DIGITAL RELIGIOUS PRACTICES IN PANDEMIC TIMES

Abstract

This text seeks to understand how communicational-religious praxis was made explicit, that is, the reflection and practice of the Catholic Church in Brazil in relation to digital communication in times of pandemic. For this, I analyze news, interviews, documents and opinion articles published between March and December 2020 on the website of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB), the highest level of Catholicism in the country, referring to Catholic reflections and practices in and on the digital environment during the pandemic. First, I describe the various online religious practices that emerged from the “liturgical confinement” caused by the pandemic are described. Then, I analyze the reflection made by Church authorities on religious practices in times of pandemic. From the limits and possibilities of the digital raised in this ecclesial reflection, I propose some inferences regarding the fear of a “replacement” of the on-site rites by those transmitted, the dichotomy between “virtual vs. real,” and the notions of participation and presence. With that, I conclude that the pandemic revealed that the religious practices, today, are manifested not only as actions of “religation” (religare) between the human and the divine, but mainly of reconnection between the human, the digital and the divine, through religious practices that change and remain in communication.