The Roots of Ritual

This collection of essays is designed to illustrate how persons working in a variety of disciplines view ritual. Despite differences in approach and concern, the authors' corporate opinion is that ritual, so far from being a matter of mere ecclesiastical ceremonial, is a basic human language rooted in man's social nature and pervading his social environment. Until recently this matter has been the almost exclusive concern of historians of religion and certain kinds of anthropologists. In religious circles, where one would have expected to find particular concern with the demands and possibilities of ritual as a genre of behavior and communication, little formal attention has been given the matter. This is astonishing, considering the extensive work Christian churches have done during the last decade in reforming and redeveloping their worship traditions. Such reforms have been instituted for the most part on the basis of theological and historical methods— methods that were primarily those of liturgical and pastoral studies in the past. The result has been generally good reform, but it may be argued that adaptation and development of Christian worship traditions of the past into new cultural dimensions cannot be well served by theological and historical methods alone. This is so because liturgical worship is ritual by nature, and ritual behavior has its own grammar and syntax. If these go unlearned, the liturgical act itself not only suflc is but those who engage in it may well find themselves spin rather than united by it. If these go unlearned, the power of ritual for evil as well as for good goes unfactored, and those who engage in it may find themselves unknowingly gripped by the viciousness they would not rather than the good they would. Not only is ritual habit forming, it is power laden. We aw also immersed in it — to such an extent, indeed, that it takes an extraordinary degree of perception even to note its presence, much less to analyze its influences on us. This presence and its effects are nonetheless real, and they are not confined to stadiums on Saturday afternoons, to military parades, to inaugurations, or to Sunday services in church. Even less is ritual an arcane phenomenon that survives only in societies we call "primitive." Architecture, for example, is both a response to the ritual patterns by which people live together and a cause that effects such patterns, for better or worse. On both counts, architecture is ultimately embedded in the ritual patterns through which people socialize. It rises out of those patterns as a practical art by which space is defined by, lor, and among those who enact the patterns over and oxer again. The same might be said of other social institutions— such as the theater, schools, systems of jurisprudence and politics, and religion — except that these processes (none of them are merely "things") deal with other significant aspects of socio-cultural definition that affect us all. What these other significant aspects are is the scope of the chapters that follow. None of the chapters pretend to be exhaustive, nor does the collection itself pretend to be definitive. Perhaps the only point on which the several authors agree totally is that ritual is not a need oi man that may or may not be retained but an inevitability coextensive with man's social nature. On this INTRODUCTION 9 basis the authors tackle the grammar of ritual behavior from various points of view and attempt to suggest something of ritual's scope and effects in the ways we live. As the one who originally organized the conference at the University of Notre Dame, at which most of the contributions to this volume were first presented, I am obliged to acknowledge the debt I owe to the work of Professor Erik Erikson of Harvard lor the concept of the conference. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Ann Lauer and Mr. Richard Humbiecht, both of the Murphy Center for Liturgical Research at Notre Dame, and to the Center's director, the Reverend James Shaughnessy, for their generous and untiring work in seeing the volume into print. Aidan Kavanagh, O.S.B. Notre Dame, 1973