Popular religion plays a vital role in the study and understanding of popular culture. While official religion is practiced in formal institutions, syncretism which includes popular religions is found in popular and informal spheres. The popularity is at the level of the subaltern or the people not on the official or elite levels. The ideas of individuals are rooted in the day to day life and as such, it is vital to look at how people lead their everyday lives to understand their experiences of the world and how they lead their lives. Places, actions, and events like music, theater, rituals, and pilgrimages contain meanings and serve as the vehicle for information. Religious aspects, on the other hand, are found in abundance in popular culture. As such, popular religion should be understood as the religion of the people and contrasts the official teachings of the religion or church. However, taking the perspective of seeing dichotomies as official or popular is challenging and creates divisions. For example, local popular practices can be can be incorporation institutional practices. A good example of a popular religion is Popular Catholicism. In the following paragraphs, the paper will analyze this religion by discussing its major attributes and facets and how it is practiced in the everyday lives of its followers.
Studies have shown over a billion people around the world refer themselves as Catholics (Sanabria, 2007). Although Catholicism is known and praised for its top-down organization, church laws, doctrines, formalized rituals and its preference of centralized control, it has been differentiated more than any other religion in human history. The implication of this is that Catholicism is not only defined by professional religious leaders, but also by ordinary individuals who have little to no connections with the vertical. The beliefs and practices of ordinary people often reside in ambiguous relations with the formal form of the religion. Christianity centers have experienced dramatic shifts from its center of gravity during the twentieth century which led to the spread of Catholicism to regions outside North America and Europe with seventy percent of Catholics residing in these places. In fact, a majority of those who refer themselves as Catholics live in countries which were previously colonized or conquered by European powers.
Given that these European powers placed strong belief on religion, especially Catholicism, their beliefs and practiced became entrenched in the regions they colonized or conquered. However, it failed to completely replace the indigenous religious beliefs which were based on polytheistic systems that were overly flexible to accommodate more supernatural beliefs and beings (Sanabria, 2007). Despite the Europeans’ Catholicism being the major component in this mixture, the official tenets, and practices of the religion where to some level diluted by the indigenous beliefs and practices. In addition to this, the final product differed from region to region given the variations in indigenous beliefs and practices which makes it vital to consider the local complexities and meanings people place on events and happenings in their day to day lives. It is from these different products that popular Catholicism emerged.
Major Attributes of Popular Catholicism
A close comparison of formal and popular Catholicism reveals key differences that explain and proves the official religion’s devolution through the combination of indigenous religious practices over the years. These differences are best analyzed by focusing on the major attributes of popular Catholicism. The first of its primary attributes is syncretism. According to Sanabria (2007), the medieval European Catholicism failed to entirely replace the pre-European and other indigenous supernatural pantheons in regions where the religion was introduced outside Europe. Although some of the deities and religious practices were lost especially the vague overarching gods, some especially those that served important roles in the everyday cultural and physical well-being of the communities have prospered to the present day. The result of this, anthropologists and religious experts insist on the important role of religious syncretism which is defined as the compartmentalization or the blending of supernatural deities that originate from indigenous, Catholic, and African Pantheons (Sanabria, 2007). These deities and indigenous practices all combine in the contemporary Catholic practices and are often seen as the official religious practices in the regions they are popular.
The second major attribute of popular Catholicism is the insistence of public ceremonies and rituals. In contrast to the official version of Catholicism which describes religious devotion as a private expression where it is either practiced at either a personal or family level, popular Catholicism is attributed by its visible and active participation in the public family or community ceremonies and rituals that punctuate the year (Sanabria, 2007). According to Sanabria (2007), even though these popular rituals and ceremonies greatly differ, they can be categorized into four major categories that overlap the catholic church’s liturgical calendar, are promoted by the devotion to honor deities central to the Catholic pantheon, sponsored by the commitment to honor indigenous deities and practices and are based on non-Catholic themes.
The religion is also known for its numerous lay practitioners and ministers. Alay minister is an individual who provides public leadership or service within the Catholic Church but has not been ordained (Espin & Nickloff, 2007). Lay practitioners are among the many people whose responsibilities and roles change depending on the various ministries and may receive a title based on local diocesan policies and practices. A good example is in the popular Rosario ceremony witnessed in Puerto Rico and New York which serves as a commemoration event for those passed away and the spiritualists who are responsible for acting as the medium through which believers can communicate with deceased friends and family (Sanabria, 2007). However, these ministers often take up these roles given that the religious brothers and sisters do not receive clerical orders since the church considers them to be laity within its legal categorizations (Espin & Nickloff, 2007). Also, according to Goizueta (2004), these positions were created as a result of the need to rationalize the Catholic faith in the regions where the former European colonial powers introduced the religion. Gizueta (2004) posits that the difference between conservative Catholicism and popular Catholicism are the rationalization agents who create and impose meaning on religious symbols and practice.
