Ritual, symbol, and experience: understanding Catholic Worker house masses.: An article from: Sociology of Religion

This digital document is an article from Sociology of Religion, published by Thomson Gale on December 22, 2005. The length of the article is 10396 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the author: This article uses house masses in a Catholic Worker community to examine the interaction of symbols and experience in religious rituals. It argues that, during the period of this study, these weekly masses served to reinforce Worker identity by guiding participants' experiences along specific lines. Ritual symbolism and the moment-to-moment attention of the participants combined to move participants from despair at the state of the world to an experience of a community of solidarity and hope. A second phase of the ritual then expanded that community to include homeless people, by means of a symbolic second 'mass' of soup, bread, and water, delivered in the streets. The article demonstrates the need for sociology to consider the experiential dimension, along with the symbolic, in understanding rituals' role in religious life.

Citation Details
Title: Ritual, symbol, and experience: understanding Catholic Worker house masses.
Author: James V. Spickard
Publication:Sociology of Religion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 66 Issue: 4 Page: 337(21)

Distributed by Thomson Gale