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Walsh.Dissertation Ch ‘BECAUSE THEY ARE NO MORE’: MEMORIALIZING PREGNANCY LOSS IN JAPANESE BUDDHISM AND AMERICAN CATHOLICISM A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theological and Religious Studies By Maureen L. Walsh, M.A. Washington, DC December 30, 2011 Copyright 2011 by Maureen L. Walsh All Rights Reserved ii ‘BECAUSE THEY ARE NO MORE’: MEMORIALIZING PREGNANCY LOSS IN JAPANESE BUDDHISM AND AMERICAN CATHOLICISM Maureen L. Walsh, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Vincent J. Miller, Ph.D. ABSTRACT In comparative perspective, this dissertation examines contemporary American Catholic and Japanese Buddhist memorial practices related to pregnancy loss. For many women, a failed or terminated pregnancy is a traumatic, life-altering event. Yet, given the prevalence of pregnancy loss—estimations range from 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion in the U.S. and Japan—there has been a marked inattention to this basic human experience. In the last half-century, American Catholics and Japanese Buddhists have developed memorials to attend to grief that accompanies pregnancy loss experiences. These practices represent distinct attempts by diverse religious groups to respond to the reality of pregnancy loss within their communities. In each setting, the new memorials reflect the logic and the values of the theological and ritual frameworks in which they emerged. The analytical categories employed in this study are prenatal theological anthropology and ritual efficacy. Prenatal anthropology refers to Catholic and Buddhist understandings of the significance of fetal life and death in the context of pregnancy loss. Ritual efficacy refers to the purported effects that these memorials bring about through their performance. This dissertation brings these themes together to ask, 1) what can be said about the nature of the prenatal beings memorialized in pregnancy loss rites, and iii 2) what are pregnancy loss rites believed to accomplish by means of their performance? It shows that Buddhist mizuko rites purport to effect a change in the postmortem destiny of lost prenates that helps them attain rebirth in the Pure Land. American Catholic pregnancy loss rites, by contrast, are premised on the belief that lost prenates do not require ritual intervention on their behalf because, in their innocence, they already fall under the protection of God’s mercy and salvific will. Despite these divergent ritual objectives, Japanese Buddhist and American Catholic pregnancy loss memorialization share a concern for the wellbeing of memorial participants troubled by pregnancy losses and worried about lost prenates. They address this concern by clarifying and ordering the postmortem status of lost prenates and by acknowledging the maternal-fetal relationship that has been broken through pregnancy loss. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to acknowledge the many individuals and institutions whose assistance made the completion of this dissertation possible. I am grateful to the members of my dissertation committee, each of whom showed tremendous faith in me and my work through their willingness to accompany me through the tangled research and writing phases of this project. They pushed me to achieve greater clarity and precision in my thought, and the dissertation is undoubtedly much stronger as a result of their insight and guidance. Thanks especially to Vincent J. Miller for continuing to work with me from afar; Francisca Cho for always coupling her critiques with kind encouragement; and Benjamin Bogin for first introducing me to mizuko kuyō. My research was assisted by the many friends and strangers who generously shared their time and knowledge of pregnancy loss and pregnancy loss memorials with me. Thank you to Jeff Wilson at the University of Waterloo for his advice on conducting field research in Japan; Sara Holmberg, M.D., and Erin O’Laughlin, D.O., for clarifying the medical issues involved in pregnancy loss; Tessa Gratton for her keen writer’s eye; Elizabeth Verchio from Victims of Choice; Mary E. Hunt and Diann L. Neu from the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, MD; Susan Vega and Father Larry Toschi from the Oblates of the St. Joseph Patron of the Unborn Shrine in California; Thomas Turner from Bishop Sullivan Center in Kansas City; Father Terry Bruce from St. Elizabeth’s Parish in Kansas City; and the many priests and lay people I encountered during my fieldwork in Tokyo. Thanks also to Georgetown University’s Department of Theology and McKenna Fund for the Summer Research Grants that supported my research in Japan. v I would like to acknowledge the mentors and friends at Georgetown who supported me throughout my doctoral studies, especially John Borelli, Elizabeth McKeown, and Peter Phan. Without the help of Mika Hama, my