Markup View

Author: MartinTheMess

Apr 23rd 2012 at 8:26:30 AM

Hmm.  Possibly expand, or create the sister trope VoodooCatholicism, for the sort of older local superstitions that got absorbed into Catholicsm as it expanded, first into Europe, then into the Americas and elsewhere.  Local Gods and Goddesses were replaced by Saints with similar motifs, symbols, attributes, and OddJobGods responsibilities.  Of course, a lot of the festivals and traditons of the former faith got repurposed as veneration of that saint, smoothing the transition from one religion to another.  Many aspects of HollywoodVoodoo, such as sticking pins into dolls, were actually traditions of French Catholics, particularly peasants who still clung to some of the older pre-Catholic traditions in Christianized form.

Once the Protestant Reformation got going, many of these traditions were suppressed, either for being too Catholic, or too pre-Catholic.  People raised in one of the more staid and boring Protestant denominations may find some of the older traditions of (in particular) certain immigrant-based or third-world Catholic communities rather jarring.  The sort of very bloody and gory art (crucifixes, frescoes of martyred saints, etc.) and ostentatious church decor popular among Spanish and Latin American Catholics, for example, can be quite shocking to someone from one of the more austere Protestant sects that favors plain wooden crosses and unadorned churches.

So if a writer wants to evoke the sort of mood and creepy factor of a pagan sacrifice or incomprehensible witch-doctor ritual, yet make it Christian, then the creepier sort of Catholicism is the way to go, especially once you toss in some OminousLatinChanting.

Of course, there are creepy protestants as well, and the Snake-Handlers of the Deep South and the faith-healing TV evangelists speaking in tongues creep out Catholics just as much as VoodooCatholics creep out protestants.