6a DECEMBER 4-17, 2015

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER

SPIRITUALITY

A lot more than saintly bones

may be tied up in reliquaries
By MENACHEM WECKER

Delineating what precisely is, and

is not, a relic presents both linguistic
and theological challenges.
Consider the Metropolitan Museum of Arts 19th-century Power Figure (in full: Nkisi NKondi: Mangaaka), created by the Kongo people.
St. Sebastian-like, iron shards pierce
the slightly hunched wooden figure,
whose hands are firmly planted on its
hips. It may evoke a voodoo doll, but
the embedded metal actually marked
treaty signing or vow sealing, per the
museum website.
The figure which appears in the
New York museums exhibit Kongo: Power and Majesty (through Jan.
3) also has a stomach cavity with
traces of medicines that were stored
therein and drew the figures power.
Does that make it a reliquary, and the
plant material a relic?
Strictly speaking, the substances
once hidden in the stomach werent
rare, and they certainly werent bones
of holy men and women. But an intricate and deliberate vessel did house
powerful materials.
Alisa LaGamma, the Mets African art curator who, in 2007, curated Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the
Central African Reliquary and curated the Kongo exhibit, insisted in
a phone interview that the sculpture
isnt a reliquary.
One has to be very specific about
how one uses the term reliquary. The
Kongo power figures are not reliquaries. A reliquary is a work that is specifically designed to exercise a certain
kind of sacra that is related to important and revered individuals, she said.
You just cant apply [the word reliquary] to lots of different religious artifacts. Not all of them are reliquaries.
For most Americans who have
spent time in museums or churches,
the word reliquary is likely to conjure
certain associations: gilded and jewelencrusted receptacles, perhaps shaped
like the body parts of the saints they
purport to protect, displayed in dimly
lit rooms meant to evoke chapels if
not in actual chapels.
But the story of relics and reliquaries throughout history is much broader than just Catholic objects. Islamic
and Jewish mystical traditions have
venerated relics, as have Buddhist
and Hindu practices. And depending
on how much elasticity one is willing to permit the term, secular society
may also be said to adore its own relics and reliquaries.
At the St. Louis-based Pulitzer Arts
Foundation, the exhibit Kota: Digital
Excavations in African Art (through
March 19) explores about 50 Kota reliquary guardians, wooden and metal sculptures that protected ancestral
bones. The exhibit centers on a database of 2,000 Kota reliquaries that Belgian researcher and computer engineer Frederic Cloth developed.
Much of the details surrounding
the Kota reliquaries context and exact uses have been lost, which is part
of the excitement of studying them,
says Kristina Van Dyke, the Pulitzers
former director and the curator of
the exhibit.

al contained within holds for the KonI love the ways these projects make
go power figures as well. So why does
you work harder to think about evithat which looks and quacks like a
dence and what constitutes evreliquary not necessary amount
idence, because you dont
to a reliquary?
have the luxury of a
In the strictest acatextual tradition or
demic sense, a relic recopious oral hisfers to the remains
tory, she said.
of a holy person, or
You just have
some thing or obto think,
ject associated
what clues
with that person,
do these obsaid S. Brent Rojects contain
driguez Plate, visin and of
iting associate prothemselves,
fessor of religious
and how can
studies at Hamilton
I extract those
College and managclues from the
ing editor of the jourobjects?
nal Material Religion.
With objects that
Plate cites the teeth of
are shrouded in mystery, such as the Kota
Buddha, the whiskers from
reliquaries (only six
Muhammads beard, and
highly staged imagsplinters of the true cross
es two drawings
or milk from Marys breast
and four photographs
as examples.
exist of the objects in
Relics are very bodily and are
situ), researchers really
meant to give a sense of continuhave to start with the objects
ity that an encounter with these rethemselves.
mains collapses space and time and
You have to use your
becomes a direct encounter with the
imagination and think:
original person, he said. Thus,
What is here? We know
people make pilgrimages over long
what isnt here, and we
distances to be in the presence of
know what we wish was
them. The objects stand in for the perhere, Van Dyke said.
son who is no longer here.
The Kota figures, she exWhile relic is a neutral term, the
plained, would have
American Protestantbeen attached to basdominated way of thinkMathieu Ferrier ing sees other traditions
kets that contained
A 19th-century reliquary as more superstitious and
relics. It appears
that they are sitting guardian figure from Obam- infatuated with magical
on top of them, pro- ba, Gabon, part of the ex- things, according to Plate.
hibit Kota: Digital ExcavacThe Protestant conceptecting the relics,
tion of Catholics and their
she said, noting that tions in African Art
uses of things, smells and
some of the relibells has been negative, he said. Relquaries also contained relics within.
ics are another one of those things
The baskets would contain bones
of multiple ancestors, and were likely stored in small enclosures outside
of the villages and were accessible
only to the initiated. These werent
Ignatius Jesuit Centre
objects that were shown to just anyA Place of Peace
body, Van Dyke said.
Like European Catholic reliquaries, the Kota figures had precious materials, as well as rare objects such as
manufactured buttons, screws, and
shell casings, applied to them, according to Van Dyke. The objects are incredibly expensive, she said.
When the reliquaries made their
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The Central African reliquaries also
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The gap between the value of the
receptacle and of the sacred materi-

