Faith

© Julie Lonneman

St. Kateri has been a controversial figure in the centuries prior to her canonization. Indeed some of that controversy remains.  As is the case with many individuals who gave up the beliefs of their community to embrace the faith of others, there are conflicting thoughts about her among Native Americans. Devotion to St. Kateri has been strongest, not among the Haudenosaunee, but among the tribes and first nations of the western half of North America. It was among the plains tribes in the Dakota's and in Montana that an annual Tekakwitha Conference conference was established to strengthen and affirm the faith of Indigenous Catholics. The organizations name reflects the fact that it finds inspiration in the faith journey of St. Kateri

Certainly her faith is inspiring, but an aspect of St. Kateri's faith that I've not always know how to get my mind around has been her practice of mortification. We know through the Jesuit records that she and her companions frequently practiced often extreme forms of self chastisement and mortification. Indeed, the Jesuits themselves were shocked by the extent of their penitential practices, and tried to mollify their zeal with the introduction of more regulated European practices (see Allen Greer's Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits). Dr. Greer attempts to bridge the gap between the modern era at St. Kateri's time with an appeal to Nietzsche's conceptualization of christian asceticism. In summary, we in 21st century society are rarely made to suffer physically. We crave comfort and are disconnected from the corporeal realities that were so much a part of everyday life just a century ago. The ubiquity of bodily suffering in the past could precipitate an existential crisis if suffering could not be given meaning. Ascetic practices were one way that suffering could be given meaning and mastered. This observation makes a lot of sense to me. As a victim of epidemic disease, physical infirmity, warfare, and emigration, St. Kateri's adoption of ascetic practices may have been a way in which she gave meaning to this suffering.

A more compelling point of view, I think, I've found in Neal B. Keatings' Iroquois Art, Power, and History. I've been reading this book in tandem with a few others on the same subject, and my understanding of St. Kateri's ascetic practices has been heavily informed by information I've gleaned from authors discussing Haudenosaunee ritual, specifically the adoption ceremony that figures prominently in the initiation rites of the Mohawk community. The Iroquois viewed warfare as a way of expanding their community. The adoption ceremony often included torture, physical trial, and extreme physical endurance through which individuals were reborn into their adopted community. I don't think it's too far a stretch to say that St. Kateri could have understood mortification and penance in this light: as her initiation into her new faith. It is important to note however, that this initiation did not proceed upon a European, but rather a Mohawk path. She was making the catholic faith her own.

This, I think, is very significant. The traditions we've learned from a young age are very important, but ultimately we must all climb the mountain ourselves and make them our own. I like how Dylan Thomas expressed it in his poem No Man Believes.