The Body Performing Rituals

The body is a fundamental yet controversial and contradictory concept in the Catholic faith. Throughout the history of the Church, it has been considered as the lower part of creation... the prison of divine soul, a corruptible flesh, the seat of wrongful desires and the seed of all evils. Yet the same structure of the Church puts a certain emphasis on the physical manifestation of faith through rituals, festivities and ceremonials in which the body plays a central part. Here it becomes the material producing religion, mouldable clay shaped to perform ad nauseam particular rituals and chants. Why? And what does this reflect? The robust physicality of ritual worship, the focus of obsessive repetition, and the hypnotic regurgitation of wor