A significant element of popular Catholicism is its role in the social order of the communities that practice. The religion is deeply tied in the critics and politics of social order, an attribute that can be argued to have been inherited from the Catholic Church’s position in historical conquests and political ideologies of early Europe. For non-elite communities and groups, popular Catholicism religious features often serve as the vehicle for condemning social injustices. Sanabria (2007), postulates that the rise of popular Catholicism as a medium for social critique begun with the 1960s liberation theology that acted within the Catholic Church. The movement aimed at building a connection between the teachings of the Bible and the manner in which ordinary people experience life and reality.
The followers and teachings of popular Catholicism are also renounced for having a close differentiation between the dead and the living. The religion’s differentiation between the mortal and supernatural, and the living and the dead is blurred with scholars arguing it is the eventual result of the mortals attempt to build a relationship with the supernatural beings as well as the dead. In its practices, there are sometimes of the years where the believers attempt to rekindle these relationships through ceremonies such as the Rosario with lay ministers leading the congregation in paying tribute and commemorate their departed loved ones (Sanabria, 2007).
Facets of Popular Catholicism
Saints and the Virgin Mary
In the reasoning of sociologists Robert Orsi, liturgical reformers insisted on the popular devotions being surrounded by the concept of saints and Virgin Mary if they would remain as features of the Catholic life (Gizueta, 2004). In addition to this, these concepts had to be reimagined and put in a language understandable to the people and as such, they were put in the form of friendship, mythology, and morality deemphasizing what the reformers saw as an extravagant and inappropriate emphasis on the material and the miraculous (Gizueta, 2004). The process of rationalizing the saints and Virgin Mary and the eventual obsession with the words shade light on the ongoing need for reforms of liturgical texts that in turn highlights that different characteristic between official and popular Catholicism. However, according to Sanabria (2007), the concept of saints and Virgin Mary would hold the role of being intermediaries between God and the mortals resonated with the indigenous groups since their religious practices recognized the existence of deities that were directly responsible for the well-being.
Working with the devil
The belief that humans can form a relationship with the devil has been in exudence since the European medieval and pre-Hispanic periods. The introduction of the Catholic faith although intended to replace the indigenous religious beliefs and practices had to explain its faith in a language that could be understood by the indigenous people. By doing this, Catholicism was integrated with different forms of religious beliefs including the practice of working with the devil. Today, among the most critical supernatural deity that is often employed to serve human aspirations and needs within the boundaries of popular Catholicism is working with the devil. The practice widespread in south and Central American nations involves making pacts with the devil for favors in the everyday experiences and activities and although their exists cultural and historical difference among its believers and in the context of its narratives historical and ethnographic studies show concurrence in the fundamental essence of working with the devil (Sanabria, 2007).
Todos Santos: the day of the dead
As mentioned earlier, one of the major attributes of popular Catholicism is its close relationship or its blurred differentiation between the dead, supernatural beings and the living. The faith’s close relationship with the dead requires the living to recognize and remember their lost kin during ceremonies like the Rosario. In the popular Catholic calendar, the most distinctive and colorful ceremony is the November first and second celebration of the All Souls and All Saints day (Sanabria, 2007). Todos Santos is a widespread public and private ritual that can be traced to the European medieval and pre-colonial indigenous times with anthropologists and religious experts describing as culturally more significant than the commemoration of Halloween in America (Sanabria, 2007).
Sanabria (2007) argues although the occasion is widely recognized in Spanish speaking South American nations and the Caribbean, its specific practices and beliefs vary from one region to the other. Despite this variations, studies have shown that the integral purpose of the ceremony remains to be honoring and remembering the dead, narrowing the gap between death and life, establishing a relationship or connection with the afterlife, and juxta-positioning the dead and the living. Most importantly, it is a time of solemn when ordinary day-to-day behaviors and expectations are suspended for some time in favor for others and a period of reflecting the meaning of life (Sanabria, 2007).
In summation, popular religion plays an important role in understanding popular cultures. Popular religions are separations of religious beliefs and practices that are formed by the integration of indigenous cultures and religious practices to the official form of the faith. Popular Catholicism as an example of popular religion can be traced from the interactions between European colonial powers and conquerors whose rule emphasized religion with the indigenous cultures and religions. From these unions came popular Catholicism which although operates under the Catholic Church, it incorporates various indigenous religious beliefs and cultures making it different from the official Catholicism. The main differences in practice and beliefs can be traced through analyzing its main attributes and facets which define popular Catholicism depending on the region of practice and historical changes.
References
Espin, O. O., & Nickoloff, J. B. (2007). An Introduction of Theology and Religious Studies. Minnesota, MN: Liturgical Press.
Gizueta, R. S. (2004). The symbolic realism of U.S Latino/A popular Catholicism. Theological Studies, 65(1), 255-274.
Sanabria, H. (2007). Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean. New York, N.Y: Routledge.
