As a specialist in lived religion much of my memento mori research in Europe this summer has left me missing the human element of communion with the divine. Most of the mummies, bejeweled skeleton saints, and piles of human bones in charnel houses are on display more as museum exhibits than as sacred objects meant for veneration and adoration. Today’s Leiberfest (feast of [heavenly] bodies) in the tiny Bavarian town of Roggenburg, however, couldn’t have been a more poignant case... Read more
In a major shift on Church teaching, Pope Francis has declared capital punishment unacceptable in all cases. Prior to the pontiff’s recent pronouncement, Church doctrine allowed for the death penalty if it were deemed the only practical way of defending lives. Practically speaking, the Church’s new policy of total opposition to capital punishment is aimed at the United States. Of the 52 nations that still execute convicted criminals the U.S. stands alone as both the only major Western country and... Read more
Macabre isn’t usually one of the adjectives used to describe contemporary dance in its myriad expressions. Sensual, erotic, frenetic, and romantic figure among some of the images that come to mind with genres of dance such as salsa, hip hop, techno, among others. But in medieval Europe where death was omnipresent, especially during the Black Plague, even one of the forms of cultural expression most associated with joy and celebration couldn’t escape intrusion by the Grim Reaper. Originating in France... Read more
The Virgin of Guadalupe (official title: Our Lady of Guadalupe; in Spanish: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe) is an advocation of the Virgin Mary associated with a venerated image enshrined within the Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The Basilica with the image is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world. On October 12, 1895, Pope Leo XIII granted the venerated image a canonical coronation and its official title. According to the hagiography, the Virgin appeared... Read more
Death as the ultimate equalizer is one of the compelling themes at the ossuaries of Catholic Europe. Most of the thousands of human skeletons and bones on display, whether in artistic arrangements or scattered haphazardly on the ground, bear no obvious traces of individuality. The distinctions and divisions of sex, age, type of employment, and social class, to some extent, of life in highly stratified European societies are obliterated by the leveling scythe of the Grim Reaper and Reapress, in... Read more
I did a double-take upon spying a sharply dressed female skeleton raising a shiny sickle with her right hand. Positioned center stage on the altar of St. Rupert’s Church in Eben, Austria, the impeccably tailored skeletal saint appears to be Mexican folk saint Santa Muerte, but she is not. Saint Death’s Austrian doppleganger is St. Notburga, a peasant woman who lived in the Tyrolian region of Austria from 1265 to 1313 and because of her acts of charity with the... Read more
The man who will very likely be elected the next president of Mexico in Sunday’s vote is not only a political populist but also a religious one. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, known as AMLO, like nearly 90% of Mexicans born in the mid-twentieth century, was raised Catholic, even serving as an altar boy at his parish church in the southern state of Tabasco. Although his own Christian denominational affiliation is unclear, he has wrapped himself in the cloak of Guadalupismo... Read more
By David Metcalfe* “If understanding followed no rule at all, there would be no good in the understanding nor in the matter understood, and to remain in ignorance would be the greatest good.” – Ramon Llull as cited in Margaret A. Boden’s Mind As Machine: A History of Cognitive Science. Vol 1. p. 56 (Oxford University Press, 2006) With the furious pace the media sets in announcing today’s innovations in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning it’s easy to forget... Read more
By Dr. Kate Kingsbury† and Debra Van Neste* Since time immemorial religions have been born from the random rencounters of disparate doxa that have syncretically intertwined to create new modes of believing, belonging and being in our world. Vodou is one such religion, whose roots are an entangled skein of myriad origins. Primarily the faith’s principal provenance may be traced to Africa, yet Vodou has also been critically contoured by Catholicism. Only once we understand how cocktails of convictions create new... Read more
By Dr. Jakob Egeris Thorsen* The Pew Forum has published a report focusing on the role of Christianity in Western Europe. The overall results show a region that is ‘non-practicing Christian’ with low levels of church attendance and adherence to key Christian beliefs and doctrine. Furthermore, both church-going and ‘cultural’ Christians are more skeptical than ‘nones’ toward migrants and Islam, which is the dominant religion among recent migrants. In this commentary, I will focus on the some of the survey... Read more
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