Worship and culture: endogenous and exogenous factors in a local church

Abstract

Since the times of Karl Marx, George Frazer and Emile Durkheim the relationship between worship and culture has been as central issue, and so it is today since 9/11. In the Roman Catholic tradition, the council of Vatican II has defined worship in reference to the endogenous dimensions of the liturgy, with little awareness of outside factors. This paper examines worship in a Catholic parish, characterized by a dynamic Latino minority within a dominantly traditional Italian American population. The endogenous variables of ethnicity and clergy dominance are not recognized while the exogenous variables of national attendance decline, ineffective institutional faith transmission, religious individualism, consumerism, and secularism are ignored. This is so because the clergy defines its responsibility only in reference to the ritual part of the liturgy, not singing and devotions. More generally, the resistance to change can be explained in terms of an ideology of self-preservation, in the form of clerical professionalization and the privatization of worship. The prevalence of ideology in the whole society today, not just religion, call for a greater awareness of the importance of ideology in cultural studies.