Introduction
This paper is on the ethnography of a Roman Catholic Church. It will explore the subculture of the Catholic Society in St Cuthbert's Church. “Catholics share with other Christians a belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, the son of God made man who came to earth to redeem humanity's sins through His death and resurrection.” (Stanford, 2011). Catholics are a religious group of people who believe in one God in three persons, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. I decided to observe a Catholic Church because throughout it's years, it continues to influence the world in religious issues, social institutions, art, education, medicine, science, music, philosophy, literature, and politics (Wilson, 1997).
I will attempt to discuss the culture of the St. Cuthbert's Catholic Church in Durham. There is a Catholic Society often known as the “CathSoc” for short, related to the church but for my research I only examined the Catholic Church and I will
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After about five minutes, people started to show up. There were a number of people for a Saturday mass and at this time, I realised I was little overdressed. Everyone appeared to be wearing casual comfortable clothes, which was ironic because the atmosphere was formal, but no one looked formal. Few minutes later, two priests came out and everyone stood to signify the beginning of the mass. Inside the church looked very traditional, especially since there were wooden benches as seats. The altar was the best decorated section of the church. A table was placed right in the middle of the altar which was where the priests carried out 'The Last Supper' ritual also known as the 'Holy Eucharist'. All of these I was informed on by friend prior to mass. “The Holy Eucharist is a sacrament and a sacrifice. In the Holy Eucharist, under the appearances of bread and wine, the Lord Christ is contained, offered, and received” (Horan,
Here we must make an aside in regard to the U.S. Catholic culture in America is practically non-existent, except in attenuated form among such peoples as the Hispanos and Indians of Northern New Mexico, the Cajuns and Creoles of Louisiana and the other Gulf States, and the old English Catholic settlements of Maryland and Kentucky. Elsewhere the Faith was brought by immigrants, and its attendant culture has, like all imported ones in the States, veered between preservation and assimilation. This was exacerbated by the fact that Catholic leadership in the United States was early committed to a programme of cultural melding. In addition, this leadership was primarily Irish, a nationality which had been deprived of much of its native culture by centuries of Protestant Ascendancy. Hence it has been extremely difficult for Americans, even American Catholics, to understand or appreciate the Catholic thing (as Chesterton described it) in a cultural context. I am reminded of the astonishment of a classmateof mine (from a typical American Catholic High School) at seeing an anthology of Catholic poetry. This situation has been greatly accentuated in the past twenty years by the changes occurring after Vatican II.
The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.”
Saunders, William P. Straight Answers: Answers to 100 Questions about the Catholic Faith. Baltimore, MD: Cathedral Foundation, 1998. Print.
Lawrence S. Cunningham's The Catholic Faith: An Introduction is a difficult book to muster up a response to. One is tempted to quip "there it no there there,"although more accurately I would say that there is little there that inspires much more than an indifferent shrug in response. Perhaps the blame lay in the purpose of the book, which is set out first to not be "an encyclopedia of Catholic trivia" (Cunningham, 8). I was disappointed to read this, since while an explanation of the meaning of the different titles and offices in the Catholic hierarchy, or an explanation of the various vestments and ceremonies may be "trivia" to some, at least it is information. Had I spent my time with this book acquiring a knowledge of these facts, I could claim to have added something to my education, albeit maybe only some banalities, lacking in profundity. Instead, what does the book set out to be? Cunningham seeks to "provide an account, as fully as space allows, of the texture of the Catholic experience and the bases for that experience" (9). I have learned to be a little nervous on reading words like "texture" used in this way; usually the author is unintentionally trying to warn the critically-trained reader away. Doubly so with the word "experience," as in hackneyed phrases like "the African American Experience" or the "Gulf War Experience." Such writings have established that they do not wish do deal in facts, nor in reasoned argument to support their conclusions. They deal in "impressions," to complement the "textures" that they will be skimming the surface of. Their primary justification for their existence is that each person's "experience" is of value, and no one...
In de-emphasizing the role of the Church, it’s rituals, and offices, and supplanting them with a more direct and personal approach to God and spirituality; the Protestant Reformation, through the works of Martin...
Roles of the Catholic Church in Western civilization has been scrambled with the times past and development of Western society. Regardless of the fact that the West is no longer entirely Catholic, the Catholic tradition is still strong in Western countries. The church has been a very important foundation of public facilities like schooling, Western art, culture and philosophy; and influential player in religion. In many ways it has wanted to have an impact on Western approaches to pros and cons in numerous areas. It has over many periods of time, spread the teachings of Jesus within the Western World and remains a foundation of continuousness connecting recent Western culture to old Western culture.-
St. Cuthbert also added to the monastic tradition. He also took himself into isolation to assert his faith. Following his death, after many years of loyalty to the faith, it was fo...
Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Chicago [u.a.: Univ. of Chicago, 2007. Print.
The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved February 21, 2010 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org
He discussed in depth about how Christological traditions emerged and developed over the decades (59). However, his focus leans towards the first five centuries of the church. As the church was beginning to grow the emergence of the canon was informing believers of the historical events of Jesus sacrifices. It was a wonderful era to study how the culture perceived the recently crucified Christ.
There are several different cultures in the world today. Each culture has its own different traditions and values. One of the world’s most popular cultural differences has to deal with religion. Religion is defined as “an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies, and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods” (Meriam). One popular religion is Roman Catholicism. Being a catholic means different things to different people but it usually revolves around one central theme; doing the right thing according to God. While I am not Catholic, I can certainly understand some of the values and beliefs they have.
The history of Christianity has always involved turbulence. Not only were there divisions among the members of the religion into different sects according to their own beliefs and ideas, but also, there were struggles between Christianity and the pagan, in which the two opposing sides tried to weaken the other and yield greater influence. These divisions and fierce competitions can be observed in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, in which several clashes between systems are shown: a conflict between Christianity and paganism and one between the two different orders – the Benedictine and Franciscan. Moreover, the significance of the society’s mood is also evident: through the application of the concept of discourse, the impact of the societal norms and standards, particularly in the limited setting of a monastery, is depicted.
Rulla, L.M., S.J Anthropology of The Christian Vocation. Vol.1: Interdisciplinary Bases. Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1986.
Turner, William. (March 1, 1907) The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume I, online edition. Retrieved February 2, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01713a.htm
I was a little lost when I arrived because mass was not held in the big church that I thought it was going to be in. It was in a little chapel to the side of the big church and a sign on the door read “daily mass held here”. I walked into a quiet, dim room that had several other people sitting quietly and waiting for it to start. There were stained glass windows, pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and candles all throughout the room, and a cup filled with water by the door so people could get it and do the sign of the cross upon entering. There was also the crucifix at the front of the room. Several other people walked in after me and I noticed that before they walked into the aisles to take their seats a few of them knelt and did the sign of the cross. I am a little familiar with the sign of the cross because I have seen it done at funerals and weddings. Right when it was time someone started off by reciting what seemed like a prayer. It was a lot of repeating. There was a lot of reciting of different prayers. Some that I had heard the words of before such as Daily Bread. This was a similarity because we have also read the scripture of the Daily Bread. It seems that this prayer or scripture is recited at every mass. What I noticed is that a different person throughout the room started each of the different prayers that were being said. Someone would lead and the other people in the room would repeat and follow after them.