Catholic tattoos are distinct from other religious or secular tattoos due to their unique imagery. The rosary, depictions of Mary, Saints, or Christ in suffering, medals, and crosses are some examples.^[11] I have corroborated the personal interviews I conducted with published interviews (included in the bibliography) to help guide my interpretations of these kinds of religious tattoos. My interviewees were two white, middle-class men from Nebraska in their mid-twenties. Both were raised in the Catholic Church and intended for their tattoos to feature recognizably Catholic imagery. The first interviewee, Spencer K., received his tattoo at age 19.^[12] It is his first and only tattoo and it depicts the outline of a cross filled with the head of Christ wearing the Crown of Thorns in black ink (Figure 1).^[13] Christ’s head is tilted downward with his eyes closed. Details of the crown’s thorns and strands of Christ’s hair extend past the boundaries of the cross, suggesting that the cross is an open portal to Christ.

Images of Christ on the cross wearing the Crown of Thorns are common in Catholic iconography. An example of this theme from the fifteenth century (Figure 2) includes the basic elements of Christ’s suffering during the crucifixion that Spencer K. emphasized in his tattoo. The second interviewee, Brent P., received his Catholic tattoo at age 18 as a memorial to his grandfather, Benjamin.^[14] The tattoo features a black ink rosary of St. Benjamin that appears to be draped over Brent’s shoulder (Figure 3).^[15] It is one of Brent P.’s two current tattoos (the other is secular). The rosary—a Catholic form of prayer beads—usually appears in images of Mary or saints who hold a rosary in prayer (Figure 4).

Catholic tattoos also draw on the significance of ritual in Catholic practice. The process a recipient goes through to obtain a tattoo is in fact inherently ritualistic. It includes a set of well-established steps guiding the experience and producing a permanent memento. In the case of Catholic rituals, such as the performance of the Eucharist, the ceremony ends with the final effect of spiritual and physical transformation for both participants and audience members. The ritual of tattooing mimics this result through the creation of the tattoo.

The ritual process begins with the tattoo recipient deciding on a design, the motive or meaning, the tattoo location, and the tattoo artist. The order of these steps varies but all are necessary to the ritual. Once the recipient finalizes these details, the tattoo session has its own set of rituals that start with the artist following health and safety guidelines to prepare the recipient’s body followed by rituals of aftercare that the recipient must complete for proper healing.

Much like Catholic rituals, the tattoo ritual connects the mind and body and designates them as equal participants. For most people, getting a tattoo—particularly a large one featuring color and/or shading—is painful and time-consuming. It requires the recipient to be both determined and in control of their body by focusing their mind on pain management and stillness. This focus also creates physical self-awareness and bodily presence, making the recipient acutely attuned to the physical state of their body during the process.

The voluntary pain of tattooing is closely related to the Catholic desire to emulate the suffering of Christ because it connects the body and mind through physical pain. As Porterfield has observed,

The suffering, broken body [of Christ on the cross] has long been an object of compassion and inspiration to prayer… extreme instances of starving, flagellating, and otherwise punishing the body have often been associated with sanctity [in Catholic Thought].^[16]

Although practitioners of contemporary Catholic thought venerate the body for its role in devotional practices and rituals, they also regard the body as a sacrificial tool to honor the divine. Following this line of reasoning, receiving a religious tattoo is in essence a mainstream expression of Catholic thought, even though it is not a devotional act that is officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Religious tattoos represent a popular culture interpretation of Catholic teachings and the liberties practitioners take with these teachings in the daily, seemingly profane realms of lived religion. By existing outside sanctioned Catholic practice, religious tattoos often reflect individuals’ spirituality more than official church theology.

By manifesting religious belief into a tangible object, these individuals invoke a modern and literal interpretation of John 1:14, which states that “the Word became flesh.”^[17] In order to better understand this Catholic approach to the tattooed body, I will turn to secular interpretations of tattoos. Using sociologist Arthur Frank’s theory of “self relatedness,” Mary Kosut, a sociologist who has extensively researched cultural perceptions of tattoos, explores the experiences of those with tattooed bodies and argues that they are distinctively different from those with non-tattooed bodies:

While some people have bodies, other people are bodies. Tattooed people are bodies…Those with tattoos are mindful of not just the surface of their bodies, but how their physicality relates to their being. In addition, tattooed people also demonstrate an understanding of various ways their bodies are culturally constructed and read by others in the course of everyday interaction.^[18]

This awareness of the body, its central role in temporal and physical experiences, and its ability to communicate firmly places those with tattooed bodies in the physical world. People with tattooed bodies, according to Kosut, recognize the importance of being physically aware and present as components of life and existence. They value tangibility and, therefore, use tattoos to bring their beliefs and aspects of their identity into a physical existence.

