What's New

Lineage groups, not the Western nuclear family, have long been the most determinative family structure in Chuuk. Respect, deference and modesty are core cultural values. Respect is demonstrated through distance, deference, and silence.

Easter is the most important feast for Palestinian Christians, and is celebrated in a particularly Palestinian way. In the Christian village of Taybeh, Holy Week is a time of unity.

Funerals serve a highly valued communal function, as the ritual occasion designed in significant part to make families put aside differences and come together in reconciliation.

Though the rules may differ from island to island—Yap proper is traditionally a patrilineal society, whereas Outer Islanders’ cultures, like most of the rest of Micronesia, are traditionally matrilineal—the rules are clear and indisputable. Catholics adaptations of traditional cultural practices into worship give women, rather than men, added, prominent roles at the holiest moments of the church year.

The style of Yapese liturgy is modest and self-controlled. For Yapese, standing is not a sign of respect or reverence. Neither is kneeling. Putting oneself low is a sign of respect, so sitting on the floor through Mass is the standard form of modesty and respect for many worshippers.

At both Christmas and Easter liturgies, dance is incorporated into Catholic worship, to communicate the importance of these days and to help tell the stories behind them. Yapese Catholics spoke about these dances as means to communicate what’s most sacred and deep about the Christian story in their own language and mode of expression.

One of the most distinctive ritual experiences of Yapese Catholicism is a ritual wherein women sit around the image of Christ on the Cross and wail to recount and mourn Jesus’ Passion. Its expressive power is matched in few Catholic contexts.

As is true anywhere, Holy Week is a time of intense liturgical activity in Yap. The liturgy follows the normal Catholic form, augmented by two especially interesting rituals, the doloolow, a mourning ritual at the Cross on Good Friday, and the thanksgiving dance for the Easter vigil.

Yap is the most heavily Catholic of the states in the Federated States of Micronesia. Though this account concerns a quite small community of people compared to the world’s billion-plus Catholics, the ways that Yapese culture interacts with Catholicism are intriguing.

Though Catholicism and Protestantism came late to Chuuk, the islands became almost entirely Christian in a relatively short time. On islands that had once been fiercely resistant to Christianity, the catechists and Jesuits made surprisingly rapid progress spreading the faith.