Synopses & Reviews
This collection explores Catholicism as a faith grounded in ritual practices. Ritual, encompassing not only the central celebration of Mass but popular ceremonies and devotional acts, comprises a base for Catholicism that requires both constant engagement of the human body and negotiation of various types of power, both human and divine. Practicing Catholic brings together top scholars from various backgrounds to explore methodologies for studying ritual and Catholicism. Scholars focus their essays on particular aspects of ritual within Catholic practice. The collection is divided into six easy-to-follow sections: Performance, Liturgy, and Ritual Practice, Catholic Ritual in History, Contemporary Ritual Practices of Healing, Catholic Ritual as Political Practice, Contemporary Mass Media as a Domain for Catholic Ritual Practice, and a final section drawing them together.
Synopsis
Practicing Catholic brings together top scholars from various backgrounds to explore methodologies for studying ritual and Catholicism. The essays focus on particular aspects of ritual within Catholic practice, such as liturgy and performance and healing rituals.
About the Author
Bruce T. Morrill is Associate Professor, Department of Theology, Boston College.
Susan Rodgers is Professor of Anthropology, College of the Holy Cross.
Joanna E. Ziegler is Professor, Department of Visual Arts, College of the Holy Cross.
Table of Contents
Part I: Performance, Liturgy, and Ritual Practice * Introduction--Susan Rodgers, Joanna E. Ziegler, Bruce T. Morrill *
Part II: Catholic Ritual: Practice in History * The Future of the Past: What Can History Teach Us about Symbol and Ritual?--Gary Macy * Commentary on Macy: Ritual Efficacy: Cautionary Questions, Historical and Social Anthropological--Anthony Cashman * Performing Death and Dying at Cluny in the High Middle Ages--Frederick S. Paxton * Commentary on Paxton: No Time for Dying--Edward H. Thompson, Jr. * Marginal Bodies: Liturgical Structures of Pain and Deliverance in the Middle Ages--Joanne Pierce * Commentary on Pierce: Body Critical Embodiment--Jennifer Knust * Modern Inquisitions--Irene Silverblatt * Commentary on Silverblatt: On Colonial Catholicisms--Susan Rodgers *
Part III: Contemporary Ritual Practices of Healing * The Vox Feminae: Choosing and Being as Christian Form and Praxis--Therese Schroeder-Sheker * Practicing the Pastoral Care of the Sick: The Sacramental Body in Liturgical Motion--Bruce T. Morrill * Christ the Healer: An Investigation of Contemporary Liturgical, Pastoral, and Biblical Approaches--Bruce T. Morrill * Commentary on Schroeder-Sheker and Morrill: Embodiment, Integration, and Authenticity; Reshaping the Catholic Sacramental Imagination--Judith Marie Kubicki *
Part IV: Catholic Ritual As Political Practice * The Death of Comrade Moti: Practicing Catholic Untouchable Rage in a North Indian Village--Mathew Schmalz * The Customs of the Faithful: Evangelicals and the Politics of Catholic Fiesta in Bolivia--Daniel M. Goldstein * Because It Is a Symbol, It Is Real: U.S. Latino/a Popular Catholicism as Liberating--Roberto S. Goizueta * Commentary on Goizueta: The Paradoxical Character of Symbols, Popular Religion, and Church: Questions for U.S. Latino/a Theology--James B. Nickoloff *
Part V: Contemporary Mass Media As a Domanin for Catholic Ritual Practice * The Cell Phone and the Crowd: Messianic Politics in Recent Philippine History--Vicente Rafael * The Sacramental Body of Audrey Santo: A Holy Mystic Girl in Ritual and Media Spaces in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Beyond--Susan Rodgers * Commentary on Rafael and Rodgers: Catholic Sacramentalism as Media Event: A View from the Sociology of Religion and the Sociology of Media--John Schmalzbauer * Performing the Miraculous in Central Massachusetts--Julia Schmalz & Mathew N. Schmalz *
Part VI: Conclusion: Between Theory and Practice * Scholarship and/as Performance: The Case of Johan Huizinga and His Concept of "Historical Sensation"--Joanna E. Ziegler * The Liturgy of Theory--Christopher A. Dustin * Commentary on Dustin: The Medicine of Philosophy--William E. Stempsey * Epilogue:
Reflections on Vespers, Holy Cross Campus, Brooks Concert Hall Sunday, October 20, 2002--Katherine M. McElaney