Of sacraments, sacramentals and anthropology: is anthropological explanation sacramental?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper suggests that what is usually called a cultural misunderstanding of biomedical disease categories may be construed as a biomedical and anthropological misunderstanding of cultural categories. This is premised on the fact that anthropology often functions as an intimate double and handmaiden of biomedicine, in so far as it refuses to countenance the possibility of theurgic aetiologies in the realm of what is called ‘mental illness’. Such a refusal displaces native explanations of divine or demonic agency to human agency. This is best elucidated by examining the unexamined religious beliefs of Anglo-European anthropology, which appears to be the terra firma of its emic explanatory categories. The paper attempts to demonstrate this by proposing that while native explanations are akin to the sacraments, anthropological explanations are akin to sacramentals (holy water, the cross, the scapular, verbal blessings). While the sacraments, like divine agency, operate ex opere operato, the sacramentals are dependent on the disposition of the recipient and on the good offices of the church, as they operate ex opere operantis ecclesiae (from the work of the working church), as well as ex opere operantis (from the work of the working one). If the sacraments are efficacious as it is work done by Christ alone, and akin to work done by the possessing agent, sacramentals are efficacious as they are also dependent on human agency. In other words, anthropological explanations are, at best, ‘sacramental’ as they replace emic theurgic explanations by etic ones, where human agency in the form of the priest, the institution of the church, and the lay person who is the recipient of divine dispensation, also have a role to play; or, as is often the case, the only role to play.