Abstract
The problem of recognizing the true motivations of secular pilgrims is often experienced on the Camino de Santiago. The faith of pilgrims seems to be hidden under the cover of many behaviors of contemporary pilgrims. At the same time on the Camino de Santiago, there could be observed a significant change in how the sacred is perceived by pilgrims: their experience is more related to “time” or “relation/event”, than “place”. The clue is the correct notion of religiosity, which for Thomas Aquinas was not a set of contents, but the relation to the ultimate end. In this light, the heritage can speak and manifest its message, when the relation is reestablished. With this theological background, I will try to answer the main question about the explanatory dimension of faith, its relation to the meaning of heritage and art and I will offer two proposals for the renewal of the theological approach to pilgrimage.
Highlights
The relationship between sacred and profane finds its privileged expression in Christian pilgrimage.It is concealed in the very etymology of the term peregrinatio, or “peregrination”, which refers to the route crossing “through the fields”, per-agros (Turner and Turner 1978; Coleman and Elsner 1995).This, in turn, suggests that the sacred is not understood as something given directly but disguised, unto which the route leads “through” other realities as well
Aquinas did not use these terms in the contexts of cultural heritage or sacred and profane experience, I will argue that it can be a useful tool for theological reflection on pilgrimage
The Camino is a pre-pilgrimage, setting the stage for one’s ultimate faith journey: his inability to control all of life, it is a long-term project, and grace which gives difficulties and inconveniences on the way an opportunity to grow, since “power is made perfect in weakness”
Summary
The relationship between sacred and profane finds its privileged expression in Christian pilgrimage. Aquinas did not use these terms in the contexts of cultural heritage or sacred and profane experience, I will argue that it can be a useful tool for theological reflection on pilgrimage This kind of reflection requires a discussion of the meaning of religiosity that is operated in studies on pilgrimage and Aquinas’ virtue of religion is applicable in this sense. I have done more social scientific publications on this (Roszak 2019; Roszak 2017a; Roszak 2015; Roszak 2011), here I want to speak more generally in the theological sense of pilgrimage This is a perspective that is not confined to understanding how one religious group (e.g., Christians) experiences a pilgrimage to Compostela, nor it is about presenting confessional theology, but rather it is an approach that attempts to analyze more broadly the role of faith by those who travel to Compostela, regardless of their religious (or areligious) tendencies. The theology of pilgrimage will be presented in the Christian perspective, which allows for an understanding of many contemporary paradoxes in, as well as the lack of visible religiosity on, the Camino de Santiago (Oviedo et al 2014; Cesaux 2011)
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