The Makeshift Catholic

It can either free you or misdirect you. Howwill you let it shape you?

I was five years old then. I remember standing atop a stool while my grandmother stood before me chanting in an African dialect as she “cleansed” me with ewe (herbs) and a raw egg, which was to absorb the bad that ailed me for all of those years. I had suffered chronic bronchitis and upper repertory infections most of my early life. You see, a week after being born, I was taken to my grandparents house were my parents lived. The old house was undergoing some remodeling and construction. The dust, mold and cement were too much for my undeveloped immune system. I almost died and after several weeks, in intensive care, I spent the rest of my early adolescence being rushed to the hospital, sometimes up to three times a week. One day the doctors finally decided that I was to be operated on. Abuela (grandma) saw different. She was determined by love, faith and a tradition she never abandoned. When her ritual was complete she bent low and kissed my forehead assuring me that I would never acquaint the scalpel. Incidentally, we fled Cuba a few days later and after being lost at sea for a week surrounded by unforgiving waters, without food, drink, or medication, I was rushed to American doctors who assured my parents that they were mistaken. They were baffled and explained that I was perfectly healthy and showed no signs of ever having any of the medical conditions they claimed.
Hallelujah. The making of my spiritual self was taking shape.

Needless to say prayers, African rituals, Saints, deities, superstition, fetishes and iffy home remedies governed my childhood and resulted in a makeshift spiritual Identity of my own. I have however learned over time that this experience is not unique to me but in fact shared by many, especially Latinos of Caribbean descent. Yet, many of us continue to maintain our institutional religious identity for some reason or the other. The real question is; why do we often differ from other Catholic groups in the way that we practice our “Catholic faith.” Why is there a shift in our doctrinal adherence in comparison to say Spaniards or Italians? What are the circumstances; politically, geographically, historically and of relation to social differences along the lines of race and class, which resulted in our makeshift deinstitutionalized practice folk Catholicism?

The role of the Church has always played a role in the shaping of Latino Identity. During the early stages of colonization there was little separation of Church and state. One of the main premises for colonizing the Americas other then the accumulation of wealth was the spreading of the Christian faith. Pope Alexander VI, himself of Spanish birth, had high regards for the Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella whom were credited with the overthrow of the Moorish power in Spain, and perhaps regarded as iconic defenders of Christendom, during the initial “discovery” of the Americas. The church also played major roles in the division of foreign territories when Pope Alexander VI’s later established the Line of Demarcation to ease the tensions between Portugal and Spain. Also important to acknowledge is the role that the Church played in the areas of education and the influence that clergy academia played in the shaping of the settlers worldviews. Thus, it is safe to assume that the connection between state and church were for the most part interrelated at many levels during the initial forming stages of our identity.

It was this arbitrary relationship between secular and political forces that later reinforced the suspicion of peasants and some of the city’s working class alike of secular institutions with claim to power which often time paralleled in identity with higher social economic groups. These differences amongst the social classes later developed an urban-rural dichotomy of racial and class segregation. Hence, skepticism toward authority grew and dominated the culture of the peasant and especially the Black mixed population’s view of institution’s ecclesiastical leaders. For Latinos of the Colonial Period the ritual process of Folk Catholicism was a means of overcoming institutional indifference, building and maintaining identity. The very value of which, could be questioned as a process of hegemony in regards to the social value given to the church by the ruling class but it is most importantly and undeniably a process of self-empowerment, identity, and community resourcefulness in the face of indifference, limitation, and oppression.

The Church or rather the presence of the Vatican and its followers, armed with bible, indifference, judgments and whips in one of the largest historical sweat-shop and genocide sectors of the world resulted in earthy flower home alters, healers, spiritual mediums, un-canonized peasant saints, Voodoo, Palo Mayumbe, Santeria, and countless other makeshift faiths. The folk practice and the ritual synchronisms, which resulted from the miscegenation of the lower classes and the ideological efflorescence between Criollos, native borne individuals, Caribbean Indians and those of African decent, were in fact the farmer’s response to his search for God in the church’s absence, hypocrisy and lack of support in his quest to please the God of his ancestral jambalaya.

I myself strongly identify with the personal God experience. I pick and choose what I like from this and that, so long as it feels good to me, inside, where it most matters. After all, I believe that religion lives within us and all paths share an essence which is beyond the understanding of dogma. It is a universal phenomenon that has for some reason or the other been the sole thing that peoples of all geographies throughout ages have agreed on. It is a primordial instinct, an unconscious connection to our Godhead. This connection is in a sense lost the moment it is shaped by man’s created world of constructs, of religions and all which encompasses our misapprehension of the nature of the actual while confounded by the physical. Once we begin to absorb information, form opinions, ideas, and doctrine, we loss sight of that which was pure; the essential nature of religion. A little spark of it resides within us. We call it Spirit and its only job is to love blindly and celebrate a creative force beyond our scope of understanding that is hallow, venerable and never chooses sides.