Tag Archives: catholic

The Color Changing Rosary

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, Texas
Performance Date: 3/30/23
Primary Language: English

Context:

19-year-old S was raised Catholic in Houston, Texas. When she was in 9th grade, she attended her first overnight church retreat. During this retreat, she experienced the Catholic tradition of Adoration, in which the body of Christ in the form of the sacramental bread is displayed for prayer in the church.

Text:

During Adoration, S prayed her rosary, which was a gift from her grandmother. It had lavender-purple faux crystal beads. While praying she was overcome with emotion and started to cry. She put the rosary away and went to confession. Once adoration ended, she left the church and returned to a different building where they broke off into small groups to talk about the experience.

S opened up the little white bag containing the rosary and suddenly noticed that the beads were a bright baby blue. She believed that the rosary had changed color during Adoration, coinciding with her intense emotional experience. This belief was affirmed by the adults leading the retreat, who told her that blue is the Virgin Mary’s color, meaning that she must have performed the miracle. S told her story to the whole room (50+ people) and called her mom in tears to tell her about the miracle. This moment was the strongest she had ever believed in God, but it was probably the last moment she ever believed to that extent as well.


The next morning when her mom came to pick her, S pulled out the rosary to show her. Her heart sank as it was purple again. She snuck back into the youth center and realized the grave mistake: it was only the lighting of that room that had changed the color of the rosary. Immediately she felt embarrassed for having believed such a miracle could have occurred. S says that her belief in Catholicism pretty much declined from there, largely due to other factors but also the humiliation of such an underwhelming event.

Analysis:

S thought she had a personal experience of myth, or the occurrence of a miracle, which is central to Catholic mythology. Often, for people growing up in christian communities, they are instilled with expectations for God’s incessant greatness and love for all his creation. Catholicism especially holds the notion of every-day miracles at its core, preaching that the divine can send little miracles, or head-nods, to acknowledge his creation and the hope of their eventual salvation.

The Christian doctrine creates endless promises to its followers, giving them hope for when hope is absent. However, when such promises are not conceived in any way, people tend to drift away from God. It is an underwhelming and confounding experience, which in turn deters followers from Christian doctrine and introduces them into a realm of harsh reality.

S believed she had experienced a miracle, which was so central to her belief system at the time. However, once she realized her miracle was false, she not only snapped back to reality, but also realized the prospect that much more than just the color-changing rosary was an underwhelming lie. Although she mentioned that other factors played a role in her rift from the church, this instance is symbolic of what happens with many when religious beliefs get flipped on their head.

Sfingi Donuts on St. Joseph’s Day

Background: N is an American of part Sicilian descent who remembers his family celebrating St. Joseph’s day by making traditional Sicilian donuts, or Sfingi, every year.

St. Joseph’s Day, the patron saint of Sicily, is celebrated on March 19th to celebrate the life and legacy of the Catholic saint. According to legend, Sicilians prayed to St. Joseph for relief during an extreme famine and drought. Once he provided them with bountiful crops and rainfall, they promised him a day of devotion in return for his good graces. The festivities usually revolve around a large meatless feast due to its occurrence during Lent.

Text:

Interviewer: “What are Sfingi and how do you make them?”

N: “Sfingi are uh fried dough balls made from flour, sugar, eggs and like ricotta cheese…usually topped with powdered sugar too… I’ve never actually made them, usually just my grandma or mom does…”

Interviewer: “Why did your family choose to make Sfingi for St. Joseph’s day as apposed to any other dessert?”

N: “I don’t know, I suppose because it’s a pretty traditional Sicilian dessert, as far as I know… St. Joseph’s is huge for Sicilians since he’s like the patron saint”

Interviewer: “Do you think they’re the best Sicilian dessert?”

N: “They’re a little too sweet for my taste… but I liked it a lot as a kid”

Analysis:

As reflected in N’s family, sweets like Sfingi are commonplace in St. Joseph’s day feasts and celebrations. The indulgence of a treat like Sfingi can reflect the indulgence that St. Joseph offered the Sicilians in their time of need. Sfingi are a celebration of Sicilian culture and a sign of gratitute to the sweet blessings granted from God and their beloved patron saint. Lent, broadly, is meant to be a time of fasting and abstinence from the luxuries of everyday life. In contrast, St. Joseph’s day stands apart from the rest of lent due to its celebratory festivities of feasting and indulgence. The holiday’s place on the liturgical calendar represents how God’s love can fulfill and serve his followers even in times of great despair and famine.

Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board — Memorate

Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text

“My mom told me this story of when she was playing ‘light as a feather, stiff as a board’ during a high school slumber party. Right as they began to lift a girl, she had a seizure. It was the first time she ever had one, and she was later diagnosed with epilepsy. 

“Since they all went to a Catholic high school and their parents were devout Catholics, the sleepover was immediately disbanded, perhaps out of fear they had conjured some sort of demonic spirit or something. Ever since hearing this story as a kid, I have never participated in those sorts of activities at sleepovers.”

Context

SR is a 20 year-old college student from Thousand Oaks, CA. Her family is Catholic and has Italian roots.

