Haitian Vodou

Tradition·Founded 1700 CE·several million worldwide

Haitian Vodou

Branch
Community of Haitian Vodou

Catholic and Vodouwizan at once.

The overwhelming majority of Vodou practitioners are baptised Catholics who go to mass, use saints' chromolithographs on their altars and hold services on saints' days. The Church has periodically demanded a choice, most brutally in 1941, and has never obtained one — the standing Haitian formulation is that Haiti is seventy percent Catholic and a hundred percent Vodou.

How you joinBoth, usually
Who leadsMost Vodouwizan are baptised Catholics who attend mass, and the lwa are addressed with saints' images and served on saints' days. The Church has periodically tried to force a choice — most violently in the 1941 anti-superstition campaign — and has never succeeded
The unitVodou and the Catholic Church, in the same person
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The overwhelming majority of Vodouwizan are baptised Catholics who attend mass, use saints' images on their altars, time services to saints' days, and see no tension in any of it. The often-quoted formulation that Haiti is seventy percent Catholic, thirty percent Protestant and a hundred percent Vodou captures the arithmetic. The Catholic Church's position has shifted repeatedly — the concordat of 1860 restored the hierarchy and inaugurated a period of hostility, the campaigns of 1896, 1913 and above all 1941 attempted forcible suppression, and the post-Vatican II period brought a partial accommodation, including the use of Kreyòl and Haitian music in the liturgy. What has never happened is a successful demand that people choose. The 1941 campaign, which extracted renunciation oaths under duress and burned sacred objects, produced compliance and no lasting change in practice.

From the sources — the passages this rests on; concise renderings, cited

Haiti is seventy percent Catholic, thirty percent Protestant, and one hundred percent Vodou.

Haitian formulation, widely repeated and of uncertain origin (rendered)

The arithmetic does not work, which is the point of the saying.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The teaching bends to the hearer. Buddhism · core tenet Go deeper →
Truth has many sides. Jainism · core tenet Go deeper →
T The saints. Christianity · figure Meet them →
Someone will speak for you. Islam · core tenet Go deeper →

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