17 - Communiquer le sacré
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Peppino ORTOLEVA
Change in funeral rituals in the age of secularisation
Le Temps des médias n°17, Automne 2011, p. 131-142.
We may be mean, by the word secularization, two very different things: the first refers to a world « empty » of any faith; the second, to quote Charles Taylor, refers to the passage from a society where faith in God was taken for granted, to one where it is considered one of many different options. This article analyses the change in funeral rituals in the age of secularisation (in Taylor’s meaning): how they became improvised (even « make-shift »), intimate, decentralized, in the present tense. And their informality, which is in itself a big difference from classical rituals, even though in many cases religious traditions are evoked in what may be called «low intensity» cults. Television programs, particularly American series, have been particularly receptive of this change in sensibility; while global television has been the theatre for the greatest funeral rites of our time: those of Princes Diana and Pope John Paul II.