On the Assumption, Remember Atlantic Was Wrong to Call Rosary-Praying Catholics 'Extremist'
On the Assumption, Remember Atlantic Was Wrong to Call Rosary-Praying Catholics 'Extremist'
“And when [Jesus] had made, as it were, a scourge of little cords, he drove them all out of the temple, the sheep also and the oxen, and the money of the changers he poured out, and the tables he overthrew. And to them that sold doves he said: Take these things hence, and make not the house of my Father a house of traffic.” —John 2:16-17
“When Jesus therefore had seen his mother and the disciple standing whom he loved, he saith to his mother: Woman, behold thy son. After that, he saith to the disciple: Behold thy mother.” —John 19:26-27
A blessed feast of the Assumption or Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary! It is the commemoration of the fact that Our Lady, through a special grace from her Son Jesus, was taken up into Heaven body and soul. The oldest accounts usually recount that Mary “died” or “fell asleep” first (hence the title “Dormition” or “falling asleep” still used in the Eastern rites), unlike for instance Elijah taken up in a fiery chariot, but that Mary afterwards was taken up into Heaven. Some later Western accounts simply recount Mary’s assumption or taking up into Heaven.
As doctrinally defined, Catholics are simply required to believe that Mary was taken up into Heaven both body and soul, a special grace that allowed her to experience already what all good Christians will experience at the Last Judgment, when all souls will receive their bodies back (there are multiple Bible verses about the resurrection of the body, including Acts 24:15).
But on this holy feast day, honoring both Jesus’s Mother and, as always—for Mary is only honored in light of her Son—Jesus Himself, I want to look at an insane article published by The Atlantic, claiming that the rosary is a symbol of extremist, violent nationalism.
The rosary is a prayer that was possibly given first to St. Dominic and at any rate was certainly popularized by him, after Our Lady appeared in a vision to him to recommend the rosary. Contrary to many misunderstandings of it, the rosary is inherently and fundamentally a Scriptural prayer. The prayers required to say the rosary are the Apostles’ Creed, the Our Father (straight from Jesus in Scripture), the Hail Mary (half of which comes directly from Scripture), and the Hail, Holy Queen. Other prayers are often included such as the Glory Be. Each decade of the rosary is to be spent meditating on a different event in the lives of Jesus and Mary, and these match up so closely with Scripture that “Scriptural rosaries,” or reading a passage of Scripture from the part of the Bible matching each decade, is very popular. The mysteries include the Nativity of Jesus, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, the Wedding at Cana, the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Resurrection of Jesus, and the Assumption of Mary.
The beads that people often refer to when they say “rosary” are very helpful for keeping track of where one is in the prayers making up the rosary, and the beads are usually blessed and used as a “sacramental”—that is, an object through which Jesus can give special graces. This is a fundamentally Scriptural idea, as Jesus often uses physical objects in the Gospels to accomplish something—as for instance when he used mud to give sight to the blind man, and told him to wash in the pool of Siloe (John 9:6-7). Jesus certainly didn’t need to use mud and water to heal the man, but He chose to do so.
The Atlantic Aug. 14 article by Daniel Panneton is titled, “How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary.” Sounds like satire, doesn’t it? He tries to argue that people who don’t support mutilating kids for LGBTQ+ ideology or murdering unborn babies are somehow a dangerous threat to society.
First of all, I don’t want to say that there are not those who misuse the rosary as a reality and a symbol. I’m sure there are. Anything, particularly any sacred thing, is always open to abuse. Sometimes even well-meaning people can make mistakes. On the other hand, Panneton’s allegations that the rosary is being used as a “literal” weapon possibly leading to terrorism is ridiculous. How many murders using rosaries have you heard of recently? How many “radical” Catholics go on murder sprees? If they did, you can bet we’d never hear the end of it. Not only that, but Catholics from many ends of the political spectrum use the rosary. Panneton’s arguments are a clever combination of half-truths, twisted Church teachings, and out-of-place quotes.
“[The Atlantic] Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or ‘rad trad’) Catholics. On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.
Their social-media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (‘God wills it’) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants. Influencers on platforms such as Instagram share posts referencing ‘everyday carry’ and ‘gat check’ (gat is slang for ‘firearm’) that include soldiers’ ‘battle beads,’ handguns, and assault rifles. One artist posts illustrations of his favorite Catholic saints, clergy, and influencers toting AR-15-style rifles labeled sanctum rosarium alongside violently homophobic screeds that are celebrated by social-media accounts with thousands of followers.”
