O DIVINO PAI ETERNO NA SOCIEDADE EM VIAS DE MIDIATIZAÇÃO: A RECONFIGURAÇÃO DAS PRÁTICAS RELIGIOSAS DO SANTUÁRIO BASÍLICA DE TRINDADE PELO DISPOSITIVO MIDIÁTICO TELEVISIVO

Abstract

This investigation tries to analyze how the religious practices (particularly Masses and Novenas) held in the Basilica Sanctuary of the Divine Eternal Father of the municipality of Trindade in the State of Goiás are put under a process of reconfiguration by being televised. In broadcasting these religious practices, the media employed its own rules and methods (or grammars), resulting in a new form of religious practice, which might be called “mediatic”. By analyzing the media practices of the Basilica Sanctuary of Trindade, we have identified two particularities: the use of simulation and the show as an outcome. These particularities have been originated from the process of media development on religious practices, mostly through the employment of techno- symbolic devices, orchestrated by the “mediatic” ceremony, developing from in- person religious practices. During this process of development, some modifications have also taken place in the Basilica Sanctuary of the Divine Eternal Father, as well as with the religious practices held within this church, due to their transmission by television. Grouped in two orders: temporality and spatiality, these modifications go beyond the religious field and can in fact be classified as concessions to another field, since they migrate into a television media classification. The research also shows that the televised religious practices of the Basilica Shrine of the Divine Eternal Father do not take place for the faithful present but for the “tele-faithful,” that is, the consumers of these mediatic-religious practices. The faithful, as well as the entire liturgical body of these religious practices, thus become the assistants of this media construction. To accomplish this investigation, a set of theoretical, methodological and technical procedures has been used, including bibliographical and documentary research, observation, interviews and analysis of media documents. The dissertation is develped in two parts. In the first, it addresses the emergence and development of devotion to the Divine Eternal Father under three distinct different aspects: the first during the colonial period until the proclamation of the Brazilian Republic. The second examines the devotion under ecclesiastical administration – in what we have called “Romanization.” The third deals with the mediatization of this devotion, that is, the use of the media in a first moment in order to “Christianize” it and then to spread it throughout Brazil. In the second part of the dissertation, the main concepts, such as secularization, the role of media, mediatization and the mediatization of religion (with a particular focus on media‟s interaction with Catholicism) are discussed as its hard core, as well as how the religious practices of the Basilica Sanctuary of the Divine Eternal Father are modified by being televised. It has come to a conclusion that religious devotion makes concessions to the media field in the transmissions of its practices and that these concessions not only alter the liturgical formats of its practices, but indeed affect the temple itself.