\n<\/p>\n
Under the half moon, the community gathered, dancing to drumbeats and chanting around a fire. In the circle, dressed in traditional buckskin, two native girls, now celebrating their coming of age, shuffled and moved in patterns traced by their ancestors untold ages ago.<\/p>\n
The following morning, the people who had danced and chanted in their native tongue the previous night celebrated Mass.<\/p>\n
The parishioners of St. Joseph Apache Mission church<\/a> in Mescalero, New Mexico\u2014a church built a century ago\u2014are devout Catholics\u2014and Apaches. For 35 years, an 8-foot painting of Christ\u2014an icon created by Franciscan friar Robert Lentz in 1989\u2014hung behind the church\u2019s altar under a crucifix.<\/p>\n The painting depicted the Savior as a Mescalero medicine man, greeting the sun, a symbol of which is painted on his left palm. In his right, he holds a deer hoof rattle. Greek letters in the upper corners are abbreviations for \u201cJesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n But one morning in late June, parishioners showing up for Catechism class were stunned to see a blank wall above the altar. The initial thought was that the painting, along with another smaller painting and Eucharist chalices and baskets from the Pueblo community, had been stolen. The truth, however, cut deeper.<\/p>\n The church\u2019s then-priest, Peter Chudy Sixtus Simeon-Aguinam, had removed the items under the authority of Bishop Peter Baldacchino of the Diocese of Las Cruces.<\/p>\n The community\u2019s outrage was answered by the diocese\u2019s silence. Not until the media gave the people of the church a broader platform from which to voice their sense of betrayal did the diocese act\u2014returning the icons and replacing Simeon-Aguinam with another priest.<\/p>\n For some, that is not enough. Old wounds have been reopened: the attempts over the generations to cleanse Indigenous peoples of their heathen ways (read \u201ccultural genocide\u201d) and the more recent reconciliation process and apology from Pope Francis in 2022 for the Catholic Church\u2019s part in forcing Native children into residential schools to destroy their culture and separate families.<\/p>\n Church elders Glenda and Larry Brusuelas said the bishop must issue a public apology to thoroughly purge this wrong and make up the damage.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t call or send a letter,\u201d Larry Brusuelas said. \u201cYou face the people you have offended and offer some guarantee that this is not going to happen again. That\u2019s the Apache way.\u201d<\/p>\n Earlier priests understood the intertwining of Indigenous culture with the Catholic faith. Both are inseparable. Both are sacred. Parishioner Sarah Kazhe explained, \u201cJesus meets you where you are and he appears to us in a way we understand,\u201d she said. \u201cLiving my Apache way of life is no different than attending church. \u2026 The mindless, thoughtless act of removing a sacred icon sent a message that we didn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n The church\u2014one of over 340 Native American parishes in the United States\u2014is filled with symbols of the culture. There are figures of teepees and a Last Supper mural depicting Christ and the apostles as Apache men. Paintings of the crucifixion and resurrections are adorned by crowns known as \u201cgame.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the 8-foot painting, Larry Gosselin, the priest who served St. Joseph at the time of its creation and secured approval for its display, said of its artist, \u201cHe poured all of himself into that painting,\u201d explaining that Lentz sprinkled gold dust on himself and skipped showering, using his body oils to adhere the gold to the canvas.<\/p>\n Gosselin believes the painting was \u201cdivinely inspired,\u201d adding, \u201cThis has resonated in the spirit and their hearts. Now, 35 years later, the Apache people are fighting for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Incorporating the motifs and imagery of a culture to better connect with the divine is nothing new in religion and certainly nothing new to Christianity. Over a thousand miles to the south, in Mexico City, is the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe<\/a>, erected to honor the appearance of the Virgin Mary to an Indigenous peasant half a millennium ago. She appeared to him as a bronze-skinned Native woman and spoke to him in Nahuatl, the language of the former Aztec Empire. It is the most visited Catholic shrine in the world.<\/p>\n And in our advanced Western civilization, we depict Jesus Christ not as he likely appeared to his people\u2014a Palestinian man with Semitic features\u2014but as something more suited to our tastes: a white man with features that would blend in with any group possessed of the genetic stuff of white Anglo-Saxon\/Norwegian folk. The trappings of faith are just that\u2014trappings. The Diocese of Las Cruces would do well to consider that truth lest they get trapped by the trappings and lose sight of the faith at the core.<\/p>\n Image credits: St. Joseph Apache Mission<\/a> by Jocnewt, CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![St. Joseph Apache Mission<\/a> by Jocnewt,](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:St._Joseph_Apache_Mission.jpg\"){kind=link}