Eric Hoenes del Pinal et al., "Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

In Mediating Catholicism: Religion and Media in Global Catholic Imaginaries (Bloomsbury, 2022), the authors and the three editors (Eric Hones del Pinal, Marc Rosco Loustau and Kristin Norget) explore how Catholicism is produced, maintained and challenged through processes of communication.

This book focuses on the ethnographic study of Catholicism and media. Chapters demonstrate how people engage with the Catholic media-scape, and analyze the social, cultural, and political processes that underlie Catholic media and mediatization.

Case studies examine Catholic practices in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Latin America, South-East Asia, and Africa, providing a truly comparative, de-centered representation of global Catholicism.

Illustrating the vibrancy and heterogeneity of Catholicism world-wide, the book also examines how media work to sustain larger global Catholic imaginaries.

Eric Hoenes Del Pinal’s chapter in particular examines “how Guatemalan Catholics have variously used FM radio and internet streaming video to manage the uncertainties of producing spectacular public rituals during Holy Week. Focusing on the devotional labor that Catholic lay leaders do to mount these events and the fact that efficacy of that work is not always easy to asses, he asks how their various media practices, which are meant to counterbalance unprecedented social changes, have contributed to the mediatization of parish life” (9).

Lauren Horn Griffin is assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Louisiana State University. She researches religion, media, and technology with a focus on Catholic communities around the world.

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