Tuesday, October 30, 2007
"THE ROCK" CHURCH AND SYNCRETISM
You may remember my previous blog about Saint Alphonsus Liguori Catholic Church in the Diocese of St. Louis, affectionately dubbed "The Rock." It is primarily a black church. They were featured on a YouTube video depicting liturgical dance.
Not long after that video appeared in Catholic websites the church was struck by lightning and incurred severe damage from fire. There was speculation at the time that the liturgical dance had sparked God's wrath, but perhaps God had more to be angry about.
If you saw this picture with no explanation, what would you think was taking place? My first thought was a Wiccan ceremony--the circle with an altar in the center--the candles. But no, this would appear to be an All Saints Day Catholic Mass taking place within a Cosmogram. There are more photos here. The explanation of the Cosmogram is give at the parish website.
A more detailed explanation of the Kongo Cosmogram is provided at the Levi Jordan Plantation website, provided there by Carol McDavid, who received her Master's Degree from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Houston, and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge, England:
God is imagined at the top, the dead at the bottom, and water in between. The four disks at the points of the cross stand for the four moments of the sun, and the circumference of the cross the certainty of reincarnation: the especially righteous Kongo person will never be destroyed but will come back in the name or body of progeny, or in the form of an everlasting pool, waterfall, stone or mountain.
That is certainly an interesting message for a Catholic priest to be conveying. This is taking place in Archbishop Burke's diocese. I wouldn't call it Catholic, let alone Orthodox Catholic. Would you?
When Christ returns, will He find any faith on the earth?
