I figure I would have received at least six really good ruler shots, square on the knuckles, had I even thought to wear my rosary around my neck.
Such a look just wasn’t done.
You maybe wore it gently laced between your praying hands during Mass or carefully tucked into its case afterward. Never as jewelry. We were taught this.
Now comes 13-year-old Cainan Gostnell, a seventh-grader at Mann Middle School in Colorado Springs who likes to wear a cross on a chain. Cainan heard a school announcement telling students they needed to take off or tuck in religious jewelry.
Cainan “loves Jesus and should be able to wear (a Christian symbol) outwardly as he chooses,” his mother, Rebekah, told the Colorado Springs Gazette the other day.
School officials have since clarified that religious headcoverings, a cross, a Star of David — all of that is fine.
Nonetheless, the Gostnell family is threatening a lawsuit if the school doesn’t give them written assurances that Cainan can wear his cross.
The family’s lawyers at the American Center for Law and Justice say “schools cannot prohibit students from exercising their constitutional rights of religious expression — whether it’s wearing a cross or a rosary.”
The school announced the ban, the district said, because some gang members are wearing rosaries of various colors as symbols of gang unity.
It was not taking a stand against the rosary, the school district said, any more than schools that ban hats, certain colors of clothing and the like. It says it has an interest in keeping its kids safe.
Is banning the rosary a violation of religious expression?
The Rev. Msgr. Robert E. Jaeger, in a statement from the Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs on Tuesday, supported the school.
“Rosaries are not intended to be worn as jewelry,” he wrote. “Students who have a devotion to the rosary should be encouraged to pray the rosary rather than wear it around their necks.”
It’s nice to know at least some things never change.
Lost in the threat of a lawsuit is that the rosary is now a gang symbol. Really?
I called the Rev. Leon Kelly, who knows of such things.
He has run Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives in Denver for more than 20 years, working to keep kids out of the gang life and counseling current and former members who want to put their lives straight.
The rosary-as-gang-symbol goes back at least 10 years, he said, and got its start in California and Texas prisons.
“Prisoners can be very creative when they have to be,” Kelly said. “Not even corrections officers figured it out for a long time. Who would think it could be anything other than a rosary?”
All gang symbols and paraphernalia are contraband in prison, he explained. Rosaries come in all different colors, but in prison, the most common colors were always the gang colors of red and blue.
“It was like when schools began banning certain clothing, colors and hats,” he said.
“Suddenly, you began seeing kids wearing these small, tiny earrings colored red or blue, a simple sign the untrained eye wouldn’t notice, but another gang member would.”
For gang members in Colorado, the rosary serves a dual purpose, he said.
“It is both a color thing and a religious one,” he said. “They grew up with them. Their mother or their grandma had one. So they respect it. It represents for them their ‘hood and Christ. Think about that.”
It appears some things do change. And ridiculously so.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
