RITE. - I. IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. - In a general line applicable to all religions, by r. (etymology uncertain) is meant the norm that guides the performance of a sacred action. This norm is fixed by religious tradition, which from the beginning has experienced its efficacy and which demands that it be repeated faithfully, so that communication between an individual or a group and the divinity may be brought about with efficacy of results.
This concept of fixity is indispensable for the genuine idea of the r.: ritus est mos institutus, religiosis caeremonii consecratus (Servius, Aen., XII 836); therefore all religions have their own ritual in which the formulas and rubrics of worship are fixed. The classifications of r. are various: positive ones that exalt the cohesive principle of social life (e.g., sacrificial r.) or negative ones that tend to separate what is sacred from what is profane (e.g., ascetic r., the calendar, temples; this classification belongs to the sociological school of Durkheim; to which it may be observed that in reality even these r. are positive because they tend to strengthen the sacral element of individuals or of the group); magical r., which have a private sphere of action and are often hostile, and religious r. of a social and beneficent character; mimetic r. based on the principle that like acts upon like, and sympathetic r. based on the principle that the part acts upon the whole; oral r. that are manifested by the spoken or modulated voice and manual r. that are manifested by gesture and action.
Better than these subdivisions of a theoretical character, which are not always perspicuous and clear, is a subdivision made on the basis of the practical purpose that the r. tends to achieve.
According to this practical criterion there are three types of r.: of passage, of participation, of propitiation.
R. of passage. - These are those that preside over the passage from one place or moment or state of life to another: and they are the r. of the threshold, of birth; of initiation whether pubertal or into a particular religious society (v. MISTERI); of marriage, of death. These r. involve three moments, sometimes more or less well distinguished, which are of separation from the preceding situation; of margin, in which the conditions that prepare the individual for the new situation mature; of aggregation to the new state or place or social condition.
R. of participation. - These are those that place the individual or the group in communication with the divine powers, in whose life they thus come in some way to participate. The three principal r. of participation are: prayer (v.), sacrifice (v.), and r. of consecration.
R. of consecration are those by means of which a person, a place, an object, after having been separated from profane use, are consecrated to the divinity. Hence, in the category of r. of passage, all ceremonies of initiatory aggregation are at bottom r. of consecration. The consecration of priests, of kings, which takes place through sacred anointing and the handing over of the symbols of their new authority, are consecratory r. that make the one who receives them a participant in divine authority. Among the ancient Romans the consecration of a temple entails, besides the separation of the place from profane use and from every right of private property, a positive dedication made by the offering magistrate, while the pontiff holds the doorpost of the temple with his hand, thereby expressing the passage of the temple into the category of things belonging to the divinity.
In animal sacrifice the victim, before being killed, is consecrated, that is, invested with ritual holiness and thus made a participant in divine sacrality by means of a special r. (smearing with butter in India, sprinkling with barley in Greece, with mola salsa, whence "immolation," in Rome).
R. of propitiation. - These are among the most frequently employed because with them the human group directly provides for procuring what benefits its life, for eliminating what is harmful, for expiating legal and moral faults, thus re-establishing peace between the divinity and men. They are therefore divided into three categories: agrarian r., lustral r., expiatory r.
Agrarian r. are those connected with the annual cycle of vegetation. They generally entail the sacrifice of an animal in which the spirit of the vegetation is synthesized and whose death, with the preservation of its spirit (represented either by the skin or by another object that has come into contact with it), guarantees the success of the new harvest. The harvest ceremonies of northern European folklore are survivals of ancient agrarian r. On the sublimation of an agrarian r. into a mystery r. v. MISTERI.
Lustral r., directed at preserving or freeing a place, an individual, a group from baleful influences, consist in ablutions of water, fumigations of incense, contact with apotropaic herbs, enclosure of the object within a magic circle determined either by a belt, by means of a which often manifest themselves with signs of divine wrath (earthquakes, meteorological phenomena, epidemics, etc.). Their mechanism consists essentially in accumulating upon a victim (animal or human) the sins or the physical and legal impurities of the community, causing them to be carried away and consumed by the victim itself. A typical case of expiatory r. was that of the scapegoat (v.) among the Hebrews and that of the two condemned men, called φαγμαχοί in the Thargelia (v.) in Athens.
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II. IN CATHOLIC LITURGY
Rite, in the proper sense, means the manner or order in which the various sacred functions are carried out, that is, the ceremonies of Holy Mass, of the Office, of the administration of the Sacraments and sacramentals; thus one speaks of the "ritus celebrandi missam," of the "ritus baptizandi," of the "ritus consecrationis altaris," etc.
The term rite indicates the greater or lesser solemnity with which Mass, the Office, and feasts are celebrated; it means, for example, "sub ritu duplici, semiduplici, simplici" or "primae vel secundae classis," "sub ritu pontificali," etc. Rite, in the broad sense, indicates the complex, the whole body of ceremonies and functions of a particular cult, or the different manner in which certain acts of worship are performed: the rite of a particular Church (of Lyon, of Toledo) or of a religious community (Carmelite, Dominican, Premonstratensian), or of a more or less extensive territory (Roman, Ambrosian, Gallican, Mozarabic, Oriental, Greek, Melchite, Ethiopian, Chaldean). In this last sense the term rite is equivalent to liturgy and designates not only the properties of the liturgy itself, but in canon law or in ecclesiastical life it is used when speaking of the faithful of the Oriental rites as opposed to the faithful of the Latin rite. The Church not only tolerates all these different rites, but in the CIC, can. 98 § 3, protects and preserves their particularities; for example, without authorization from the Apostolic See it is not permitted to change the rite in which one was baptized, nor even to return to a rite once legitimately changed. All rites and the liturgical books pertaining to them fall within the competence of the S. Congreg. of Rites; with the exception of those
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by the thread, or by the circumambulation of animals destined for sacrifice (e.g., in Rome the suovetaurilia in the Ambarvalia, the lustration of the people and of the army, etc.). Lustration is also used to restore to common use a person or an object invested with sacredness through their contact with a sacred thing (e.g., the offerer, the sacrificers, and the objects that have taken part in a sacrifice).
Expiatory rites are those that tend to remove from a group the effects of a fault into which it has fallen, and Oriental ones that are reserved to the Congreg. Pro Ecclesia Orientali, reorganized in 1938 by Pius XI.