My opinion on the ‘would modern au Harrow be goth or Catholic’ debate is that she would be both and it would throw everyone off. She goes equally hard on both of those things and no one knows what to do about it.
Harrow has no friends so she treats confessional like she’s venting with her besties.
The priest secretly hates her because she comes up to him after every mass with intense questions about the philosophical implications of the most obscure bits of scripture that he can’t even fully remember. She tries to not be insubordinate but can’t quite keep the condescension out of her tone.
When Gideon’s been hanging around for long enough she starts venting to her about what an idiot the priest is that he can’t even answer these simple questions.
Gideon suggests that she should just lead her own services if she knows so much more and Harrow, completely horrified, hisses at her “Don’t you know that would get me excommunicated??” and storms off to her room for the rest of the day to perform some sort of weird penance ritual she made up for herself.
After 20 minutes Gideon realizes she’s not coming back out and leaves.
So this gets at something that doesn’t often get discussed in the Locked Tomb fandom: imo, the Ninth House is very much inspired by/a statement about Marianism in the Catholic tradition. See, officially the Catholic Church generally accepts and encourages the veneration of Mary, above and beyond that of other saints. However, it’s always been quite leery about this veneration shading over into the territory of “Mariolatry” (worship of Mary as a goddess), especially in the historical heresies of Collyridianism, and in general giving women too many ideas. (Notably, a lot of Protestant theologians were not happy with Catholic Marianism, seeing it as idolatry.)
This brings us to Harrow and the Ninth. The Ninth in general is highly Marian-coded; they’re not considered heretical by anyone but the Eighth, they don’t think of themselves as heretical, as far as they’re concerned, they are a devout monastic society living in obedient service to a divine commandment. But Harrow is a heretic: she did the forbidden thing her family was charged to make sure was never done, and she has already transferred not just her veneration but her adoration to the Body by the time the series begins. She is, in this analogy, a Collyridianist.
And then Nona the Ninth comes around, and she goes a step further:
“I want to understand why she was angry—I want to understand the mathematics, now that I have seen them for myself. I want to know how many of the Resurrection are left, and how many you began with, and what the discrepancies are. I want to know where you put them. They didn’t go into the River. I want to know why she was angry … and why you were terrified.”
She looked away from him, and she said: “I want to journey to find God. Maybe, at the end of that road, I will find God in you, Teacher … the God who became man and the man who became God. Or, perhaps, the child of the Nine Houses will recognise a different divine. But I am the Reverend Daughter—I am the Reverend Mother, the Reverend Father—I must find God, or some aspect of God, and understand it for myself … even if she lies, right now, within the Tomb.”
Harrow’s conclusion is that John is probably not God, but that Alecto probably is, which is just the kind of thing that the early Church was worried about when they said Collyridianism was a form of Ishtar-worship.
It’s a very obscure heresy from the 4th century, which I know about only because I took a course on the Late Roman Empire where the professor insisted we learn every single heresy in the Late Roman Empire and how they related to surviving syncretic traditions (for example, there’s a reason why Marianism was very popular in Egypt, and why the Virgin Mary’s iconography is very similar to that of the goddess Isis) and their impact on the politics of the Late Roman Empire.
So I know my homoiousios vs. homoousios, and my monophysite vs. dyophysite, and my monothelite vs. dyothelite, and how it all led to the Arab caliphates getting a decent navy and winning the Battle of the Masts.
[ID: Image 1: tags that say: “#modern au where harrow goes to confessional and unloads all of her frustration about the idiot dyke’s latest antics #priest panics having never heard such gay shit in their entire life #but is legitimately confused because harrow has yet to say a single thing she needs forgiveness for #figures the best way to go is to prescribe several hail marys #but becomes increasingly concerned harrow is actually in love with the virgin mary as well”
Image 2: tags that say: “#the locked tomb #harrowhark nonagesimus #tlt modern au #sorry your tags activated the headcanon factory #love the idea of harrow being the most devout but also the most problematic member of the congregation #this girl is high-key neurodivergent and catholicism is her special interest as well as her religion #and she has negative social skills #shes trying so so hard not to be a heretic but unfortunately it just comes naturally to her”. End ID]
