The Evil Church of Evil Meets All Christianity Is Catholicism
Recently, John C. Wright had an essay on his blog about the sf trope of the fake religion (he uses the term synthetic religion) set up entirely to manipulate and control a group of people who are regarded as less educated or even less intelligent than the people doing the manipulating. One thing he commented upon was how, if this religion is actively evil, it's almost always based upon the Catholic Church.
While a good bit of this trope may well be rooted in the anti-Catholicism of many of the Protestant denominations at the time when science fiction was emerging as a genre, there are also narratological reasons that an Evil Church of Evil is apt to resemble the Catholic Church, even if no deliberate slight was intended.
First, an evenly remotely plausible Evil Church of Evil, whether it's a good faith community that got corrupted or a fake religion set up to control, is going to need a top-down hierarchical structure that extends throughout the polity that it operates in. (It's pretty difficult to imagine a congregationally organized faith community becoming an Evil Church of Evil, for the simple reason that administrative authority is distributed rather than centralized -- in my Grissom Timeline stuff about the Sharp Wars era, the neo-Puritans are not a single organized body, as much as a loose group of people with a certain mindset who capture individual congregations, and while they may shape public opinion, they don't form a true Evil Church of Evil in the usual sense of the trope). Even if one carefully avoids obviously Catholic terms like "pope," "cardinal," and the like, it's going to have a Catholic-ish feel to it to most Western readers.
Second, the elaborate vestments and liturgy of Catholicism, particularly pre Vatican II, are sufficiently exotic to many Protestant faith communities (especially Calvinist ones) to read as Other -- and for an American, to recall the pomp and ceremony of a king's court, so unlike a presidential government. So a writer creating an Evil Church of Evil is apt to consciously or unconsciously draw upon Catholic visuals for the scenes of their ceremony and ritual.
Third, most sf writers of the formative years of the genre wouldn't have been familiar with the other possible contenders. Orthodox Christianity has the hierarchy and optics, but in the 1930's and 40's it didn't have much of a presence in the US -- and because Orthodoxy is divided into a number of autocephalous (self-governing) national churches, and most of them are based in small countries, it doesn't have the same "weight" as Catholicism. The Russian Orthodox Church might well have been large enough before the Bolshevik Revolution to have that kind of presence to people familiar with it, but by the time sf was really coming into its own, the Russian Orthodox Church was being systematically destroyed within the Soviet Union, and Russian Orthodox believers abroad were divided into several different groups, depending on how much they were trying to maintain ties with a Patriarchate possibly compromised by the Soviets. And while the Latter-Day Saints do have a top-down hierarchy and some interesting visuals (particularly in their Temples), their American origin means their organization is much more presidential than monarchial, and thus less easy to turn into a believable Evil Church of Evil (although one could argue that Sanctity in Sherri Tepper's Grass is an offshoot of the LDS). Not to mention that in the 30's and 40's the LDS were still very much a fringe sect rather than the phenomenon it has become.
So it's quite possible that, at least for writers who were not steeped in anti-Catholicism, having their fictional Evil Church of Evil look Catholic may well be more a matter of falling into the All Christianity is Catholicism trope without thinking about it. Even if one is trying to avoid it by creating a completely fictional faith community to become corrupt, the need for top-down hierarchy to control things and visually striking ceremony to awe the flock is going to mean it will echo the Catholic Church in many Western readers' minds.
While a good bit of this trope may well be rooted in the anti-Catholicism of many of the Protestant denominations at the time when science fiction was emerging as a genre, there are also narratological reasons that an Evil Church of Evil is apt to resemble the Catholic Church, even if no deliberate slight was intended.
First, an evenly remotely plausible Evil Church of Evil, whether it's a good faith community that got corrupted or a fake religion set up to control, is going to need a top-down hierarchical structure that extends throughout the polity that it operates in. (It's pretty difficult to imagine a congregationally organized faith community becoming an Evil Church of Evil, for the simple reason that administrative authority is distributed rather than centralized -- in my Grissom Timeline stuff about the Sharp Wars era, the neo-Puritans are not a single organized body, as much as a loose group of people with a certain mindset who capture individual congregations, and while they may shape public opinion, they don't form a true Evil Church of Evil in the usual sense of the trope). Even if one carefully avoids obviously Catholic terms like "pope," "cardinal," and the like, it's going to have a Catholic-ish feel to it to most Western readers.
Second, the elaborate vestments and liturgy of Catholicism, particularly pre Vatican II, are sufficiently exotic to many Protestant faith communities (especially Calvinist ones) to read as Other -- and for an American, to recall the pomp and ceremony of a king's court, so unlike a presidential government. So a writer creating an Evil Church of Evil is apt to consciously or unconsciously draw upon Catholic visuals for the scenes of their ceremony and ritual.
Third, most sf writers of the formative years of the genre wouldn't have been familiar with the other possible contenders. Orthodox Christianity has the hierarchy and optics, but in the 1930's and 40's it didn't have much of a presence in the US -- and because Orthodoxy is divided into a number of autocephalous (self-governing) national churches, and most of them are based in small countries, it doesn't have the same "weight" as Catholicism. The Russian Orthodox Church might well have been large enough before the Bolshevik Revolution to have that kind of presence to people familiar with it, but by the time sf was really coming into its own, the Russian Orthodox Church was being systematically destroyed within the Soviet Union, and Russian Orthodox believers abroad were divided into several different groups, depending on how much they were trying to maintain ties with a Patriarchate possibly compromised by the Soviets. And while the Latter-Day Saints do have a top-down hierarchy and some interesting visuals (particularly in their Temples), their American origin means their organization is much more presidential than monarchial, and thus less easy to turn into a believable Evil Church of Evil (although one could argue that Sanctity in Sherri Tepper's Grass is an offshoot of the LDS). Not to mention that in the 30's and 40's the LDS were still very much a fringe sect rather than the phenomenon it has become.
So it's quite possible that, at least for writers who were not steeped in anti-Catholicism, having their fictional Evil Church of Evil look Catholic may well be more a matter of falling into the All Christianity is Catholicism trope without thinking about it. Even if one is trying to avoid it by creating a completely fictional faith community to become corrupt, the need for top-down hierarchy to control things and visually striking ceremony to awe the flock is going to mean it will echo the Catholic Church in many Western readers' minds.