The Congregation is an outline for a Christian anti-Mythos organization, proposed by Adam Scott Glancy. As with Section Disparu, “the Congregation” is not a name intended for actual use in gaming, though the concept is perfectly serviceable.
The unnamed, global organization was created by the Holy See some time after the loss of Catholic secular authority in 1871. Its hand-picked men (and Holy Sisters) are hidden in the ranks of regular clergy and lay employees of the Church. Their main source of intelligence is “confessors”, corresponding to Delta Green friendlies. The Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology provides additional intel. Like traditional CoC investigators, those from the Congregation have no secular authority.
The big difference is that they could have nearly unlimited operational funds, a worldwide organization to support them, one of the world’s largest archives to draw on for research, and perhaps even diplomatic immunity.1
If violence is needed, the Congregation sends in Sicarri (“dagger men”) recruited from the Swiss Guard. If any such criminal activity is exposed, the Church denies all involvement to avoid scandal, and quietly uses its leverage to have the agents released if it can.
The Congregation is populated by a reactionary old guard that resists the modernization of the Church. It misunderstands the Mythos because it observes supernatural phenomena through the lens of biblical and medieval demonology, and refuses to use spells.
Delta Green takes a canonical view of Lovecraft’s universe, so let’s stick close to Lovecraft’s vision of a scary, hostile universe where Christianity has no supernatural power to repel or contain the Cthulhu Mythos and the rituals and symbols of the Catholic Church will be useless to our team from the Congregation.2
A less reactionary approach would lead to understanding of the Mythos, and from there to loss of religious faith in the imaginary Abrahamic god. This faith could easily be replaced by something more real, which would be counterproductive, explaining why it is the reactionary approach that has survived.
For the same reason, the Congregation actively combats all public knowledge of the Mythos, knowing it is corrosive to the familiar faith. Blissful ignorance is an explicit, primary goal. Ineffective methods are the price of this ignorance.