Response

 There has been quite a reaction to an article in the Atlantic about the rosary as a symbol for extreme right views.  Here's my response:

Hello and thank you for waking me up this morning!

     This article  hit home with me.  The article by Daniel Panneton did the opposite of what he intended. He is the manager of an Anti-Hate Research and Education Project.  He also is a product of his time and culture.  His articles defend the current cultural climate.  Any criticism of mainstream media, government, opinion, he interprets as "Hate."  Defending the mainstream is his shtick.

      That being said, he doesn't think deep enough.  When there are pro-life people praying in front of abortion clinics, he doesn't see that.  He sees anti-government, radical religious nut cases shaking rosary beads.  They're holding up posters of bloody abortions and waving their rosary beads.  He sees people with rosaries accosting potential people who need help. When there are protesters protesting nuclear weapons, he sees them brandishing rosary beads. At the border with Mexico, Cardinal O'Malley reached out to people holding rosaries through the slats in the wall--what an affront to the law!   IOW, he sees the rosary as an obvious symbol, and doesn't hear the praying, nor think of the reason.  He's too entrenched in our secular world to have eyes that see and ears that hear. 

     People should criticize Panneton's article and call out the bigotry that the labeling inferred.  But I'd like to throw my opinion into the soup.  In my frame of reference, belonging to a Lay Dominican prison fraternity, Panneton is on to something in seeing extremism in the people who brandish their beads.  I see it, too.  Oh, I definitely see it.

The Latin Kings wear their rosary beads proudly.  They will willing explain to you that anyone wearing white beads is an "inquirer," the black and gold beads are for all members, two gold beads are for a leader, and if their rosary is all black beads, then they're murderers but they look upon it as enforcers/assassins. Honor killings aren't murder. Then there are the Netas.  They come from Puerto Rico and wear 78 red, white, and blue beads that symbolize the 78 towns in Puerto Rico. I know of one more gang, the Sureno.  They wear a necklace of 13 beads.

     Rosary beads are a popular tool for gangs. Gangs are extreme!  I also can assure you, that most, if not all, of these rosary bearers, never pray their rosary.  Daniel Panneton has obviously never prayed a rosary, either.  I will give him the benefit of doubt, that he didn't reflect too much before he submitted that article.  After all, he works hard to expose "hate."  I don't think he meant to water the seeds of anti-Catholicism.  But I do blame the Atlantic magazine for using misleading headlines, dubious captions, subtitles and pictures, to beguile readers into reading their anti-Catholicism nonsense. 

     Just as God can turn bad into good, so Satan can turn rosaries into extreme tokens.  We aren't fighting against "flesh and blood," but against the dark spiritual forces of evil.

Veritas!

P.S.  I have already called attention to this article in this post.