Similarly, contemporary Catholics value the body but focus on its ability to act as a medium to connect with both the mind and the soul. This connection aids practitioners in bringing the intangible spiritual elements of Catholicism into the corporeal world by allowing them to use their bodies as an instrument during rituals. For example, in the ritual of the Eucharist, Catholics pray in order to transubstantiate the bread into Christ’s flesh and the wine into Christ’s blood. This literal transformation of the divine into an earthly, physical form is, in essence, a corporeal expression of divinity. Participants then consume the bread and wine as Christ’s flesh and blood, which is a biological, bodily act that is crucial for the completion of the Eucharist and subsequent Communion. The act of consumption serves both a spiritual and bodily function. Spiritually, when Catholics eat the bread and drink the wine this signifies that they accept and thank Christ for his sacrifice. In terms of the body, ingesting the transubstantiated bread and wine brings the spiritual into the physical, connecting the two through the process of consumption and digestion. In this process, the divine is actively present within the corporeal microcosm of the body.

We can connect the way that practitioners use the body as an instrument during the Eucharist to the role of the body as an instrument in religious tattooing. In both rituals, participants actively engage the body and mind in bringing the divine into physical form. But those with religious tattoos specifically use the body as a vessel for displaying symbols, words, and images to represent their beliefs.

Since tattoos are publicly and privately on display, for the Catholic with tattoos this is merely an extension of the performative nature of other Catholic practices and rituals. A number of scholars have interrogated the connection between performance and the Catholic faith, including those at a conference titled Practicing Catholic: Ritual, Body, and Contestation in Catholic Faith held in November 2002 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. A book followed in 2008 that features cross-disciplinary arguments about the embodied and ritualistic nature of Catholic practices. In addressing these themes, the “conference participants went further to examine the Catholic body-in-motion, as that was constituted within such performative ritual experiences as saints’ processions, mystical chant, holy dance, sung death vigils, and tactile interactions with sacred statues.”^[19] We can apply the elements of these performative rituals, interpreted as the “Catholic body-in-motion,” to religious tattoos as both a ritual experience of marking the body and a continued lifetime performance of wearing and presenting religious imagery on the skin. The permanence of tattoos arguably ensures that the adherent will have a perpetual relationship with God. In addition, tattoos are a visual reminder for the wearer of the connection between body, mind, and soul.

Scholars have also studied how tattoos express meaning for the wearer and how they perceive the ways tattoos communicate. According to Kosut, tattoos evoke a range of responses and compel viewers to gaze upon them.^[20] This corroborates the performative aspect of people displaying their tattoos. Tattoos induce viewership and elicit responses, drawing attention to the tattoo wearer and in turn, encouraging them to perform themselves.

Part of the performance involves the wearer answering questions about the tattoo’s symbolism and meaning, forcing them to produce and share a narrative for the tattoo. Both Margo DeMello, a cultural anthropologist with a secular focus, and Julia Parnell, a religious studies scholar who specializes in religious tattoos, have studied how people create and share tattoo narratives. DeMello and Parnell argue that by imbuing tattoos with personal or otherwise significant narratives, wearers remove the stigma that tattoos have of being a frivolous and impulsive decision, which has ultimately allowed tattoos to become part of mainstream American culture.^[21] For wearers of religious tattoos, this emphasis on a narrative provides an opportunity for them to openly share their beliefs and a platform from which they can proselytize. The social aspect of sharing a religious tattoo’s narrative enables the wearer to bring their religion into secular spaces and expand the reach of their lived religion.

Tattoos also communicate meaning by signaling group affiliations, demonstrating an interest or hobby, or commemorating a person, accomplishment, or transition.^[22] As sociologist Clinton Sanders observes, all of these meanings are methods of self-definition and association.^[23] By choosing religious themes as a self-defining symbol, the wearer demonstrates a commitment to their religion and frames their belief as a core feature of their identity. For example, my interviewee Spencer K. chose the Catholic subject matter of his tattoo specifically to console any commitment woes he might have. In his interview, he explained his rationale: “If I’m getting a tattoo, I want something I’m going to want when I’m 19 and 90. The one thing I’m always going to have is my religion.”^[24] Viewing his Catholic faith as an unfaltering part of his life, Spencer saw his faith as a core aspect of his identity that he felt was permanent enough to ink onto his body.

