Suchergebnisse

The cult of the relics of St. Thérèse de Lisieux. A pragmatic approach to worship in contemporary French catholicism.
The article offers a pragmatic approach to a contemporary religious fact – the cult of the relics of St. Thérèse de Lisieux. Ethnographic investigation reveals a series of arrangements in which these relics are open to worship, leaving room for more or less restricted possibilities for touching them. The to-ing and froing between observable practices and texts defining the proper usage of relics enables us to interpret instruments of worship as so many compromises between institutional demands, anxious not to separate the relics from what they see as being the most relevant beings while not laying themselves open to criticism as being superstitious on the one hand, and the expectations of action and interaction with the Saint demonstrated by her worshippers on the other hand. The activities which make St. Thérèse de Lisieux present are therefore revealed as being a source of conflict and implacably multifarious.