> Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical

It has a hierarchy, but it has multiple hierarchies. It is not all that top down. Bishop's ave a lot of autonomy, and most decisions are made at the diocesan level. Dioceses have their own property and funds held by their own trustees. On top of that religious orders have their own hierarchy (and property and funds etc.). Then there are the rites such as the Ukrainian or Syro-Malabar churches that have their own hierarchies.

Historically this was the result of the fact the church predates modern communications. It was not possible for a Pope to direct things the way a CEO of a modern corporation does, but in recent times it has been recognised as guiding principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_%28Catholicism%29 that has been adopted by other org anisations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

> It's not uncommon to see traditional Javanese processions integrated right into the mass.

That is encouraged, as long as there is not conflict with Catholic belief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inculturation#

Side note as another Catholic:

Saints Josaphat and Barlaam never had an official decree of canonization. That process didn't exist (in its earliest form) until 1170 AD. Saints before that were generally just acclaimed by the Christians in the area and probably recognized by a local bishop.

The Vatican does keep a "Roman Martyrology" by which they try to keep a list of all known saints, but the saints that existed before the canonization process are known as "pre-congregation" saints and our certainty about them is generally less, well, certain.

In this case, these two names were removed from the Martyrology. That isn't to say that the Vatican has declared they are not saints, but is no longer actively making that claim.

There have been quite a few other pre-congregation names removed from the list when historical study has found little evidence of their existence or life story.

Its called syncretism. The Greeks and Romans have been doing it since the time of Alexander the Great.

I saw a painting in a church in Peru of the last supper. On the painting they were consuming guinea pigs and chicha morada.

There also were countless statues and icons of Pachamama which is a kind of merge between mother Mary and a Andean earth goddess.

Arguably wet got Christmas trees the same way

One of the stranger aspects of Roman history is that for centuries, there was a fight over who gets the public space. You'd have the local mystery cults defacing whatever the Christians put up and vice versa. Assimilating local traditions rather than demanding people just adopt theirs fits in with a faith that aims to be higher than all others. Jesus has no need to fight Vishnu, and never did.

We're just looking at this through the lens of the Protestant Reformation so this pragmatism is often lost.

Buddhism itself also has such a history, for example with the Hindu gods, or with Shinto in Japan.

>the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia.

This is straight out of the Manichaeism playbook whose followers believed that a wide range of previous belief systems including Platonism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity each had a part of divine truth in them. This allowed them to absorb a diverse set of followers and contributed to them being one of the fasted spreading religions in Late Antiquity even giving Christianity a run for its money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

Sufis have done something similar within Islam. Similar to how there are different denominations of Christians some of whom view some of these as heretical you see the same thing playing on Islam where Sufi saint pilgrimage sites that were once Hindu temples are sometimes destroyed by fundamentalists

I don’t think anything assimilates religions better than Hinduism. New belief system? Just throw in a new avatar of Vishnu to legitimize it and carry on.

> the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions

One of the most studied issues in Catholic evangelism is the Chinese rites controversy which is also one of the historical reasons why religions are suppressed in China (aside from ideological policies ascribed to communism).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Rites_controversy

(That and the Taiping rebellion which was estimated to have killed as many people as World War 2 on the higher end. It was led by a failed scholar claiming to be alleged brother of Jesus. Most of the deaths were due to starvation. Not quite Netflix material but interesting plot nonetheless)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

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I really don't think that that use of "in particular" is correct or notable? Cross culture motion of mythology and storytelling is the rule with humanity, not the exception.

Really it's only in the last/final generation of religions, where they started writing them down in canon/scripture/testaments/writs/dogmas/whatever, that you started to see unique stories get associated with specific religions.

Before that? It's all mush. Aphrodite descends pretty clearly from the same line as Astarte/Ishtar/Innana (maybe Isis too), etc... People steal good stories. People get conquered and then confused by retelling the stories their new overlords tell. Again and again.

I'd think you overrate christianity too much. Javanese culture is known to be very welcoming of other traditions.

Catholic church tries to be practical but inadvertently poisons Christianity. Christianity is way different from the Catholic church.

Because catholic church is whatever the newest model is in the distro but other distros try to be very very clean and try to follow the original texts and their meaning but catholic church is like the new iphone trying to be like whatever is the trendy trend nowadays.