Rite

RITE. —

I. IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

This concept of fixity is indispensable to the genuine idea of the rite: ritus est mos institutus, religiosis caeremonii consecratus (Servius, Aen., XII 836); hence all religions have their own ritual, in which the formulas and rubrics of worship are fixed. Rites are variously classified: positive rites, which exalt the cohesive principle of social life (e.g., sacrificial rites), or negative rites, which tend to separate what is sacred from what is profane (e.g., ascetic rites, the calendar, temples; this classification belongs to Durkheim’s sociological school, to which it may be objected that in reality these rites too are positive, since they tend to strengthen the sacred element of individuals or of the group); magical rites, whose sphere of action is private and often hostile, and religious rites, which are social and beneficent in character; mimetic rites, based on the principle that like acts upon like, and sympathetic rites, based on the principle that the part acts upon the whole; oral rites, manifested through spoken or modulated speech, and manual rites, manifested through gesture and action.

Better than these theoretical divisions, which are not always clear and distinct, is a division based on the practical purpose that the rite seeks to achieve.

According to this practical criterion, there are three types of rites: rites of passage, rites of participation, and rites of propitiation.

Rites of passage. — These preside over the transition from one place, moment, or state of life to another: they are the rites of the threshold, of birth; of initiation, whether pubertal or into a particular religious society (v. MISTERI); of marriage and of death. These rites involve three moments, sometimes more or less clearly distinguished: separation from the preceding situation; margin, in which the conditions preparing the individual for the new situation mature; and aggregation into the new state, place, or social condition.

Rites of participation. — These place the individual or group in communication with the divine powers, in whose life they thereby come, in some manner, to participate. The three prayer (v.), sacrifice (v.), and rites of consecration.

Rites of consecration are those by which a person, place, or object, after having been separated from profane use, is consecrated to the divinity. Thus, within the category of rites of passage, all ceremonies of initiatory aggregation are ultimately rites of consecration. The consecration of priests and kings, which takes place through sacred anointing and the delivery of the symbols of their new authority, consists of consecratory rites that make those who receive them participants in divine authority. Among the ancient Romans, the consecration of a temple involved, in addition to the separation of the place from profane use and from every right of private ownership, a positive dedication performed by the offering magistrate, while the pontiff held 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, before being killed, the victim is consecrated—that is, invested with ritual sanctity and thus made a participant in divine sacredness by means of a specific rite (the smearing of butter in India, the sprinkling of barley in Greece, and of mola salsa in Rome, whence “immolation”).

Rites of propitiation. — These are among the most frequently employed, since through them the human group directly seeks to obtain what is beneficial to its life, to eliminate what is harmful, and to expiate legal and moral faults, thereby restoring peace between the divinity and human beings. They are therefore divided into three categories: agrarian rites, lustral rites, and expiatory rites.

Agrarian rites are those connected with the annual cycle of vegetation. In general, they involve the sacrifice of an animal in which the spirit of vegetation is synthesized, and whose death, together 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 rites. Concerning the sublimation of an agrarian rite into a mystery rite, V. MISTERI.

(from P. B. Bagatti, Il cimitero di Commodilla, Vatican City 1936, p. 58)
RITRATTO - Portrait of a deceased woman carved in marble - Rome, cemetery of Commodilla.

which often manifest themselves through signs of divine anger (earthquakes, meteorological phenomena, epidemics, etc.). Their mechanism consists essentially in accumulating upon a victim (animal or human) the sins or physical and legal impurities of the community, having them removed and consumed by the victim itself. A typical case of the scapegoat was that of the emissary goat (v.) among the Jews and that of the two condemned men, called φαγμαχοί in the Thargelia (v.) at Athens.

The term r. indicates the greater or lesser solemnity with which the 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. R., in the broad sense, indicates the complex, the totality, of the ceremonies and functions of a particular form of worship, or the different manner in which certain acts of worship are performed: the r. 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, Eastern, Greek, Melchite, Ethiopian, Chaldean). In this latter sense the term r. is equivalent to liturgy and designates not only the characteristics of the liturgy itself, but in canon law or ecclesiastical life it is used when speaking of the faithful of the Eastern r. in contrast with the faithful of the Latin r. The Church not only tolerates all these different r., but in the CIC, can. 98 § 3, protects and preserves their particular features; for example, without the authorization of the Apostolic See it is not permitted to change the r. in which one was baptized, nor to return to the r. once it has been legitimately changed. All the r. and their respective liturgical books fall under the jurisdiction of the S. Congreg. of Rites, with the exception of those

of thread, or by the circumambulation of animals intended for sacrifice (e.g., in Rome, the suovetaurilia at the ambarvalia, the lustration of the people and of the army, etc.). Lustration is also employed to restore to common use a person or object invested with sacredness through contact with a sacred thing (e.g., an offerer, sacrificers, and objects that have taken part in a sacrifice).

The r. of expiation are those intended to remove from a group the effects of a fault into which it has fallen, and

of the Eastern rites, which are reserved to the Congreg. for the Oriental Church, reorganized in 1938 by Pius XI.