The Invisibility of Voodoo, or, the End of Catholic Archives in America

New Orleans is home to Voodoo. ¹⁷ Typically described as a composite of traditional African religions and Roman Catholicism, Voodoo in New Orleans is a product of the Haitian Revolution and the multiracial migration of roughly 10,000 enslaved and free refugees who crossed the Caribbean to the urbanizing banks of the Mississippi River in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Local and national media outlets like the Times Picayune and Harper’s Weekly spent the nineteenth century exoticizing and demonizing practitioners of Voodoo, many of whom also regularly participated in the sacramental life of the Catholic Church. Such fantastical caricatures of Voodoo continued to reach mass audiences in the twentieth century, due in large part to the commercialization of ritual objects like Voodoo dolls and the mythologizing of the Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau. What links these and other modes of representation has often been a general belief in the irreconcilable differences between Voodoo and Catholicism. Voodoo has been seen as unorthodox, illegitimate, and superstitious. Catholicism has been seen as orthodox, legitimate, and sacramental.

This legacy of distinguishing between Voodoo and Catholicism is not exclusive to popular portrayals in newspapers, magazines, and cheap books. Indeed, it is also a feature of the academic study of Catholicism in America, made evident by the fact that there is very little in the literature of American Catholic Studies to show for the wedding of Voodoo and Catholicism in the real lives of many Americans, past and present. Fundamental to this invisibility is the near absence of primary sources related to Voodoo beliefs and practices in Catholic archives. Specifically, in the archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans – the repository where one would think to go for historical records of the relationship between Voodoo and Catholicism – there is only one file related to the topic. The file is entitled “Discussion on Voodoo in Louisiana on Radio and TV by Mr. Baudier and His Daughter,” dated 1953. The contents of the file speak to the limits of research in Catholic archives. They also demonstrate the challenges facing those who wish to expand the investigative scope of American Catholic Studies to subjects that didn’t leave extensive documentary records or that didn’t warrant the attention of Catholic archivists.

But Catholic archives aren’t the only culprits in this act of historical erasure. Scholars of American Catholicism are also to blame because of their overreliance on Catholic archives. I should know. Over a decade ago, I waded into the world of Catholic archival research in search of the history of Voodoo and came out with a book strictly focused on the lives of European Catholic priests. Not only did I find it easier to go where the available sources took me, but, in retrospect, I now realize that there is always a kind of investigatory determinism when stepping into the reading room of a Catholic archive. Especially for someone interested in the history of American Catholicism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Catholic repositories usually prioritize collections pertaining to the clergy, sacramental records, and official church business. It’s just a fact, not to mention canon law (Can. 482–491) in the case of diocesan archives.

Given the invisibility of Voodoo in Catholic archives, the obvious resolution to my conundrum would have been to look elsewhere for insight into the confluence of Catholicism and Voodoo in New Orleans. But a quick scan of the scholarship that has been produced on New Orleans Voodoo reveals a similar pattern of intense curiosity met with unverifiable conjecture. Carolyn Morrow Long expressed just this sentiment in the conclusion to her laboriously researched biography of the Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau. “What we can piece together from the published sources and oral histories is a silhouette of Marie Laveau,” Long writes, “her mere outline, lacking all the detail and color of a real portrait . . . . As a mirror, Marie tells us more about the era from which she is observed than she does about herself. She remains untouched and unknown, secure in her enduring aura of mystery.”¹⁸ Yet based on the sacramental records...