"Comprar é um ato moral": religião e consumo na igrejinha de Nossa Senhora de Fátima em Brasília - DF

Abstract

This thesis, inscribed in the research line Culture and Symbolic Systems, deals with religion and consumption and aims to verify how the constructions of meaning aimed at consumption occur, in relation to Catholic Christian principles, in the Catholic Community of the Little Church of Our Lady of Fátima, in the city of Brasília/DF. Such investigation enables reflection on the role of Catholic Christianity in the current culture, in relation to consumption and the preservation of life. Therefore, I discuss Catholic principles in relation to consumption, using the resources of hermeneutics to analyze the pericope of the Beatitudes (Mt 5, 1-12), as they are a code of ethics for Christians, as Jesus assures that the experience of his exhortation would make them happy. To update the interpretation of the Beatitudes, I carry out a dense bibliographical research to understand the Social Doctrine of the Church, crowned by the Encyclical Laudato Si' (2015), and the analysis of discourse and speeches given by agents symbolically relevant to the Catholic Church. The Encyclical Laudato Si', written by Pope Francis, exhorts the care of the common home and calls for the conduct of conscious consumption, within a cosmopolitan planetary notion. In this way, I identify the position of the Catholic Church, throughout history, with regard to consumer relations. To understand the meanings attributed to consumption by community members, I carry out participant observation and seek to reconstruct the life trajectories of these subjects, in order to apprehend their habitus, and how they guide their consumption relationships. In this way, I then come to outline how the current consumer society is configured and its relationship with Catholic principles. Using the methodology of semistructured interviews carried out with the faithful of the community of Igrejinha and analyzing the letters of intent left by them in an urn at the foot of the patron saint, I verify how these agents relate to the world of consumption. I seek to demonstrate how subjects and individuals relate to contemporary religious institutions, as well as the power to generate cohesion and solidarity that institutions have over Catholic subjects, by verifying how subjects create and are guided by the habitus and what is the place of religion in this process, and of other institutions, which I categorize into primary and secondary groups. I conclude, therefore, by proposing Christian spirituality, attached to the values of the Gospel, as a possibility for a healthy, sustainable and happy life