青年涩导航

The Boisi Center was honored to host Gustavo Morello, S.J., a professor in the sociology department at Boston College, for the first luncheon colloquium of the semester. He began the luncheon by explaining how church attendance was no longer an adequate way to measure the religiosity of a society. As a sociologist, he advocates for looking for religion where it might not traditionally be found and asking more nuanced questions about its expression. One of his research projects involved asking people to send him photos of things that helped them connect with the transcendent. When many of his participants sent in pictures of their tattoos, he decided to take a deeper dive into this trend.

Morello found surprising parallels between tattoos and religious practices. He argued that getting tattoos can be seen as a ritual in itself. Tattoos operate under a sacred system of meaning for individuals, there is an investment of pain, risk, and money, and one has to carefully discern and commit to what tattoo they want for themselves. Morello joked that, at times, tattoos are chosen more carefully and are more permanent than modern marriages. Tattoos are a particularly important way for the growing unaffiliated population to express their beliefs, since there are not many other non-religious rituals that allow this.

After discussing these parallels, Morello briefly explained the different types and history of sacred tattoos. He distinguished between eight different types of these tattoos, including tattoos that represent foundational experiences, pilgrimage tattoos that prove someone has made that journey and changed from it, and tattoos of resistance to trauma. Historically, Morello mentioned that the oldest sacred tattoos were recently discovered on an Egyptian mummy. Other cultural and religious groups such as Native Americans, Christians, and Muslims also shared in this practice. One report from a 19th-century Redemptorist in the New World even mentioned how the tattoos of Native Americans reminded him of Christians with tattoos from their pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Morello wrapped up his luncheon by reflecting on the lack of research about tattoos, despite their historical and cultural prevalence.听

In the Q&A session, one audience member asked about any patterns that were noticed when researching this topic. Morello said that although the correlation was small, he noticed some alignment between location and symbolism: scripture tended to be on arms, a symbol of protection on backs, and a large number of resilience tattoos on injured or ill body parts. He also mentioned that people with tattoos tended to be from the extremes 鈥� rich or poor 鈥� of society. The middle-class was the most averse to tattoos. The final question asked about how Morello became interested in tattoos. He said he found his niche in his initial research and ran with it. The Center was lucky to learn from his journey of discovery about this fascinating and under-researched part of human culture.