Folk Catholicism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Folk Catholicism is a term used to refer to varieties of Catholicism as actually practiced in Catholic communities around the world. Practices that are identified by outside observers as "folk Catholicism" vary from place to place, and often vary as well from official Roman Catholic Church doctrine.
Some forms of folk Catholic practices are based on syncretism with non-Catholic beliefs and may involve the syncretism of Catholic saints and non-Christian deities. Some of these folk Catholic forms have come to be identified as separate religions, as is the case with Caribbean and Brazilian syncretisms between Catholicism and West African religions, which include Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santeria, and Brazilian Candomblé. Similarly complex syncretisms between Catholic practice and indigenous or Native American belief systems, as are common in Maya communities of Guatemala and Quechua communities of Peru to give just two of many examples, are typically not named as separate religions; their practitioners generally regard themselves as "good Catholics."
Other folk Catholic practices are local elaborations of Catholic custom, and do not contradict orthodox Catholic doctrine. Examples of such practices include compadrazgo in modern Latin America, which developed from standard medieval European Catholic practices that fell out of favor in Europe after the seventeenth century, and ritual pilgrimages in medieval and modern Europe. Modern folk Catholic beliefs and practices include miracle stories about priests in Ireland, stories about apparitions of the Virgin Mary and other saints in Spain, and folk practices surrounding vows to saints in Latin America and Europe.
Folk Catholic practices occur everywhere that Catholicism is a major religion, not only in the often-cited cases of Latin America and the West Indies. Folk accommodations between orthodox Catholicism and local beliefs can be found in Gaelic Scotland, the Philippines, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Poland. See folk religion.
[edit] Bibliography
Allen, Catherine. The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1999, 2002.
Badone, Ellen, ed. Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in European Society. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Christian, William A., Jr. Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Johnson, Paul Christopher. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods : The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Nutini, Hugo. Ritual Kinship: Ideological and Structural Integration of the Compadrazgo System in Rural Tlaxcala. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Nutini, Hugo. Todos Santos in Rural Tlaxcala: A Syncretic, Expressive, and Symbolic Analysis of the Cult of the Dead. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Taylor, Lawrence J. Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