Panneton is displaying his own historical ignorance. The connection between the rosary and soldiers/weapons goes back centuries—at least as far back as 1571 and the Battle of Lepanto. At that battle, Christian forces under the leadership of Don Juan de Austria miraculously won a victory over a more powerful Muslim force, saving Europe from invasion and conquest. The pope called for the faithful to pray the Rosary and the soldiers in the battle were issued rosaries as well as weapons. Sudden and favorable changes in the weather on behalf of the Christians aided the soldiers. After the battle the pope, Pius V (who miraculously knew about the battle’s outcome before word reached him), attributed the victory to the intercession of Our Lady through the rosary. The idea that the rosary is not only a spiritual weapon but can actually influence the outcome of physical combat has, of course, been a part of the Catholic mindset since then.
“The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a ‘Catholic cyber-militia’ that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church. These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.”
TERRORISM! Like when those eeeevil Jan. 6 protestors wandered around the Capitol taking pictures and not killing anyone! Not like those loving BLM and Antifa protestors who shot children and burned down cities, of course. I’d sure like to see proof (which Panneton does not provide) that “rad trad” Catholics are connected to terrorist attacks—or even one attack. I mean, radical Muslim terrorist attacks occur on a daily and almost hourly basis around the world, particularly in countries like Nigeria and Afghanistan, but I have yet to see a recent mass murderer who was screaming “Our Lady is great!” and waving a rosary while mowing down bystanders. In fact, Christians were the most persecuted group worldwide in 2021. Am I missing something here?
By the way, homosexual acts (like adultery) are a grave sin. The Church cannot change its teaching on that. Both the Old and New Testaments explicitly say that homosexuality is a grave sin.
“The rosary—in these hands—is anything but holy. But for millions of believers, the beads, which provide an aide-mémoire for a sequence of devotional prayers, are a widely recognized symbol of Catholicism and a source of strength. And many take genuine sustenance from Catholic theology’s concept of the Church Militant and the tradition of regarding the rosary as a weapon against Satan. As Pope Francis said in a 2020 address, ‘There is no path to holiness … without spiritual combat,’ and Francis is only one of many Church officials who have endorsed the idea of the rosary as an armament in that fight.”
Apparently Panneton is unaware that being “Church Militant” requires both a spiritual and physical struggle. The Catholic Church traditionally describes the mystical Body of Christ (His Church) as having three parts, as it were—the Church Militant (those still striving to attain holiness and resist sin on earth), the Church Suffering (those who are saved but are expiating the last of their attachment to sin and earthly things in Purgatory), and the Church Triumphant (the saints in Heaven).
But resisting sin and evil manifestly has a physical component, even aside from fighting murderous radical Muslims trying to conquer and destroy your country, as at Lepanto. Even Jesus Christ, with His boundless love and mercy, used violence at least once—to drive the moneychangers out of the Temple. It’s so important that it’s one of the few stories about Jesus included in all four Gospels (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, John 2). And even atheists used to acknowledge that a man who kills his would-be murderer is not himself a murderer, and that there is such a thing as justified war—for self-defense, for instance. In our increasingly evil culture, where the government and institutions are trying to force everyone to call evil “good,” physical resistance occasionally becomes necessary simply to prevent oneself from participating in evil.
“In mainstream Catholicism, the rosary-as-weapon is not an intrinsically harmful interpretation of the sacramental, and this symbolism has a long history. In the 1930s and ’40s, the ultramontane Catholic student publication Jeunesse Étudiante Catholique regularly used the concept to rally the faithful. But the modern radical-traditionalist Catholic movement—which generally rejects the Second Vatican Council’s reforms—is far outside the majority opinion in the Roman Catholic Church in America. Many prominent American Catholic bishops advocate for gun control, and after the Uvalde school shooting, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, lamented the way some Americans ‘sacralize death’s instruments.’”
Citing bishops who are much more leftist political activists than priests is deceptive. The Church never condemned just warfare and fighting—the idea that clerics support gun control is pretty new, just as the Church taught for almost 2000 years that capital punishment was justified in some circumstances, until John Paul II essentially unilaterally altered those thousands of years of teaching. There can be differences of opinion among clerics on certain subjects. So citing random leftist bishops does not necessarily give you the official Catholic teaching on the subject.
