Nativity & Religion

[Vaska Tumir]

And then there's V and the whole bizarre joke/satire of St Veronica the sewer rat as well as the Malta episodes, the Bad Priest V-avatar, Dnubietna, etc.  Much of that has always seemed to me the product of a certain quintessentially ("anti-Catholic") Catholic sensibility.  

Vaska

Paul Mackin writes:

> Are we talking about P's upbringing or Slothrop's. I know I got confused
> on this before. If it's P's, although I can't cite much chapter and verse,
> I do essentially agree with Terrance. The feel of early religious
> indoctrination  if any seem more Catholic than Protestant or Puritan. That
> memorable 'Mom I sent someone to hell today' all by itself clinches it for
> me. Stories with this theme were systematically drummed into Catholic
> youth always involving sins of impurity as they were called. This sort
> of thing was beginning to die out by the time P came along. But in a
> small town community of the type P grew up in it might have been still
> extant. Especially if the parents were fairly conservative. It would be
> intolerable for me to say 'it takes one to know one' but truthfully that's
> how I feel about P's fundamental, involuntary religious  perspective. The
> other thing is I'm not aware of any howling blunders P makes with regard
> to Catholic teachings--of the kind that  even genius nonCatholic writers
> are so prone to make. Strange to say this kind of accuracy can only be
> achieved by an insider. I know this is hard to fathom. 
> 
> Anyway I honestly don't buy the idea that P feels Puritanism as anything
> but a historic fact that he read about and knew existed in his own family
> history. Of course I could be wrong.
> P.
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