Concepções de morte e ritos fúnebres da Igreja Católica a partir dos documentos do Concílio Vaticano II: uma análise psicológica e antropológica

Abstract

This research aimed to analyse the potential psychological and anthropological effects of the Second Vatican Council's conceptions of death and funeral rituals. This was an exploratory bibliographic research. The worldview on death and the guidelines on funeral rites present in the documents were analysed through three theoretical frameworks: Carl Gustav Jung, Mary Douglas and Victor Turner. Starting from the auxiliary disciplines in the field of Science of Religion, Psychology and Anthropology, it was possible to conduct the analysis from a nontheological perspective. From a Jungian psychological point of view, what can be seen in the discourse of the documents investigated is that only in part the direction of the Catholic Church towards the theme of death seems to be consistent with the process of individuation. As for Douglas's notion of impurity or danger, it is evident that in the Judeo-Christian context death itself is not considered impure. Impurity is associated with the condition that would have led humanity to mortality: sin. As for Turner's notion of communitas, we perceive in the documents that this is a state encouraged in the hope that in communion and in the experience of the paschal mystery, the social body of the Church will live a kind of spontaneous communitas