Protestants see as being part of an inferior system.

(Never mind, he says, that Protestant traditions claiming to be more
wrapped up in beliefs than objects create their own bibles and particular
kinds of music and images of Jesus
that cast him in subtle pastels and
calm colors.)
In the ancestral remains in African
reliquaries, theres a marked difference from Muslim and Christian relics, which tend to contain a very small
piece of a single person.
The other difference, Plates said,
is that its probably a lot more likely that the African reliquaries actually contain the bones of the ancestors
they say they contain, while its highly unlikely that the splinter of wood
in the reliquary is actually from the
cross of Jesus.
So the medicines and other organic materials contained in the Kongo power figures, strictly speaking,
arent relics. But Plate says one can
also consider the ways that they functioned in peoples lives.
They may not be bones and true
relics, but for the people involved,
they are treated as such, he said.
That seems much more interesting
to me than trying to give the authoritarian Thats not a relic!
The key, to Plate, is that relics arent
merely symbolic. Theres an actual presence that is believed to be contained in the reliquary, or in close
proximity to it. He admitted, however,
These are, of course, art museum and
art history terms, and they may or may

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DECEMBER 4-17, 2015 7a

NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER

SPIRITUALITY

not mean much of anything to the original people who used the objects.
Interestingly, that actual presence carried particular kinds
of power. For local people,
relics had intrinsic powers, and they might remove particles, submerge
them in water, and then
drink the water, LaGamma said.
Since the ancestral
bones were believed
to be a means to appeal to ancestral intervention in times
of need, as specific
ancestors receded
into the more distant past, there was
a process of decommissioning or retiring old bones and adding those of ancestors
whose memories were
fresher.
You were always upgrading. Certain things
went in; certain things
came out, she said. The
more remote an ancestor
was, probably the less responsive one considered
him or her to be.
Even the Portuguese
missionaries who began arriving in Central Africa in 1483
thought the power
objects were potent.
Prior to 19th centu-

ry, when Europeans began thinking

of the local people as superstitious,
the power figures didnt appear in
European collections. Europeans considered the figures idolatrous, and encouraged their destruction; they did not spare
any examples and bring them
back home with them, as they
did with textiles and ivories destined for princely collections.
They would have had
a sense of their potency for local people, and
they wouldnt have casually collected things
like that, LaGamma said. They would
have wanted to keep
their distance in handling that kind of material.
[Menachem Wecker is a
Washington, D.C.-based reporter and co-author of the new
book Consider No Evil: Two
Faith Traditions and the Problem of Academic Freedom in
Religious Higher Education.]

