Are certain horrific aspects of catholicism distinctive to that sect specificaly.

[Angrboda]

I only skimmed the article on the Just-World hypothesis, but I have my own personal theory about this. (Although I don't have it fully fleshed out, so forgive if it's a bit rough.) As humans, we're a social species, and depend for our survival on important social processes. In dealing with others, which is a major part of our world, we look for fairness and trustworthiness, because these are the conditions most conducive to profitable social exchanges. We become naturally anxious if we suspect someone is lying to us, or cheating us. Thus, we have an emotional need to feel that things are fair, and that we aren't going to be rewarded for good acts with bad results. We have an emotional need to believe things are fair, so we project that need onto the universe, to things beyond other social partners. If bad things happen to good people, well, if they aren't compensated somewhere down the road, that's unsettling. Accepting that life is unfair is something we can do with our head, but less so with our hearts. We need to feel there's some justice in the world, or we're profoundly disturbed. Even those who are atheist think in these terms. We like to think that we got that promotion because we deserved it, when it could have been that my boss just liked looking at my ass. We want to believe that people get what they deserve, whether it be good or bad. (In ethics, this leads to the concept of moral desert.) It's just the emotional part of our monkey brain shepherding our biological interests by overlaying an emotional need which is instrumentally useful in social interactions, onto a context in which it has little utility, the behavior of the universe. Evolutionarily, this makes sense, as making mistakes in not applying this logic in social situations can lead to serious consequences for you and your chances of reproductive success; making the mistake of applying it where there is no benefit is relatively harmless and less costly than the former mistake. So, to speak teleologically a moment, it makes more sense to over-detect fairness even when it's not applicable than it does to under-detect it when it does matter. Evolutionarily speaking, the cost-benefit ratio is in favor of over-detection.

So while it's rather puzzling on its own terms, I suspect events like this are just another example of how the brain resolves cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, we're faced with the unfairness of an indifferent universe, on the other hand, our mammalian brain has an intense need to believe that things are fair and just. The intense need wins out, even at the cost of distorting reality to make it fit. So what you saw in that Tavern might have been exacerbated by religious doctrine, but was more likely simply people trying to resolve an emotional and epistemic crisis. Their need for a just world was threatened by the reality of an indifferent universe in the palpable form of bad things happening to good people, and the conflict was resolved by redrawing the map.

That's just the way the human mind works. The mind is less concerned with truth than it is with feeling in control. If you kick their belief in a just world out from under them, their sense of control evaporates, and panic sets in.