research in Tokyo would not have been possible. I am grateful for her masterful interpretation skills as well as her friendship. A special thank you also goes to the other members of my doctoral cohort, Jerusha T. Lamptey, Erika B. Seamon, and Anh Q. Tran, each of whom inspired me personally and intellectually during our five years together. Finally, I would like to thank my family for the support and love they gave me as I worked to complete this dissertation. My mother, Patty, my siblings, Erin Flood, Dan P. Walsh, Kara Hoolehan, and Kelly Boling, and especially my husband, Sean M. Gratton, graciously bore the tasks of celebrating my milestones, listening to my frustrations, and encouraging me to persevere. I dedicate the dissertation to my parents, Daniel L. Walsh (1947-2005) and Patricia A. Walsh, who helped me reach this point and to Sean for helping me through it. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..…………………………………………………………………………………………………..........1 Part 1: Pregnancy Loss in Focus—Imagining Fetal Life, Imagining Motherhood…......5 Part 2: Defining the Argument………………………………………………………………………..………..16 Part 3: Chapter Outline……………………………………………………………………………………………..27 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY…………………………………………………………………………………………………………35 Part 1: General Methodology….…………………………………………………………………………….….35 Part 2: Data Sources…………………………………………………………………………………………………..41 Part 3: Conceptual Tools from Ritual Studies……………………………………………..…………...48 CHAPTER 3: PRENATAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN BUDDHISM AND JAPANESE MIZUKO KUYŌ……………………………..62 Part 1: Early Buddhist Ideas about Prenatal Life and Abortion…………………….………….63 Part 2: Contemporary Japanese Buddhist Ideas about Prenatal Life and Abortion…78 Part 3: Scholarship on Mizuko kuyō…………………………………………………………………………...96 CHAPTER 4: CATHOLIC THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGIES OF PRENATAL LIFE………………………………………..113 Part 1: Doctrinal Conceptions of Prenatal Theological Anthropology….……..………..114 Part 2: Images of Childhood in Christian History…..………………………………………………145 CHAPTER 5: MIZUKO KUYŌ AND RITUAL EFFICACY IN JAPANESE BUDDHISM…………………………………………170 Part 1: General Features of Japanese Religion and Ritual Practice…………………………173 Part 2: Japanese Buddhist Funerals and Memorial kuyō…………………………………………180 Part 3: Mizuko kuyō and Ritual Efficacy……………………………………………………………………194 Part 4: Women’s Agency and Mizuko kuyō…………………………………………………………….…212 CHAPTER 6: EMERGING AMERICAN CATHOLIC PREGNANCY LOSS MEMORIALS……………………………………..219 Part 1: Ritual Efficacy and Catholic Memorialization of the Dead— Historical and Contemporary Perspectives…………………………………………………221 Part 2: American Catholic Pregnancy Loss Memorials— Re-narration and Epistemological Efficacy………………………………….………..……229 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..276 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………….…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..283 vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION At the Shrine of St. Joseph in Santa Cruz, California, there sits an oversized bronze statue of St. Joseph cradling a delicate prenatal human figure in his hands. Here St. Joseph is referred to as the Patron of the Unborn, and the statue is part of a memorial commemorating those children lost through miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion. Surrounding the statue, a wall inset with engraved stones names those who are remembered at this site—Aaron, Scarlett, the Two Babies of K.P., the Fifth Moore Baby. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, at Zōjōji Temple in central Tokyo, hundreds of small stone statues wearing red hand-knit bibs and hats dot the temple grounds. The statues represent mizuko, literally “water children”—prenates, neonates, and children that die at the earliest stages of life. Each monk-like statue is a miniature image of the bodhisattva Jizō, the Japanese Buddhist protector of children that die very young, asked by the parents of mizuko to watch over their lost loved ones. The Patron of the Unborn memorial in Santa Cruz is part of a new and growing movement within American Catholicism to recognize pregnancy losses. Across the United States, parishes, dioceses, and other Catholic organizations have developed liturgical rites and memorials that provide a formal way to attend to the grief that often accompanies experiences of miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion. These memorials range from dedicating commemorative plaques at places like the Shrine of St. Joseph, to “miscarriage masses” held at individual parishes around the country, to healing rites that involve “mothering” baby dolls as part of post-abortion ministry retreats. 1 In Japan the practice of memorializing pregnancy losses is already well established. The Jizō statues
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