Bishop Barron Responds | “The Atlantic” Article on the Rosary BishopRobertBarron
Friends, the insinuation that the rosary is caught up in mindless militancy is so offensive. Spiritual warfare has nothing to do with guns and knives and has everything to do with prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and using spiritual weapons against dark powers both visible and invisible. Please join me in praying for the authors and the editors of the Atlantic. If you are new to the rosary and want to learn how to pray it, or want to pray it along with me, here are a few other videos I've recently created... Why Pray the Rosary?: https://youtu.be/vE247jOt4AA How to Pray the Rosary: https://youtu.be/HXcWknfC0vI Pray the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary: https://youtu.be/ckUJRg04jyg Pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary: https://youtu.be/ry7FbjkN-p0 Pray the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary: https://youtu.be/WoJ1hQTVdSo Pray the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary: https://youtu.be/b2EjBt2PFpc
How Extremist Gun Culture Is Trying to Co-opt the Rosary
Why are sacramental beads suddenly showing up next to AR-15s online?
By Daniel Panneton
AUGUST 14, 2022
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About the author: Daniel Panneton is a writer based in Toronto, Canada.
Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or “rad trad”) Catholics. On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.
Their social-media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (“God wills it”) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants. Influencers on platforms such as Instagram share posts referencing “everyday carry” and “gat check” (gat is slang for “firearm”) that include soldiers’ “battle beads,” handguns, and assault rifles. One artist posts illustrations of his favorite Catholic saints, clergy, and influencers toting AR-15-style rifles labeled sanctum rosarium alongside violently homophobic screeds that are celebrated by social-media accounts with thousands of followers.
The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church. These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.
The rosary—in these hands—is anything but holy. But for millions of believers, the beads, which provide an aide-mémoire for a sequence of devotional prayers, are a widely recognized symbol of Catholicism and a source of strength. And many take genuine sustenance from Catholic theology’s concept of the Church Militant and the tradition of regarding the rosary as a weapon against Satan. As Pope Francis said in a 2020 address, “There is no path to holiness … without spiritual combat,” and Francis is only one of many Church officials who have endorsed the idea of the rosary as an armament in that fight.
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