Commission on Evangelization

Father Larry Goulding blesses a car for a Hispanic family in Georgia.

Popular Religion: What Is It? Is It Real Religion?

“The official liturgy of the Church has never exhausted the impetus among Christian people to pray. Novenas and other devotional rites allowed people to publicly express a most important dimension to religious experience—emotion.” That is a quote from Primero Dios, by Mark Francis and Arturo Perez-Rodriguez, Liturgical Training Publications. "Emphasis on the affective side of human life is also a hallmark of the popular religion that developed in the Spanish and Portuguese territories of the New World” (p.10).

Immigrant groups brought Catholic European devotionalism to the United States. Popular religion developed in an agrarian society. Devotional practices are of the people, not the hierarchical elites. From the beginning, there have been continuing tensions between official sacramental Catholicism and popular religion.

In the New World, popular religion served to root the faith in the everyday lives of those being catechized. Many historical and cultural influences shaped this devotional life into the customs and traditions we see today.

Paul IV expressed both support and concern for an “appropriate orientation of popular religion by a pedagogy of evangelization (EvangeliiNuntiandi, #48). While cautioning against distortions and superstition, he also identifies the values that popular religion fosters a thirst for God; a generosity and sacrifice even to the point of heroism; an acute awareness of the profound attributes of God; and a development of interior attitudes.

Paul IV, the Latin American bishops at Puebla, John Paul II—all are quoted in the Catholic Catechism (#1674 -#1676) connecting popular religion with catechesis and evangelization. At its best, popular religion is a means which draws people further into the sacramental life of the Church.

Suggested Resources:
Primero Dios, by Mark Francis and Arturo Perez-Rodriguez, LTP, including the videos in English/Spanish.
Asi Es: Stories of Hispanic Spirituality, by Yolanda Tarango, Liturgical Press.
Popular Catholicism: A Hispanic Perspective, by Arturo Perez, MACC.

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