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Ritual Elements in Community*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Kenneth L. Schmitz
Kenneth L. Schmitz
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Trinity College, Toronto
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Extract

The Oxford English Dictionary says that a rite is ‘a formal procedure or act in a religious or other solemn observance’. The word comes into English through the French rite from the Latin ritus. Its original meaning escapes etymologists; and this is a mixed blessing, for we neither can nor must attempt a retrieval of its hidden roots. We are told by respectable etymologists (if such there be) that the word is associated from earliest times with Latin religious usage, but that even in the early Latin it was already extended to ‘custom, usage, manner or way’ of a non-religious sort. [Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary.] So, too, in modern languages the terms ‘rite’ and ‘ritual’ have specifically religious meaning, but they are also used in social and cultural settings that we would not call religious. What first strikes us about the terms ’ and ‘ritual’ is an emphasis upon a certain formality, upon a regular and stable way in which an action or set of actions is to be performed. A ritual is more than a formalism, however, since there are formalisms that are not rites, such as the logical rules for making a valid argument. Moreover, the term is frequently associated with the terms ‘myth’, ‘symbol’ and ‘faith’. These, too, are primarily religious, but are also extended to non-religious contexts. Indeed, there seems to be a network of such terms whose usage touches upon some extraordinary quality in things. Like them, the term ‘ritual’ shares both a wide variety of meanings and a certain hint of impropriety. The variety of ritual forms is notorious, ranging from the most sacred religious liturgies to the absurdities of a fraternity initiation; and the impropriety of the term breaks out whenever we brand a certain action ‘ritualistic’, just as we sometimes refer slightingly to an assertion, saying it is ‘mythical’, ‘merely symbolic’ or ‘credulous’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1981 , pp. 163 - 177
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

page 164 note 1 The Rites of Passage (1908), translated by Vizedom, M. and Caffee, G. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960).Google Scholar

page 164 note 2 Die Gestaltung der Lebensfeiern (Berlin, 1942), pp. 3–8Google Scholar; cited at length by Koenker, Ernest B., in Secular Salvation: Rites and Symbols of Political Religions (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965), pp. 193–8 (appendix 6).Google Scholar

page 164 note 3 Kirchliches Jahrbuch (1958), pp. 176–81Google Scholar; cited by Koenker, , op. cit. pp. 173–81 (appendix 2).Google Scholar The city is now named Eisenhüttenstadt.

page 166 note 1 For at least one element of importance, see Schmitz, K. L., ‘Sport and Play: Suspension of the Ordinary’, in Sport in the Sociocultural Process, ed. Hart, Marie (Dubuque, lowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1976 2), pp. 35–48.Google Scholar

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page 171 note 1 Elements of Social Organization (Boston: Beacon, 1963 3), p. 35.Google Scholar

page 171 note 2 Ibid.

page 172 note 1 For a discussion of the natural sign-base as the cosmological principle of religious meaning, see Schmitz, K. L., ‘Natural Imagery as a Discriminatory Element in Religious Language’, in Experience, Reason and God, ed. Long, E. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America 1980), pp. 159–176.Google Scholar

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page 172 note 3 The Mystery of Being (The Gifford Lectures, 2 vols.) (Chicago: Regnery, 1950)Google Scholar, vol. 1, develops the theme, but it is concisely expressed in ‘The Ontological Mystery’ in the English collection entitled The Philosophy of Existence (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949).Google Scholar

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page 176 note 1 Clearly at least in religions of revelation such as the Biblical religions.

page 176 note 2 The Sacred Canopy (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1969), p. 176.Google Scholar

page 177 note 1 Here again these remarks on religious ritual best fit the Biblical religions, but I think they could be adjusted to fit others.