"Baby Shower" - Family Drama - Help!

[13pollitos]

With respect to the “Wiccan Blessingway Ceremony”, Wicca was founded in 20th-century England and has gone on to appropriate pagan customs from all over the place. I understand that within Wicca, this is controversial and some practicitioners only cleave to one particular tradition of Wicca, such as British Traditional Wicca. It seems like a bit of a reach to me to have a Wiccan appropriating a Native American tradition, but since the overall ceremony doesn’t bother me that much (as I said above) and I haven’t been to a baby shower since I was about 10 years old, it’s not my issue to get het up over.

The typical American idea of a baby shower is to love and support the mom by gifting her with stuff that she will need for the baby and that she would otherwise have to buy. While this might not be the form of support that some moms want, and they might prefer something like the Blessing Way Ceremony where the focus is on prayers and good thoughts for the mom as I understand it, I think a lot of moms are pretty happy with the traditional shower and see it as a form of support.

Really, it’s up to the mom to decide what kind of shower she wants to have, but it’s also understandable that if she wants to have any kind of religious-seeming activity going on, and is planning to invite people of different faiths, some people might be uncomfortable and not want to attend.

That sounds quite a bit like Christians and some of the newly formed denominations. Especially the non trinitarians that claim to be Christian.

I agree that no one should participate in another religion than their own. Like I said, it bothers me that the Catholics in my culture and my husband’s culture will many times pay the witches to perform these ceremonies and healings and claim it is simply culture and not what it really is—paganism.

I’ve never had a baby shower but I’ve been to a few. It’s not something I care about either way honestly. It just amazes me that someone could call this either a mockery or appropriation when the couple is pagan. It was known before hand that they are pagan and it wasn’t exactly hidden that it would contain pagan elements at least.

If it were me, I would have had a “prior engagement” or “something came up” that made it impossible to make it. I wouldn’t say what was wrong or bothering me because it would only cause hurt feelings. I grew up in a culture and spent a lot of time living within another that has a lot of that kind of stuff in it. We stay as far away from it as possible.

 

[heidi_storage]

Traditional Native American religion is pagan, quite as much as Wicca. I don’t see that the ritual being Native American makes it any less objectionable from a religious standpoint.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

You kind of missed the point of the above discussion, which was not about religious appropriateness but whether cultural appropriation was going on.

The OP is uncomfortable with the ceremony regardless of its origin, which is fine. Another poster said the cultural misappropriation would bother her so we began to discuss that.

In addition, I think it is helpful, even if you don’t want to participate, to know where ceremonies actually come from so that one can discuss them intelligently and not just lump it all together as “generic pagan”. That would be like lumping all Protestant faiths together as “generic Protestant”.

 

[heidi_storage]

Perhaps you didn’t mean to convey the impression that you thought a ceremony being Native American makes it somehow less religiously offensive than a Wiccan ceremony would be, but nevertheless you did convey that impression. And if we’re talking about a pagan ceremony, I don’t really care about its provenance–Wiccan, Native American, Hindu, whatever–it’s contrary to Christianity.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

Since you seem so focused on this issue, let me make it perfectly clear what my “position” is. I’ve said about three times I’m not particularly bothered by the mom-to-be having a “Blessing Way” ceremony and I wouldn’t be bothered if it were Wiccan either, though it would make me chuckle a bit about Wicca being such a hodgepodge.

I don’t know if I personally would want to participate in the ceremony either way; it would depend on a lot of other circumstances, as I understand there are many variations of what is actually done and some might be okay with me, others perhaps only if I knew the mom-to-be very well, and still others not okay.

You and the OP are entitled to your opinions and I am fine with anyone who doesn’t want to participate in any such ceremony and have been supportive to the OP’s views throughout the thread.

Have a nice day, muting now.

 

[TheLittleLady]

I attend religious services of non-Catholics (while always keeping my Mass obligation). We Catholics are not forbidden to go visit a Temple or a Mosque or a Synagogue or Pow Wow or even a Pagan ritual. This does not mean we participate, any more than my non-Catholic friends would receive the Eucharist when they come to Mass.

We can sing and pray together.

 

[13pollitos]

That would be like lumping all Protestant faiths together as “generic Protestant”.

This does happen a lot. There are even “collective protestant services” in many areas, including every Sunday in military chapels around the world. A lot of Protestants move between denominations depending on where they are living or which town they are visiting. One of the first things most protestant families do when they move to a new area is to shop for a church. The church chosen is not necessarily the same denomination they were in before they moved either. My neighbor goes to the “generic protestant” (her exact words) church in a town next to ours, but when she visits family she goes to the disciples of Christ church she grew up in, and when she’s in Springfield where she does business she goes to an independent baptist church. It’s not that unusual, at least in the south and Midwest.

Many pagan beliefs and ceremonies overlap with simply different names for the gods and goddesses and ritual/ceremony. Other times the similarities are greater than the differences or nothing offensive is contained even if it’s different. Also, there is a “generic pagan” group (church?) that meets for worship and rituals not far away too. They call themselves “generic pagan” or just “pagan” and I’m sure they probably pull from a variety of beliefs.

 

[runningdude]

One of the requests in the shower invitation that was sort of lost on me, was that they asked everyone to being a special “bead” that would be used to make a necklace for the mother to wear during labor. In fact, there was going to be a “bead ceremony.” The invitation also said that there would be an “altar” (!!) if you wanted to bring something to put on it for the health of the baby or whatever. What exactly this was supposed to be, I didnt’ know, but it sounded weird, but sadly typical of them.

Unpopular opinion perhaps, but Catholics are permitted to attend and minimally participate in non-Catholic, even non-Christian, worship services. Catholics may participate in portions that do not contradict or insult the faith; for instance, a Catholic attending a bar mitvah may wear a yarmulke. A counter example, the Book of Acts strongly discourages Catholics from eating meat sacrificed to pagan gods.*

Merely stringing beads onto a necklace is not the kind of integral pagan worship that a Catholic is obviously prohibited from participating in. Beads, however, have been included in Christian worship (ie, the Rosary), in part to make Christianity less foreign to those who grew up pagan. Some pagan traditions have even been completely stripped of any inappropriate worship elements (ie, birthday candles!).

I was upset that she was trying to force “compliance” for something that was supposedly a silly party game.

It sounds as though your relative wanted a memento to carry with her during birth to remind her of her loved ones. It is important to approach things with the family members perspective in mind. Treating the necklace as something weird and “off the deep end”, when it is kind of a sweet gesture, comes off as kind of mean.

If a Catholic asked for a photo of a loved one to put in a locket, or in a baby book, and were refused, she would understandably be hurt.

If it were my family, I might have brought a neutral bead, with perhaps a shamrock or flor de li to show family solidarity, but with just a subtle hint of the Christian message. The goal must always be to evangelize, and to avoid rejecting the those opportunities to connect.

*(The Book of Acts records Saint Peter issuing a discipline against such consumption; I am uncertain whether that discipline is still in effect - any subsequent pope could have modified or rescinded the discipline).