‘Light as a feather, stiff as a board’ is a levitation game played at girls’ slumber parties. It is a sort of ritual that embodies the liminal space between life and death as one girl is chosen to ‘die’ and the others must lift her up. There are certain things to be recited that supposedly make the girl’s body light enough to be lifted or rise on its own, depending on versions of the game.

SR’s mother told her this story to warn her against playing the game. Since the ritual attempts to draw upon some dark magic or power, a Catholic family would not want their kids engaging in such practices.

Analysis

This story is an example of a memorate, a personal experience that gets interpreted into an existing legendary structure. SR noted the Catholic upbringings of all the girls at the sleepover, meaning they all had a degree of belief in the devil and demonic forces; perhaps they had been told stories of possessions and exorcisms as this is something commonly done in Catholic teaching against the devil.

Thus, when something scary happened to their friend, this belief system offered a framework through which to understand the experience. 

This game being performed in the context of a sleepover highlights how belief is a social process. SR’s mother played the game in high school, a liminal time when a child is beginning the transition into adulthood and thus experimenting with belief. Legend questing/tripping is something done within peer groups at this time in an attempt to see if a legend is true.

Many beliefs are acquired from social sources in narrative form. Thus, SR hearing this story from her own mother makes it especially memorable and believable. Regardless of the truth value of the story, the legend is strong enough to discourage SR from doing any ‘legend tripping’ of her own, as she said she never participated in these activities after hearing her mom’s story.

St. Joseph Miracle — Family Legend

Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2, 2023
Primary Language: English

Text

“My great great grandfather from Sicily prayed to St. Joseph for a favor. I believe he had a near-fatal illness and needed healing. Anyways, he got better. So every year on St. Joseph’s day (March 19) he promised to have a big feast in St. Joseph’s honor and invite friends and family to celebrate. He also had a large St. Joseph statue in his home, which now belongs to my great uncle. 

“More widespread, I believe St. Joseph’s day is celebrated in March because it is believed that praying to him brings rain and bountiful spring crops. Creating a table or altar of offerings is commonplace in Italian tradition, but my family goes above and beyond with the festivities to recognize this family legend.”

Context

SR is a 20 year-old college student from Thousand Oaks, CA. Her family is Catholic and has Italian roots. She first heard the story of her great great grandfather’s miracle when she was very young.

“I believe it was first told to me when I was five or six years old, around the first time I met my extended family in New York,” she said.

The extent of her belief in the family miracle/legend has decreased alongside her religious belief.

“I considered it a miracle at the time, but given how little evidence I have for it actually happening and how I’ve sort of grown out of the Catholic faith, I’m definitely skeptical,” she explained. “However, that doesn’t change the fact that I cherish the tradition and plan to share the legend — as something that may or may not have been true — with my own kids one day.”

Analysis

This miracle slowly devolves from a personal experience of myth (sacred truth) to a legend, reflecting the shifting truth value of the story. In this way, this testimonial is a great example of how the major distinguishing factor between a myth and a legend is its truth value to an individual. SR’s skepticism means that she still values the story as a legend and as a site of tradition, regardless of belief. 

The story of a relative experiencing a miracle functions to strengthen a myth (sacred truth) by bringing it closer to an individual. Additionally, SR learned this story in a familial context, which functioned to link myth (religious belief) with family. Social networks have a strong influence on belief.

The myth also functions to naturalize an aspect of SR’s culture, the St. Joseph’s Day celebration, by endowing it with a sacred origin story of why they celebrate the feast day. These family myths/legends function to create a more personal experience of religious (mythic) belief.

Ghost of a Nun

Text: “Okay so, I went to an all-girls Catholic school that was apparently extremely haunted. I went to middle school there as well, and the middle school was on the third floor of this Catholic school and it used to be the old boarding school and the dorms used to be upstairs. The third floor is right next to the belltower. So, there’s this story that there was this nun in the 1900s who got pregnant, and because obviously when you’re a nun you’re not allowed to be pregnant, she jumped off the belltower. People would say they could see her shadow in the belltower at night and there were several girls who also saw another ghost who used to go to the school, and several people reported seeing penny loafers that just disappeared underneath the stall in the girl’s third floor bathroom.”

Context: A school in El Paso, Texas, but both her parents are Mexican and she grew up spending time in both El Paso and Mexico. She was raised Catholic and speaks both Spanish and English.

Analysis: A’s ghost story might be meant to serve as a cautionary tale for the young and impressionable girls that attended A’s school. Catholicism often preaches very strict views on homosexuality and female sexuality, specifically celebrating women who choose to wait until marriage to have sex. Catholic nuns and priests are thought to be in a covenant with God and when they take their vows become celibate. A’s school ghost did not follow her vows and faced the consequences. Moreover, those who commit suicide cannot technically be buried in a Catholic graveyard with their family where the land has been blessed by a priest. Therefore the nun in becoming pregnant set her fate, and in her suicide permanently separated herself from God, so she suffers in the form of a ghost. Ghosts are primarily outside of the canon of Catholicism, although it is common in many churches to light a candle for your ancestors or in the earlier days of the Catholic church to tithe or donate money in order to reduce your ancestors time in purgatory for your sins.