a recent invention tied to the culture surrounding drug trafficking and not specifically related to the Day of the Dead.

Can Catholics celebrate the Day of the Dead? The answer is clearly “yes,” if those Catholics or any other Christian denomination understand properly as the celebration of All Souls Day with certain cultural, folkloric aspects of Mexican culture.

So, we say to the Faithful of the Reformed Catholic Church and all People of Goodwill, enjoy this special day and treat it with the respect and reverence it is meant to have. 

Borrowed from Richard Rohr website

 Richard Rohr and author and a priest had a website called "Center for Action and Contemplation"  He sends out a daily point to meditate and contemplate.  All are geared towards improving a person's perspective on life.  That is how I view them anyway.   Today's missive caught my attention more than usual,  So I posting in part.  To enjoy the rest go to his website  https://cac.org/

Living with the Land

 

 

 

In the West, most Christians have been shaped by culture and faith into a paradigm that normalizes acquisition, at great cost to others, ourselves, and the land itself. As Richard puts it, “Perhaps the primary example of our lack of attention to the Christ Mystery can be seen in the way we continue to pollute and ravage planet Earth, the very thing we all stand on and live from.” Theologian, scholar, and Cherokee descendant Randy Woodley describes the difference between the attitude of early North American settlers and the Indigenous people who were already present on the land. He writes:

The very land itself meant something quite different to the newcomer than it did to the host people. Something was missing. The difficulty, as the Natives saw it, was with the settlers themselves and their failure to tread lightly, with humility and respect, on the land. The settlers wanted to live on the land, but the host people lived with the land. Living on the land means objectifying the land and natural resources and being shortsighted concerning the future. Living with the land means respecting the natural balance.

To Indigenous peoples, the problems of a Western worldview are obvious. The way of life demonstrated by Western peoples leads to alienation from the Earth, from others, and from all of creation. This lifestyle creates a false bubble called “Western civilization,” which people in the West think will protect them from future calamity. This false hope is detached from all experience and reality.

The problem is that the Western system itself is what brings the calamity. There is little doubt that much of what we are experiencing today as so-called natural disasters have their origin in human carelessness.

How do we avoid the impending disaster brought on by a settler lifestyle of living on the land and against nature? The answer is simple: we learn to live with nature. [1]

 

A thought on Salvation

 In all my reading and discussions on salvation and what it is or what it takes to obtain salvation, I have always been amazed at how complicated we tend to make this simple process.   Maybe it is just me that thinks it is simple as it appears to me this point of our existence has been argued over for centuries.  

For me is a simple formula.  Believe in Jesus' teachings, follow the Christ's message, and accept God's love and love God back as your savior and you will attain salvation.   

First, you have to understand that Jesus was not Christ.  He only became "the Christ" after his death and resurrection.  Second, you have to understand, even if you believe or do not believe in the Trinity, Jesus' teaching was about the two existing components of what we later labeled as the trinity.  He spoke of his father, Our God, he also spoke of the kingdom to come, in essence, the holy spirit.   Once he was crucified and arose, then ascended, he then became part of the Holy trinity.  However, you see this final form, this is now the way to salvation.  You can do the works, you can feel you attained grace or any other items you feel you need to check off a list for salvation,  until you live the simple formula I laid out, I do not believe you have attained the salvation you seek.  As you have to save yourself before you can be saved by any other means.