Or: how I learned to stop worrying about the triumph of superstition and love Darwin...
5 hours ago
Friday, December 31, 2010
Some Local Folk Religion
Or: how I learned to stop worrying about the triumph of superstition and love Darwin...
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8 comments:
You were raised in the states (well so was I), but our experience of Faith are WORLDS apart. The US Catholic experience doesn't make room for folk orthopraxy which explains why The Church is in the state she is in, in The US. There is SUPPOSED to be a dialogue between the received folk tradition of the people and the ecclesial tradition of The Church, but that's for another day. ;)
This is just an absurd and extreme example, of course, on the order of snake-handling.
I'm not actually critiquing folk religion in general (maybe)...just saying that setting your house on fire "to ward off evil spirits" is a pretty good way to remove yourself from the gene pool. And thus ensure that your own particular traditions are NOT going to be passed on for much longer.
You do know that those practices aren't so foreign to European Christendom right ? People still slaughter a rooster (I don't recall the feast, but will find out today.) and I forget the other details for a particular feast day. Likewise, The Feast of The Purification of The Theotokos does have a folk Tradition whereby brooms and certain other items are burned in a large bonfire so as to purify through flames.
Were you raised with ANY folk religious practices at all ?
From a friend on the subject:
" Feast of St. Martin of Tours (Martinmas). In Ireland the custom was to kill a cockerel and splash the blood in the corners of the house.
There are other feasts where animals were customarily killed. The tradition of axing a bull to death in Rome at the height of Carnival in the spring lasted until the Renaissance."
Killing roosters doesn't, generally, tend to put ones own life or health in danger, however. Nor do outdoor bonfires. Lighting your stairs on fire, however...
"Killing roosters doesn't, generally, tend to put ones own life or health in danger"
Senselessly killing a creature for any reason may hint at other health issues ;) We have the guidelines from The Council of Jerusalem for a reason.
It's still part of folk religious practice. It's not something that can actually be checked off through a book, etc. . Did he exercise prudence in how he did it, no, however his intention was not necessarily bad. That is why I posed the question to you, were you at all raised with folk religious practices ?
No, but I was raised not to play with fire indoors.
Which explains the disconnect. I'm not saying what he did was exactly prudent, however the intention behind it does have a folk following.
Tradition and tradition are meant to be in a constant dialogue with one another. One without the other cannot exist.
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