Furthermore, I like how the leftist Atlantic is suddenly piously reverent toward the “reforms” of Vatican II, many of which (such as the new Mass) in fact did not come out of the council itself, but were made afterwards. And most traditional Catholics critique, not reject Vatican II, which is why they’re still Catholic. Nothing like bashing the Catholics who, for all their many flaws, hold to the 2000-year-old teachings and liturgies of the Church in order to make a political point.
“Militia culture, a fetishism of Western civilization, and masculinist anxieties have become mainstays of the far right in the U.S.—and rad-trad Catholics have now taken up residence in this company. Their social-media accounts commonly promote accelerationist and survivalist content, along with combat-medical and tactical training, as well as memes depicting balaclava-clad gunmen that draw on the ‘terrorwave’ or ‘warcore’ aesthetic that is popular in far-right circles.”
And of course Panneton got around to the “toxic masculinity” and anti-Western civilization angle. I’m certainly not going to deny that Western civilization has had a lot of problems over the years, but try looking at other cultures—cultures where women’s feet were broken and bound to make them “smaller” (China), cultures where sexual slavery is still endorsed and sometimes encouraged by religious leaders (Muslim nations), cultures where human sacrifice of children was an important part of religious practice (Aztecs). And the West right now is not so much suffering from toxic masculinity as from effeminacy. For actually toxic “militia culture,” look to ‘Palestine’ or Afghanistan, not American conservatives.
“Like such networks, radical-traditional Catholics sustain their own cottage industry of goods and services that reinforces the radicalization. Rosaries are common among the merchandise on offer—some made of cartridge casings, and complete with gun-metal-finish crucifixes. One Catholic online store, which describes itself as ‘dedicated to offering battle-ready products and manuals to ‘stand firm against the tactics of the devil’’ (a New Testament reference), sells replicas of the rosaries issued to American soldiers during the First World War as ‘combat rosaries.’ Discerning consumers can also buy a ‘concealed carry’ permit for their combat rosary and a sacramental storage box resembling an ammunition can. In 2016, the pontifical Swiss Guard accepted a donation of combat rosaries; during a ceremony at the Vatican, their commander described the gift as ‘the most powerful weapon that exists on the market.’
The militarism also glorifies a warrior mentality and notions of manliness and male strength. This conflation of the masculine and the military is rooted in wider anxieties about Catholic manhood—the idea that it is in crisis has some currency among senior Church figures and lay organizations. In 2015, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix issued an apostolic exhortation calling for a renewal of traditional conceptions of Catholic masculinity titled ‘Into the Breach,’ which led the Knights of Columbus, an influential fraternal order, to produce a video series promoting Olmsted’s ideas. But among radical-traditional Catholic men, such concerns take an extremist turn, rooted in fantasies of violently defending one’s family and church from marauders.”
And we’re back to bashing men. It’s interesting that at a time when suicides of US soldiers are at obscene levels and fatherless homes are creating a crisis that the Atlantic is still pretending that strong men are the problem. Panneton seems to be equating strong masculinity with radicalization. That’s a ridiculous equation to make. A man who is ready to defend his family is not automatically a terrorist—he’s usually a responsible husband and father. “Combat rosaries” are simply a physical personification of the spiritual warfare. If they’re popular with soldiers and those who have to carry weapons for their jobs, no wonder. In a world constantly telling men they are evil or defective for being what and who they are, “combat rosaries” that appeal to the natural male instinct to fight for what he values are sure to be popular.
Also, isn’t it interesting that the leftist bishop who bashed guns was cited by Panneton as if he were an incontrovertible authority, but Bishop Olmstead is treated as if he’s somehow erring from true Catholicism? Panneton is picking his sources based on his political prejudices.
“The rosary-as-weapon also gives rad-trad Catholic men both a distinctive signifier within Christian nationalism and a sort of membership pass to the movement [proof??]. As the sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry note in Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, Catholics used to be regarded as enemies by Christian nationalists, and anti-Catholic nativism runs deep in American history. Today, Catholics are a growing contingent of Christian nationalism.”
Is Panneton equating patriotism with racist terrorist movements of the past like the Know-Nothings? Considering that he uses vague language without providing solid examples as proof, it’s hard to tell.
“Helping unite these former rivals is a quasi-theological doctrine of what Perry and another sociologist, Philip S. Gorski, have called ‘righteous violence’ against political enemies regarded as demonic or satanic, be they secularists, progressives, or Jews. The hostility toward liberalism and secularism inherent in traditionalist Catholicism is also pronounced within Christian nationalist circles. No longer stigmatized by evangelical nationalists, Catholic imagery now blends freely with staple alt-right memes that romanticize ancient Rome or idealize the traditional patriarchal family.”
