Loveland school seizes rosary beads from student, says they’re ‘gang symbol’

KDVR Fox 31 News in Denver ^ | Sep. 14, 2012 | Tammy Vigil

[terycarl]

you don’t wear a Rosary, you carry it. There are NEVER 13 beads in a section, that is strictly a gang thing and zero tolerance should be the rule of thumb when dealing with gangs.....useless groups of human trash.

[A.A. Cunningham]

He’s tried to pick them up from the office. But the school says they’ll only give them to a parent and his mom can’t make it during school hours because of work.

Waiting, no doubt in vain, for an ACLU shyster to come to the rescue, pro bono of course.

[Moonmad27]

I was raised catholic and it was never worn. One of the projects in early school years was to make a felt pouch to carry one, I clearly recall.

[TigersEye]

There is a lot of MS-13 in Larimer county.

[mc5cents]

A rosary should not be worn by lay people. That is what a scapular is for.

[230FMJ]

I assume you never went to Catholic school.

[Elendur]

There is a lot of MS-13 in Larimer county
///
good point.
and it was my understanding,
that the rosary in question,
haad 13 beads, instead of 10...

[grey_whiskers]

OK -- couldn't they have just told him that "gangs often *wear* the Rosary" and said, "Keep it in your pocket" instead of confiscation?

Zero tolerance...

[Varda]

So was I and it wasn’t worn in any place I lived either. That doesn’t mean that the custom in one place is correct over a custom in another. There is no doctrine about this except as was explained in the link (post 19) above.

[tbw2]

They should be punishing gangs and prosecuting their leaders more severely, not punishing everyone else.
If the gangs switched from Catholic symbols to Muslim ones, they’d be totally protected by administrators. Or wear Sikh gear and gain permission to carry a knife to school.

[DLfromthedesert]

You would be wrong in your assumption. I went when the nuns actually wore habits, and yes, they wore the rosary, but not as jewelry as some are doing today.

[TigersEye]

That’s interesting. Loveland is a relatively conservative community as is Larimer cty on the whole.

[TigersEye]

OK -- couldn't they have just told him that "gangs often *wear* the Rosary" and said, "Keep it in your pocket" instead of confiscation?

I can't say that they didn't. From the little contact I've had with gang banger punks they're pretty disrespectful little smart asses.

[Romulus]

*The junior says he wears rosary beads to protect himself from harm*

Then he is abusing them and should stop, out of respect for other Catholicsat school who presumably don’t like to see sacred objects reduced to a profane or superstitious use.

[bannie]

Sorry folks, this is true. :(

My school also prohibits the wearing of them on the outside of clothing.

Gangs have hijacked the public display of Rosaries, and that’s the way it is. In my area, the beads are arranged to indicate the number “13.”

[mware]

About a decade ago, some of the students in our school began to wear rosary beads outside their shirts.

From what I recall the color of the beads indicated what type of drug you were selling.

As a teacher, I sympathized with the kids that I knew attending Mass weekly but some who wore them were not even Catholic.

[BlackVeil]

My recollections agree with yours, fromthedesert, and rosaries were carried, not worn. Nuns in traditional habit used to hang them from their belt. Many people did, and do, carry them in a pocket bag. Wearing them around the neck is an innovation, of a secular type. One would not easily recite the rosary with it around ones neck.