RITUAL. —
I. IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
In general terms applicable to all religions, by ritual (etymology uncertain) is meant the norm that guides the performance of a sacred action. This norm is established by religious tradition, which from the outset has experienced its efficacy and demands that it be faithfully repeated, so that communication between an individual or a group and the deity may be effectively realized.This concept of fixity is indispensable to the genuine idea of ritual: ritus est mos institutus, religiosis caeremoniis consecratus (Servius, Aen., XII. 836); therefore all religions have their own ritual in which the formulas and rubrics of worship are fixed. There are various classifications of rituals: positive ones that exalt the cohesive principle of social life (e.g., sacrificial rituals) or negative ones that aim to separate what is sacred from what is profane (e.g., ascetic rituals, the calendar, temples; this classification is from the sociological school of Durkheim; to which it may be objected that in reality even these rituals are positive because they aim to enhance the sacred element of individuals or the group); magical rituals, which have a private sphere of action often hostile, and religious rituals of a social and beneficial character; mimetic rituals based on the principle that like acts upon like, and sympathetic rituals based on the principle that the part acts upon the whole; oral rituals that are manifested through spoken or modulated voice and manual rituals that are manifested through gesture and action.
Better than these theoretical subdivisions, which are not always clear and distinct, is a classification based on the practical purpose that the ritual aims to achieve. According to this practical criterion, there are three types of rituals: rites of passage, rites of participation, and rites of propitiation.
Rites of passage. — These are those that preside over the transition from one place, moment, or state of life to another: they are the rituals of thresholds, of birth, of initiation—whether pubertal or into a particular religious society (v. MYSTERIES); of marriage, of death. These rituals involve three moments, sometimes more or less clearly distinguished, which are: separation from the previous situation; a marginal phase in which the conditions that prepare the individual for the new situation mature; and aggregation to the new state, place, or social condition.
Rites of participation. — These are those that place the individual or the group in communication with the divine powers, in whose life, in this way, they come to participate in some manner. The three principal rites of participation are: prayer (v.), sacrifice (v.), and rites of consecration.
Rites of consecration are those by which a person, a place, or an object, after being separated from profane use, is consecrated to the deity. Therefore, within the category of rites of passage, all ceremonies of initiated aggregation are fundamentally rites of consecration. The consecration of priests and kings, which takes place through sacred unction and the handing over of symbols of their new authority, are consecratory rites that make those who receive them participants in divine authority. Among the ancient Romans, the consecration of a temple involved, beyond the separation of the place from profane use and from any right of private ownership, a positive dedication performed by the acting magistrate, while the pontifex held the doorpost of the temple with his hand, thereby expressing the passage of the temple into the category of things belonging to the deity.
In animal sacrifice, the victim, before being killed, is consecrated—that is, invested with ritual holiness and thereby made to participate in divine sacredness through a specific rite (smearing with butter in India, sprinkling with barley in Greece, with mola salsa, whence “immolation,” in Rome).
Rites of propitiation. — These are among the most frequently employed, for with them the human group directly provides for what benefits its life, removes what is harmful, and expiates legal and moral faults, thereby restoring peace between the deity and humanity. They are therefore divided into three categories: agrarian rituals, lustratory rituals, and expiatory rituals.
Agrarian rituals are those connected with the annual cycle of vegetation. They generally involve the sacrifice of an animal in which the spirit of vegetation is synthesized, and whose death with the preservation of its spirit (represented either by the hide or by another object that has come into contact with it) guarantees the success of the new harvest. The harvest ceremonies of North European folklore are survivals of ancient agrarian rituals. Regarding the sublimation of an agrarian ritual into a mystery ritual V. MILGARI.
Lustratory rituals, aimed at preserving or freeing a place, an individual, or a group from harmful influences, consist of ablutions with water, fumigations with incense, contact with apotropaic herbs, enclosure of the object within a determined magical circle by means of a belt, a thread, or the circumambulation of animals destined for sacrifice (e.g., in Rome the suovetaurilia in the Amburbium, the lustration of the people and the army, etc.). Lustration is also used to restore to common use a person or object that has been rendered taboo by contact with something sacred (e.g., the offerer, the sacrificers, and objects that have participated in a sacrifice).
Expiatory rituals are those that aim to remove from a group the effects of a fault into which it has fallen, often manifested by signs of divine wrath (earthquakes, meteorological phenomena, epidemics, etc.). Their mechanism essentially consists in accumulating upon a victim (animal or human) the sins or legal and physical impurities of the community, causing them to be carried away and consumed by the victim itself. A typical case of an expiatory ritual was that of the scapegoat (v.) among the Hebrews and that of the two condemned men, called “zazozēl” in the Targums (v.) in Athens.
II. IN CATHOLIC LITURGY
Ritual, in the proper sense, refers to the manner or order in which the various sacred functions are performed, namely the ceremonies of the Holy Mass, the Divine Office, the administration of the Sacraments and sacramentals; thus one speaks of the “ritus celebrandi missam,” the “ritus baptizandi,” the “ritus consecrationis altaris,” etc.The abbreviation r. indicates the greater or lesser solemnity with which Mass, the Divine Office, and feasts are celebrated; it means, for example, “sub ritu duplici, semiduplici, simplici” or “prima vel secundae classis,” “sub ritu pontificali,” etc. In a broad sense, r. denotes the whole complex of ceremonies and functions of a particular rite or the different manner in which certain acts of worship are performed in a particular Church (Lyons, Toledo) or by a religious community (Carmelite, Dominican, Premonstratensian), or in 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 properties of the liturgy itself but, in canon law or ecclesiastical life, it is used when speaking of the faithful of the Eastern rites as opposed to the faithful of the Latin rite. The Church not only tolerates all these different rites but, in the Code of Canon Law, 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 rite in which one has been baptized nor to revert to a rite once lawfully changed. All rites and their corresponding liturgical books fall under the jurisdiction of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, with the exception of the Eastern rites, which are reserved to the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, reorganized by Pius XI in 1938.