[Alex Murphy]

A Thompson Valley High School student had his rosary beads taken away twice in three weeks after school officials said they were gang-related....

....Loveland Police Sgt. David Murphy, who heads the school resource officers in the Thompson School District, Vigil's rosary had a red-flagging 13 beads in a row instead of a traditional rosary with 10 beads. The number 13 is sometimes associated with the Sureños gang, Murphy told the newspaper.

[SampleMan]

Rosary beads are not to be worn. They are not a necklace.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

If he wants to wear a rosary he should become a nun.

A rosary is not jewelry. Wearing a rosary as jewelry is a sacrilege.

Dominican nuns taught me that.

[righttackle44]

The thirteen beads instead of the 10 is, I think, a dead-set give away that there is something wrong here. I am not a Catholic, but I used to work for a company that catered to Catholic clientele. Each set of 10 beads is called a decade, not A Thirteen.

[svcw]

As someone who is not Catholic, what is a typical Rosary bead supposed to look like or are there typical ones at all?

We have become a country where every citizen is looked on with suspicion because jthey ust might be a gang member or terrorist.

[Carpe Cerevisi]

A quick search mentions the 13 bead “decade” is used for the St. Philomena Chaplet. That’s the first I’ve heard of that.

[Jimmy4Toes]

If you want to wear your rosary around your neck do so UNDER your shirt. Then it will be touching you personally and will not be seen as a fad.

I think that even if the “intention” is good, for example as a sign of your faith, the current fad has degraded the practice to a fad, and it could be mistaken as one.

[Vigilanteman]

If rosary beads are a gang symbol, here's a gang we could stand to have in the world again:

[two134711]

While it might be true that this particular student is a gang member and co-opting the wearing of a rosary for an unGodly purpose, I can personally attest that faithful, God-loving Catholics of Hispanic descent do wear the rosary in honor of their religion.

This may seem odd to many Anglo-Catholics, yet it is not done out of disrespect, but reverence. I do not believe there is an "official" Catholic doctrine on this matter, other than if worn as a genuine statement of faith, it is not deemed profane.

Hispanic Catholics are very much accustomed to iconography, which may be seem sacrilegious or "Pagan" to certain Christian sects. Public prayer, use of religious symbols, and constant references to God, Jesus and his mother Mary in everyday speech (not done in vain), are a part of the earthly lives of many ardent Latin American Catholics. I've witnessed this among my own family members and Catholic church attendees: young and old alike.

It is not the veneration of the object--be it a statue of the Virgin Mary in a garden, rosary beads around the neck or pictures of saints in a wallet--but a physical token of their belief in God.

If this young man and others wear rosaries as a statement of pride in gang membership, certainly, that is disrespectful and should be addressed, however most of the people who openly wear them, do so as an honest religious declaration with no nefarious purpose.