Tag Archives: catholic

Bringing home a wolf (humorous proverb)

Main Piece:

JK (50s, american-polish, father): “It’s like buying a wolf and then freaking out when it attacks your kids!”

Background:

The informant is my dad remarking over the phone in response to me explaining how I was upset about not being able to finish working on a multitude of projects outside of school. When asked about where he heard the phrase, he pointed to Catholic school and the sort of lamb/wolf proverbs that he was exposed to there. He also claimed it to have similarity to the saying “bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

Context:

The phrase was said in an effort to make me laugh and bring light to the worry I’d been expressing (and it did get me to do so). It’s as if to say “well, what were you expecting to happen?”

Thoughts:

The proverb itself is innately very dark in nature, and yet hits that sort of shock humor coupled with a simple realization. The idea of having your children eaten is a terrible concept, but the ignorance/gullibility of the person who would do such is. An added factor to the proverb is the in the word choice of “buying” said wolf. There is a certain action in paying for the beast that ends up screwing you over, which bolsters and reveals the main lesson of the saying. It asks the recipient of said advice to be more pragmatically present in the day to day; to not hyperextend their own capabilities.

All Saints Day

Background: The informant is my roommate and a fellow student at USC. She grew up in Southern California and attended a private Catholic school until she began high school.

Informant: I don’t know if this is a thing like…anywhere else, but at least at my school you’d dress up as a different saint on this day…it was called All Saints Day. Like it was Halloween but with saints instead of like monsters or whatever and we’d go to mass and we’d just all march around and you’d kind of get into character as your saint like you could be Mother Teresa or something.

Me: Was this a tradition at your school…like did teachers tell you to do it?

Informant: Yeah it was like an official day…I think it was just cute because it was like tiny kids dressed as these like adult saints but I don’t know if it was religiously significant.

Context: This was told to me during a recorded in-person interview. Upon further research, the informant later told me that it was in fact celebrated by many Christians outside of her school, and it was meant to signify that anyone who trusts in God is themselves a saint.

Prayer to Saint Anthony

Text/Interview:

MW: “If you lose something, all you need to do is say the Prayer to Saint Anthony seven times along with seven Hail Marys and your missing object will appear.”

PAR: “What is the Prayer to Saint Anthony?”

MW: “Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please look around. Something is lost and cannot be found.”

Context:

MW first heard this from her grandmother. Although the Church has never officially declared this prayer to be the solution to finding lost items, every time that MW has lost something, she has performed this ritual and the item has magically appeared. She claims that you do not need to do this multiple times, as that would be redundant. Once you get through your 7 prayers to Saint Anthony and your seven Hail Marys, you have received all the divine intervention you will get. Now you must be patient and wait.

My Interpretation:

The first thing that sticks out to me about this is that prayer to Saint Anthony reads like a rhyme. It is almost an incantation of sorts and saying it seven times (along with the seven Hail Marys) will create a spell that will make your object magically re-appear. I think this is an awesome piece of religious Folklore as it shows the blurred line between prayer and Sympathetic Magic.

Three Wishes In a New Church

Text/Interview

MW: “When I was a little girl, I went to catholic grammar in Brooklyn. Every year around Easter time we would have to go to 7 different churches. It was our own local pilgrimage. One year, a nun told me that when you walk into a new church, you get three wishes.”

Context:

MW explained that these wishes are not prayers. The people are not asking God to intercede on their behalf. Instead, it is binding between you and God as you enter a new place. The wish is just a favor God is granting a person for entering His house – like a good host giving a gift to his visitors. MW explained that she has continued this far beyond her grammar school years and has even gotten her three wishes at the Vatican in Rome.

My Interpretation:

I find it very interesting that the tradition of visiting different churches eventually yielded the religious folklore that God will grant the wishes of those who go to a new church. I think this Folk belief shows hopeful optimism as it takes from dogma and establishes a non-canonical connection with the divine. God will grant the wishes of anyone, all they have to do is visit a new church.

Dog Guardian or God Watching over the House in the Form of a Dog While Family is on Vacation

Because this interview exchange took place with my sister, I was able to ask in-depth questions about the events and beliefs she discussed in her stories. I remember the day she describes in her interview. We had just gotten home from vacation and a little dusty white dog met us at our car. We don’t own a dog and thought the animal was a stray. I didn’t think much of that event, but this experience had a large impact on my sister, who believes this dog watched over our home while we were away on vacation.

*

My sister said that God works through people and animals, and that during a conversation with our neighbor, she learned that the animal has been seen wandering around our house in the time we were gone. Our parents feared that the house would get robbed while we were away. They prayed that God would keep the house safe and that no one in the community would notice we had left.

My sister described how our parents would hush us any time we mentioned that we were going on vacation. We couldn’t talk about it outdoors, and while packing, we always kept the car closed to avoid showing passers-by a trunk full of suitcases.

One time when my sister and mother were not on vacation but rather at school and at work, the house did get robbed. They arrived home to find the door swung open and an alarm blaring. My sister said that this was a very bad experience, and that at first she couldn’t believe that the house had been robbed. She thought someone had come home early or that someone had left the door unlocked.

My sister said that she was not sure whether the dog was God or a messenger, but she did say that she believed it watched over the house while we were gone, and that she hadn’t seen it since.

My sister also mentioned that she is training for Confirmation, a sacrament of initiation in the Catholic faith that allows high schoolers to reaffirm their belief in church principles. She said that she had not met any other animals or people that she believed had watched over her. She also said that this might be because she considers herself capable and that she wants to take care of herself.

She also said that she did not come to this conclusion right away. It was only years after this event that she came to believe the dog had offered protection. She was pleased to know that God had watched out for the house when the family was away.

*

I do not share my sister’s belief in Catholicism but I do believe in signs. I remember this event and know that the dog made us nervous at the time. It was strange that the dog went right up to our car, and I do believe I saw the animal around the neighborhood after that day. This is an example of religious folklore. There are cannon Bible stories where God talks through a donkey to get his message across, such as the story of Balaam, the donkey, and the Angel ( Numbers 22:21-39 of Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition Bible)

You can find a version of this story here:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+22%3A21-39&version=RSVCE

This story also relates to conversations about whether animals have souls.

This conversation took place over the phone, and the recording is very bad quality. It is important to note that our house is visited by members of a feral cat colony and other wild animals like squirrels and raccoons. These animals were not mentioned in the interview. The house is also located less than 100 yards from a homeless encampment of about 20 people.

I find it interesting that this is the story that my sister wanted to tell me most. She knows quite a lot about folklore from playing Dungeons and Dragons (see, “How Not To Play Dungeons and Dragons” in the USC folklore archive”) but this is the first story she shared when I asked her to think of a story for this archive.