For some wearers, however, the identity statement of tattoos is more personal than social.^[25] If they regard the tattoo as a public statement or display, they choose a highly visible location for it. Less visible tattoos often indicate that the bearer has a desire to keep the tattoo private.^[26] It could also mean that the wearer does not want to publicly identify their faith, or at least that they want to manage their tattoo’s display. But the perceived permanence of tattoos indicates that faith is important to the wearer’s identity regardless. And while the aesthetic qualities and original meanings might be constant, the wearer’s relationship to the tattoo can change.^[27] For example, as a person’s spiritual journey develops, so too might their understanding of or relationship to their religious tattoo. In my interview with Brent P., he revealed that his original motivation for tattooing the rosary of St. Benjamin on his shoulder was to honor his grandfather, memorialize his grandfather’s faith, and connect with him on a spiritual level, even after death.^[28] In recent years, however, his relationship with his tattoo has changed because his relationship to his faith has changed. Although he was raised Catholic, he now focuses on a personal relationship with God and is no longer active in the Catholic Church. The tattoo now serves as a reminder of his religious foundations in Catholicism and his relationship with his family who still practice the religion. In his words, “[Catholicism] laid the foundation of my faith and I will always carry it with me, literally and figuratively. My rosary is a constant reminder that those I lose are always with me.”^[29]

Religious tattoos on “Catholic bodies-in-motion” can also represent a contemporary form of body art within the practice of lived religion. Body art as a movement began in the 1960s and often involves artists performing acts of endurance and self-mutilation. Heartney connects the most extreme examples of self-injury in Body art with Catholic artists or those with Catholic backgrounds. She raises questions about the relationship between Catholicism, biblical accounts of torture and martyrdom, masochism, and violent forms of Body art.^[30] The life and work of American artist Vito Acconci (1940-2017), who was active in Performance and Body art from 1969 to 1990, exemplifies many of Heartney’s observations. Acconci was raised Catholic and attended a Catholic primary school while growing up in the Bronx. As an adult and practicing artist, one work that he performed, titled Biting Piece (part of a larger series called Trademarks), featured the artist repeatedly biting himself wherever he could reach on his body. He then rubbed ink over the bite marks and transferred their impressions onto various surfaces. This was a typical form of Body art during the 1960s and 1970s when many artists were responding to the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.^[32]

We can understand tattoos as a mainstream form of Body art involving a degree of masochism as well. Many of the most violent expressions of Body art, in fact, were performed by individuals associated with Catholicism in some way. Bob Flanagan (1952-1996), a sadomasochist performance and body artist known for extreme acts of sexually explicit self-mutilation, was raised Catholic and directly addressed the impact of Catholic teachings throughout his childhood: “I got to experience Catholic guilt and confession, the Stations of the Cross, and the saintliness of suffering. I think I related my suffering and illness to the suffering of Jesus on the cross—the idea that suffering in some way was kind of holy.”[33] Thus, the willingness of Catholics outside of the Body art movement to get tattooed might not be so surprising. Heartney explores the connection between Catholicism and forms of masochism further when noting:

Indeed, these artists’ voluntary acceptance of violence or abuse to their bodies does seem to contain parallels with the Catholic preoccupation with the Imitation of Christ. This form of devotional practice which became increasingly widespread with the doctrinal insistence on Christ’s humanity during the second century, encouraged the faithful to assume such a passionate identification with Christ’s bodily suffering that they willingly undertook physically painful trials or courted agonizing deaths.^[34]

The parallels between Catholic masochism and tattooing are clear. Both are voluntary, painful, and time-consuming, and they require self-control to tolerate pain for possibly several hours. Tattooing also includes elements of performance inherent to Body art. The impact of this performative “Catholic body-in-motion” is that the wearer/performer is able to communicate their Catholic lived religion outside the authority and control of the Church.

Catholic tattoos function as performative, material Catholicism and as products of lived religion. Although I cannot draw larger conclusions about how race, class, gender, or generational differences influence Catholics who commission tattoos, I can say that Catholic tattoos appear to be growing in popularity among younger generations. This study explored only the white male experience through two personal interviews and art historical research on Vito Acconci and Bob Flanagan. Although this narrow representation was not my original intention or focus, the seemingly higher visibility of white men performing at the intersection of Catholicism and varying degrees of masochism—here mostly interrogated through tattooing practices—raises questions about this particular demographic and phenomenon. Has the white-washing of Christ made it easier for white men to emulate his suffering? Do women have a different relationship to self-inflicted bodily pain or is their experience of Catholicism altogether different? Are Catholic men emulating Christ and the martyrdom of saints while women are called to the silent suffering of Mary? For answers to these questions, we must consider the gendered experience of Catholicism, the psychology of self-mutilation, and the phenomenon of religious tattoos.