Courtesy of the Metropolitan

Museum of Art

Power
Figure
(Nkisi
NKondi:
Mangaaka)
a
work of Kongo peoples in
Angola, shown in the exhibit Kongo: Power and
Majesty

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Playing defensive:
my go-to secret sin
By BRIAN HARPER

The virtues we ought to pursue and

the vices we should avoid are usually too stealthy to notice. Efforts to foster love, for instance, might convince
us we have to stamp out hatred, when
fear or apathy are the real culprits.
It is this insight, as well as a deeper commitment to St. Ignatius Daily
Examen, that has helped me discover
my go-to secret sin: defensiveness.
Pride may seem like the natural opposite of humility, but I think defensiveness is just as worthy a contender. On
the surface, they may seem the same,
but I have found there are real differences. While pride is the misplaced belief
that I am superior, defensiveness is my
panicked reaction when I realize I am
not and refuse to accept it.
Defensiveness wears many disguises, but for me, it shows itself when I am
facing or anticipating criticism. I find
myself preparing retorts for an argument that will never occur or compiling counterexamples for criticism that
will end up being constructive.
My reckoning with defensiveness
came to a head over the summer. Pope
Francis was returning to Rome after a trip to South America and held
a press conference aboard the plane.
A journalist asked why he frequently speaks of the rich and poor but
scarcely of the working, tax-paying
middle class.
My blood begin to boil before I even
read the popes response. I pictured
myself in his place, confronted with
yet another question through the distinctively North American lens of another North American reporter.
Do they ever ask about anything
that isnt expressly about the United
States? Pope Brian asked himself, ignoring that the question came from a
German journalist.
Setting my gut reaction aside, I
read on, expecting Pope Francis to
list examples of times he stood in solidarity with the middle class, defended labor unions, or otherwise spoke
in support of people who are neither
rich nor poor.
I got something else.
Youre right, he responded. Its an
error of mine not to think about this.
The popes comments were immediately heralded as another example
of his modesty. The Atlantic carefully documented his exile after serving
as provincial superior of the Jesuits
in Argentina, claiming it was humiliation that led to this humility.
Perhaps it is because humility is such
a rare commodity that Francis straightforward admission of his imperfection
has remained with me as much as anything else he has said or done. My visceral reaction to the German reporters
question suggested I might have something to learn from this encounter.
First, the popes response reveals
that the spirit in which a critique is
offered need not determine the spirit in which it is received. St. Ignatius
Presupposition states, It is necessary
to suppose that every good Christian
is more ready to put a good interpretation on anothers statement than to
condemn it as false.
In other words, we need to give people the benefit of the doubt.

CNS/Paul Haring

Pope Francis answers questions from

journalists aboard his flight from
Asuncin, Paraguay, to Rome July 12.

There are unquestionably journalists who approach the pope combatively, hoping to catch him off-guard. I
have no idea what this German reporters modus operandi was, but in focusing on what he said and not whether
what he said was meant as an affront,
the pope was able to accomplish something few other leaders do: get to the
heart of a relevant question.
This presents another problem with
defensiveness: It is concerned with
self-preservation, rather than truth,
love or anything else that is good,
right and just.
Admitting we are wrong is painful;
it publicizes a flaw. This is hard for
any of us, but I would venture it is especially so for someone who can infallibly speak ex cathedra. If holiness is
our pursuit, though, we must dismiss
vanity and the instinct to protect our
self-images.
Finally, Francis approach demonstrates the paradoxical benefits of St.
Thrse of LisieuxsLittle Way. While
our society not-so-subtly promotes fostering a healthy ego and sticking to
ones guns, Francis simple acknowledgment of oversight reverberated far
more than any politicians promise to
never apologize.
Power, as St. Paul said, is perfected in weakness.
The world offers all of us many opportunities to practice defeating our
defensiveness.
As a white male, for example, I might
feel uncomfortable with a national conversation about the insidious racism
and sexism that exist in our schools,
workplaces and cities, because that dialogue lays bare the extent of my privilege. Nevertheless, how can I do a
better job making the embarrassing
concession that I experience an unbelievable degree of privilege every day?
How can I do better listening to and
working beside people who suffer discrimination that I do not?
Choosing not to play defense and
asking these sorts of questions is
challenging. If we are to believe Francis, St. Thrse and Jesus, however,
the path of the meek, weary, burdened
and heavy-laden, while not the way of
the world, is the way that leads to life.
[Brian Harper is a communications specialist for the Midwest Jesuits. He contributes to
NCRs Young Voices blog at NCRonline.org/
blogs/young-voices.]