I love how the same leftists that hate Israel always pretend to hate anti-Semitism when they’re bashing Christians. While anti-semitism has been a problem among Christians (and other religions) in the past, it is silly to pretend that “rad trads” are automatically anti-Semitic. I’m a very traditionalist Catholic, and I couldn’t be prouder of my ethnic Jewish background.
“Some doctrinal differences and divisions remain. Many radical-traditional Catholic men maintain the hard-line position that other forms of Christianity are heretical, and hold that Catholics alone adhere to the one true Church. Christian nationalism’s nativism and its predilection for ‘Great Replacement’ theory alienate some radical-traditional Catholics who are not white or who were not born in the United States, and deep veins of anti-Catholicism persist among far-right Protestants.”
Panneton’s argument even here is involved and distorted. It is Catholic doctrine, rooted in the Bible, that the Catholic Church is the only true Church, meaning that other forms of Christianity are heretical to some degree. Jesus said that the only way to the Father was through Him (Jn. 14:6), and He also founded “my Church,” a Church in the singular (Matt. 16:18). That does not mean, however, that Catholics cannot recognize similarities between themselves and other Christians and work together for a common cause. And, just for context, it doesn’t mean that Catholics who believe required doctrine (go figure) stigmatize the individual non-Catholics they meet. In fact, if they did, they wouldn’t be “nationalistic,” because most of America’s Founding Fathers were Protestants!
Also, what the heck do modern-day devout patriots, Protestant or Catholic, have to do with racism? Panneton’s mention of race (“Catholics who are not white”) is, in my opinion, simply unnecessary. Racial divisions are mostly being caused in the US by leftists, not high-profile Protestant pastors. Donald Trump actually made the conservative movement more diverse than ever, and there are plenty of “non-white” Christians driving the conservative movement right now, like Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears.
As for traditional Catholicism, just as context, the Church has had canonized saints from Africa and Asia and elsewhere for centuries. Catholic saints are a very racially diverse group, and some of the most persecuted yet most faithful Catholics in the world are in Africa. Traditional Catholics hold up more than one African bishop as their heroes (Cardinal Sarah, for instance, is very popular among many traditional Catholics).
“Yet the convergence within Christian nationalism is cemented in common causes such as hostility toward abortion-rights advocates. The pro-choice protests that followed the leaked early draft of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, led to a profusion of social-media posts on the far right fantasizing about killing activists, and such forums responded to Pride month this year with extremist homophobic and transphobic ‘groomer’ discourse. Rad-trad networks are also involved in organizing rosary-branded events that involve weapons training.”
Oh my goodness, Catholics condemn baby murder. Literal terrorists. And as a matter of fact, while pro-life Catholics support institutions such as pregnancy centers, which provide all kinds of free services to mothers and babies and which outnumber abortion clinics in the US, pro-abortion activists have been on a national tear of arson, violence, and calls for violence. I found for MRC Free Speech America over 60 pro-abortion tweets calling for violence after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, for instance, including multiple calls to murder SCOTUS justices.
“Catholics are taught to love and forgive their enemies, that to do otherwise is a sin. But the extremist understanding of spiritual warfare overrides that command. To do battle with Satan—whose influence in the world is, according to Catholic demonology, real and menacing—is to deploy violence for deliverance and redemption. The ‘battle beads’ culture of spiritual warfare permits radical-traditional Catholics literally to demonize their political opponents and regard the use of armed force against them as sanctified. The sacramental rosary isn’t just a spiritual weapon but one that comes with physical ammunition.”
Panneton is twisting the doctrine of forgiveness to support his point. Jesus forgives everyone who asks, and died to save men, and yet He used a whip of cords to drive the moneychangers out of the Temple. Many of the most loving and service-oriented saints in Catholic history have also strongly condemned sin. It is a necessary part of love that a Catholic hates sin and evil while loving the sinner. Jesus specifically adjures his followers to resist sin and wickedness. Struggling against mutilation of kids, ripping apart unborn babies in the womb, and the politicization of Catholic liturgies in not unforgiving or unloving—it is in fact loving, because it recognizes that these evils destroy lives and souls.
Panneton and the Atlantic just mounted a dishonest, insane attack on the very people trying to prevent society from going mad with violence, injustice, and sin. I think we know which side the Atlantic is on in the battle against evil.