Moroni’s new mistaken identity

Twice this week, a Catholic publisher apologized for using an image of the Angel Moroni on the covers of two new books.

Everyone who publishes makes mistakes, so I always try to remember what it’s like to err and that it’s best to forgive others in the hopes I’ll be forgiven, too.

That said, there are some interesting things to unpack here.

First, the image involved may be familiar to you, if you follow art competitions sponsored or paintings purchased by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If not, you may be interested to learn that the artist who painted the image used on the Catholic book covers is Jorge Cocco Santángelo, who grew up a Catholic in Argentina and became a Latter-day Saint in 1962.

He developed a style he calls sacrocubism — taking a sacred subject and creating a painting influenced by the cubist movement associated with Pablo Picasso. Santángelo calls his work “art for the spiritual intellect.”

He entered his painting “The Call” in the church’s 10th triennial international art competition and won a purchase award. The church then commissioned 16 more paintings from him about the life of Jesus Christ for the Church History Museum.

On Tuesday, the Catholic News Agency published two stories about how Oregon Catholic Press had placed Santángelo’s “Angel VIII” on the covers of “Today’s Missal Music Issue 2021” and “Respond & Acclaim.”

Whoops. 

“OCP, please, please recall these books!” one person said on Twitter. “This is an image of the ‘angel’ Moroni, which comes from Mormonism. This is not compatible with Catholicism in any way, and is highly inappropriate for a Catholic publisher to place in Catholic parishes. Recall these books immediately!”

Some were harsher. Others were kinder. A couple sounded a more interfaith note, like this one:

“Don't we all believe in the angel in Revelation with the trump? Just because another religion happens to believe similar things — why is this a problem?”

I appreciated that thought. While I think it’s more than fair to be frustrated to find a Latter-day Saint image mistakenly used on Catholic book covers, the harsher tones of some of the Twitter complaints were hardly interfaith-oriented.

The publisher tried an interfaith tone with its first apology, too.

“The sounding of the trumpet at the last is a strong traditional Christian image. We chose this angel because he’s holding a trumpet and what looks like the book that will be opened at the last,” OCP said. 

That tone is fine, but OCP was wrong. Santángelo has stated clearly that “Angel VIII” is part of his Moroni series.

Where I think there is more to learn here is about how to apologize. I once wrote a story where I interviewed some experts about how to do it right and in this case, the publisher compounded the problem with its apology. It reminded me of the baseball announcer fired this past week for using a horrible gay slur on air. His on-air apology before he was fired included the word “if,” which experts say is a poor way to apologize: “If I offended anyone” belies the fact that you are apologizing because people indeed were offended.

The OCP apology issued Monday night didn’t use “if.” Instead, it used its equally troublesome cousin “may”: “We of course apologize for any misunderstanding that this may have caused.”

That only fanned the flames, so to speak.

The initial apology also tried to deflect the blame. For example, it said other websites had “erroneously labeled” as Moroni what it still maintained was a general angel.

Tuesday, it returned with another apology with stronger language: “… we have heard your concerns, we admit our error,” … “we should have done more research. We apologize for this embarrassing mistake.”

Which brings me around to some of the best life advice I’ve ever read, the BYU devotional, “Be 100 Percent Responsible,” by Elder Lynn G. Robbins. It’s free to read or watch, but the story on how he resolved shipping problems at a day planner company would be worth paying for.

Sister Sheri Dew has published her final words to her mother as she was dying in June and what she learned from the experience of being at her side as her mother crossed the veil.

I’m looking forward to exploring the church’s new version of the Missionary Database (40,000 names from 1830-1940), which the Church History Department will soon integrate with the Pioneer Database (80,000 names), according to this Church News story.

This made me sad. A man punched a Sesame Place theme park worker after he asked the man and his wife to wear masks.

This made me happy. NBA star Damian Lillard is literally changing basketball. He takes and makes more shots from 30 to 40 feet than any NBA team. The deep 3-pointer is his basketball superpower, says the Wall Street Journal (pay wall). Two shocking facts: 1. “The average NBA team took 36 shots from 30 to 40 feet this season. Lillard took 125. The rest of the league shot 27% on long 3s. Lillard shot 42.4%.” 2. “By making such a high percentage of his deep ones, Lillard returned 1.27 points on shots from 30 to 40 feet. That’s astonishing. The part of the court that he colonized was more valuable to Lillard than 0 to 10 feet (1.1 points), 10 to 20 feet (0.9 points) or 20 to 30 feet (1.17 points). He’s never been more efficient anywhere else on the floor in his entire career. Damian Lillard from 30 to 40 feet this season was the statistical equivalent of LeBron James within 10 feet.”

Great headline: “A math problem stumped experts for 50 years. This (27-year-old) grad student from Maine solved it in days.” Also a really good story with a better message: “You don’t have to be really ‘smart’ — whatever that means — to be a successful mathematician,” the problem solver said.

I read this piece with real interest about developments in American politics in recent years because it provides some answers to a question I’ve been asking: “Why There Are So Few Moderate Republicans Left.”

The second season of “The Chosen” will be filmed at the church’s ancient Jerusalem movie set in Utah, according to LDS Living.