The Cross as Religious and Secular Icon

The image above is a piece of the destroyed World Trade Center pulled from the wreckage a few days after 911. Two beams crossed at a joint is an architectural necessity. Two beams crossed could also be a religious symbol or icon.

The above icon was on site at the new World Trade Center rising. It was temporarily moved two blocks to the side of St. Peter’s RC church on Church Street to make way for new construction. It will be returned to the finished WTC II. There will be no problem with a possible religious icon being displayed on private or corporate property, which the WTC is.

Ran into the following story whereby an American Legion War Memorial got put up in the California desert, with a cross, over eighty years ago. Somebody sued the government, the owner of the public land where the war memorial sits, and the case has been in and out of court all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court found in favor of the memorial.

Mojave cross at center of court fight reported stolen

A war memorial shaped like a cross that has been at the center of a Supreme Court fight has been torn down by vandals from its remote perch in a California desert….

The high court on April 28 ruled the cross did not violate the constitutional separation of church and state. The American Civil Liberties Union, which had brought the original lawsuit to have the cross removed, promised to continue the court fight….

The Latin cross was first erected in 1934 by a local VFW unit to honor war dead. It has been rebuilt several times over the years, and Easter services are held annually at the remote desert site. The site is on national park land that totals about 1.6 million acres, or 2,500 square miles….

The justices did not completely resolve the fight over the fate of the cross, but the conservative majority re-affirmed recent rulings that there is a limited place for religious symbols on government land.

"It is reasonable to interpret the congressional designation as giving recognition to the historical meaning that the cross had attained," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy. "The Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society."

Other quotes from this Supreme Court case that overturned the objection to this one case in particular but not setting any future precedents on the matter:

Supreme Court overturns objection to cross on public land

To Kennedy, the cross "is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs" but a symbol "often used to honor and respect" heroism.

He added: "Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten."

Dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens said: "The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith."

As I have stated in this blog previously, I, as a secularist, do not object to all religious icons that have been there for decades and are therefore “grandfathered” so to speak into American public spaces and landscapes.

Now, with this haphazard crony nomination of Elena Kagan to the future 2/3 Catholic and 1/3 Jewish U.S. Supreme Court, I have to wonder if opinions such as by Justice Kennedy should not be more aptly labeled in the future as the opinion of Catholic Justice Kennedy.

My feeling is that all future cases to the Supreme Court will be tainted in terms of the extremely narrow cultural/religious diversity now seen on the Court.

So it goes.

Mary - Mother Earth

In the back stair unofficial R.C. story telling culture of nuns in my youth, the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe was one of those strange but miraculous stories that sticks with you the rest of your life. Stories, myths, legends come and go and bind cultures. Mary fills a lot of niches in our global diversity.

Through my casual studies of esoterics and myths over the decades, I keep coming back to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Wikipedia makes mention of the concept that Mexicans have faith in only two things, the National Lottery and the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Of course eggheads and historians will tell you that the Marian apparition of Mary on a hill just outside Mexico City is in fact an overlay of the Mexican goddess Tonantzin, or Mother Earth. Etc. One has to wonder sometimes why one image, one icon sticks out and stays with the human spirit and culture.

As being pretty much a Cultural Christian from the Protestant side of the spectrum, Mary, the mother of Jesus has been relegated very little space, comment, devotion since Martin Luther’s reformation.

In my Catholic youth, the Mary Icon, (not an idol) was a major part of all R.C. church architecture and devotion.

I do not venerate saints. I pray directly to God.

Some years ago, I thought that from a cultural or an artistic point of view, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe would be a great idea if you scraped away a lot of the added on silver paint and cherubs which were added after the appearance of the original image.

A streamlined Virgin of Guadalupe I thought would be a good cultural christian icon. It would be something to match so much of the pagan add-ons since the early church and the basic Jesus – to be a useful secular, cultural, not sacred image.

The above image would fit into that agenda image concept of mine.

Of course I do not feel comfortable with Marian apparitions especially when people see Mary in a french fry or on calcium stained windows on an office building of I think in Florida.

Icons in Christianity are part of the mysticism of getting into a spiritual mood or feeling. This is not unlike breathing exercises in yoga or Buddhism. What ever works in a spiritual sense changes from geography to geography and culture to culture.

In any case, I show great respect to the beliefs of other people, cultures and religions. I expect the same measure of respect in return.

Have a thoughtful day.