|
|
 |
|
Cultural Catholicism in Cajun-Creole Louisiana
By Marcia Gaudet
Sacraments and Sacramentals
Novena to Saint Clare, Statue of Saint Joseph, Saint Medard's Day
Yard Grottoes / Traiteurs / Bonne Mort Society
Pilgrimage Sites / St. Vincent DePaul Bonfire / Hurricane prayer card
"Living Way of the Cross" in Dulac / Conclusion
Yard Grottoes
Yard grottoes (small religious shrines) honoring the Virgin Mary, the saints, and Jesus, particularly the Infant Jesus of Prague, are still extremely popular among Cajuns and Creoles throughout southwest Louisiana. Various settings are used to display the statues and various materials are used to construct the grottoes-including grottoes fashioned from half of an old-fashioned bathtub in Basile and various other places. There is a double "bathtub grotto" in Thibodaux, where both halves of the bathtub are used, one with a statue of the Virgin and the other with a statue of the Sacred Heart (see Figure 1). More typically, grottoes are homemade of brick, stone, or wood designed to protect and partially enclose a religious statue. Yard grottoes are sometimes part of a complex of yard decorations that include both sacred statuary and secular sculptures. One yard in Choupic, Louisiana, has a Virgin in a front yard display that includes several pink flamingoes.
Figure 1. Yard Grotto in Thibodaux.
There are a remarkable number of yard grottoes throughout southern Louisiana. They seem to be especially popular among older women who often plant flowers near the grottoes. While most grottoes are in the front yards of homes, visible from the street, it is unusual to see a front yard grotto used as a place for prayer. Some families choose to build a grotto in the back yard for a more private place of devotion. Families who construct a grotto or simply have a statue of the Virgin Mary in their front yard are making a public statement of their Catholic faith, and they are typically devout, practicing Catholics. I have also been told that having a grotto in the yard will keep proselytizers of other faiths away.
Yard grottoes, particularly statues of the Virgin, are not unique to Cajuns and Creoles, but seem to be a part of heavily Roman Catholic expressive cultures. For example, Joseph Sciorra has documented the large number of yard shrines and sidewalk altars in New York City's Italian American neighborhoods. He says, "Thus, the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Conception keep company with concrete stableboys, stucco dwarves, plastic cartoon characters, and a menagerie of artificial flamingos, ducks, rabbits, and deer" (Sciorra 1989: 185). Sciorra also includes a photograph of a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary built around a discarded bathtub in Brooklyn (reminiscent of shrines found in rural Italy), thus suggesting an aesthetic of yard shrines much like those in southern Louisiana (187).
Traiteurs
Roman Catholicism has consistently emphasized a relationship between healing and the power of prayer. Traditional healing has always been associated with belief as well. Among Cajuns and Creoles there is the continued use and popularity of folk healers or treaters— called traiteurs —who believe their gift of healing is a blessing from God and an integral part of their Catholic faith (see, for example, Daigle 1991). Traiteurs are faith healers who sometimes use herbal medicine as well as prayers and rituals to heal. They can be compared to the Mexican curanderos or the "pow wow" healer of the Pennsylvania Germans. Traiteurs can be male or female, and they have various beliefs about how they obtained their power to heal. They do not advertise, and they do not charge a fee. All believe that they are intermediaries of God and that their Catholic faith is essential to their power to heal. They use special prayers as well as blessed candles, holy water, or religious objects and gestures (especially the sign of the cross). Typically, they are not in conflict with physicians, but treat those ailments (usually none life-threatening) that are not worth going to a physician to treat—or that physicians have been unsuccessful in treating, e.g. warts, arthritis, asthma, a pulled muscle. Most traiteurs have other full–time jobs or work at home. For example, Mr. Lousay Aubé of Meaux is a retired high school teacher who has treated people in his community and others who drove from Lafayette for his treatments. Mr. Aubé is a "broad spectrum" traiteur, treating for many different ailments. He is also a devout Catholic, and like most traiteurs, sees no conflict between his powers to heal and official Catholicism.
Bonne Mort Society
The Bonne Mort Society of Carencro, Louisiana, a pre–Vatican II relic, is still active in a small, primarily Cajun, Catholic church parish in southwestern Louisiana. In a recent Louisiana Folklore Miscellany article, Julie Landry says that the Bonne Mort (literally "Good Death") Society of Saint Peter's Catholic Church in Carencro was founded in 1906 by a French priest who was then pastor of Saint Peter's. According to Landry, "the original name of the organization was the Bona Mors Confraternity. . . founded in Rome in 1648 by Friar Vincent Carafa, the seventh general of the Society of Jesus, apparently to help people to prepare for death from the plague that swept Europe so often in that century" (Landry 1998: 4). The organization's charter limited the founding of chapters to Jesuit church parishes. Landry also found that Friar Grimaud, the founder of the local group, was indeed a Jesuit, and Carencro was a Jesuit mission in 1906. The Jesuit historian at Saint Charles College in Grand Coteau, Friar Rogge, was "as astounded as the diocese archivists to find that such a group was still in existence" (4). Landry reports that according to the president of the Bonne Mort Society, Saint Peter's chapter in Carencro had seventeen–hundred members in 1998. The dues are $2 for a new member and $1 yearly thereafter. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that the purpose of the organization was "to prepare each member, through a spiritually disciplined life and a special devotion to Christ's Passion and the sorrows of Mary, for a peaceful death" (qtd in Landry 1998: 5). Carencro's chapter was authorized by the Archbishop of New Orleans (Lafayette did not have its own bishop until 1918) and its stated purpose was "the deliverance or lessening of the sufferings of the souls in Purgatory through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass." Several things have changed since the original charter, including an emphasis among members under sixty years of age on the benefits of prayers for the living—not only after death. Officers today are the president and the treasurer. According to Julie Landry, "No elections are held. When one person tires of a position, she hands it to the next willing person" (8).
NEXT - Pilgrimage Sites / St. Vincent DePaul Bonfire / Hurricane prayer card
|
