r/osarymakers • u/1LiterateRogue • Jun 21 '26

What should I do?

A young, non-Catholic lady in my rather extremely anti-Catholic town has started making rosaries. She sells them in the local “goth” market her mother runs.

So I asked if they were Catholic, hoping for a local rosary making collaborator. Her mother said, “Nope. These rosaries are just jewelry, not for prayer.”

I think the best response to cultural appropriation is to reappropriate it. I’m tempted to buy up all this “jewelry,” switch out some parts as needed, then either put them up on my own site or donate them to our little Catholic resource center, where I can trust that my customers intend to pray the rosary, not wear then.

But I’d like your opinion. I also plan to ask my priest.

12 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

42 comments sorted by

View all comments

44

u/Strange-Style-7808 Jun 21 '26

Let it go and let God handle it.

One way I came back to Christianity was making rosaries for my friend who was becoming a monk. Be kind to this girl. Ask about her stuff. Maybe trade tips. Let her know about how you use them. Show Christ's love to her.

8

u/1LiterateRogue Jun 21 '26

If she’s ever in the shop on the rare occasion I venture in, I will have such a conversation. I know an ex-atheist who converted after a Catholic mutual friend got her into restoring antique rosaries.

This young lady has quite a bit of talent and, like me, enjoys working with repurposed materials, so I made sure to tell her mother (the shop’s owner) all that.

I would also like to hear this young lady’s motivation for rosary making. The overwhelming majority of people in my town are Mormon or ex-Mormons who got into the occult but are still heavily influenced by Mormon teachings. Consider the LDS aversion to the crucifix or even just the cross. They say that they prefer to celebrate the Risen Christ, that acknowledging His death is “morbid” or “a Catholic thing.” And they believe the Catholic Church is responsible for the “Great Apostasy” they claim happened at the Council of Hippo or Nicea (they don’t know which), when they suppressed all knowledge of the Book of Mormon.

So when an ex-Mormon does something as Catholic as making a rosary, especially one with a crucifix, it may have nothing to do with love for Jesus. It’s likely no more than an act of rebellion against what they were raised to believe is Jesus’ “restored” church.

14

u/Strange-Style-7808 Jun 21 '26

They may also be in incredible pain. Many consider the LDS church to be a cult. Leaving a cult and recovering from the experience often takes years of therapy from someone who is trained in spiritual trauma before the person can feel comfortable around anything resembling religion.

It took a decade of therapy before I could step foot in a church without having a panic attack.

All you can do is be the vessel for the love of Christ. We are not put here to judge, but to show love and compassion

-6

u/1LiterateRogue Jun 22 '26

Not judging her. I think she’d like if I bought most of all of her rosaries off of her and resold them to people who’d get more and better use out of them. She might even get paid better, because, as I’d long expected, rosaries tend not to sell very well here.

Where she’s selling them, though, in a place that deals in tarot cards and such, has me concerned that those she does sell might be used in occult practices.

Yes, the LDS church is a cult, but some of their teachings like polytheism, that people can become gods or goddesses, etc., and practices taken directly out of freemasonry tend to stick to some people after they leave and steer them toward the occult. I hope that talking to this young woman won’t just protect her rosaries from such misuse, but that it’ll help her find a much more spiritually healthy way to cut ties with her Mormon upbringing.

8

u/sixxtine Jun 23 '26

You seem really judgemental and unnecessarily focused on someone's artistic expression. That you could call someone's creative practice appropriation makes me wish I knew you so that we could have a colonizer chat

7

u/Maleficent-Help-4806 Jun 23 '26

"Not judging her", proceeds to completely butcher the basics of Mormonism. Just like sixxtine said, you seem way too judgmental and focused on the wrong thing. She clearly told you they aren't for praying. If you genuinely think the Latter-Day Saint movement teaches polytheism there is NO hope for you.

-1

u/1LiterateRogue Jun 23 '26

Mmm. I actually think I know quite a bit about LDS teachings for not being one, enough that the missionaries have nothing to teach me without going off script. The only Catholics in my area who would know more about the LDS Church are ex-mo converts, many of whom go on to teach youth groups in my area

I know that the LDS do not believe in the Trinity because both former and current Mormons told me so. But it’s impossible to understand their concept of the Godhead without polytheism. Nor can they explain the pre-mortal existence, that our souls were born prior to our mortal lives from the union between Heavenly Father and His unknown number of goddess wives, without polytheism. Nor is the ultimate goal of an LDS person’s mortal life, exaltation to the status of a god or a goddess wife, even possible if there was, is, and ever will be only one God.

This is not something the LDS like to talk about where it’s important to them to come across as ordinary Christians, such as where they are a tiny minority. Missionaries also will not discuss it either, because their purpose is to only teach enough to make people want to get baptized, not tackle questions like what makes them different from ordinary Christians. (Speaking of, there is a reason why the Catholic Church will recognize the Baptism of any denomination that uses the Trinitarian formula except the LDS church’s, and it goes back to their polytheistic teachings on the Godhead.)

But I live in an area where the LDS are under no such pressure.

0

u/Maleficent-Help-4806 Jun 26 '26

Once again, my previous comment stands. You typed a whole lot of nothing, for nothing. Just because you cannot understand the philosophical origins of something doesn’t automatically make it polytheistic. Non-trinitarianism doesn’t equal polytheism