Le placebo céleste. La liturgie comme thérapie

Abstract

This study argues that the effect envisaged by the Christian Sacrament of the sick consists in the healing of the rupture provoked by scientific medical procedures. The anointing of the sick reestablishes the fundamental unity of the human person as a symbolic completion of what other partial procedures may have begun to do as a result of sickness: a symbolic completion that marks the Christian for the resurrection. We begin by highlighting the placebo as an ally of the medical sciences, while noting that placebo research points to the importance of ritual performance in treatment as well as the reformulation of mind-body dualism. Then, in order to develop the dialectic between rite as therapy and therapy in its ritual aspects, we report on two complementary contributions: one from a specialist in ritual studies, Ronald Grimes, and the other from a theologian, Andrea Grillo. The utopian key of Gregory Baum is added, understood as a – reflexive – second-order discourse in relation to the – symbolic, ritual and performative – first-order articulation of the sacrament of anointing the sick. The latter thus appears as a symbol of the future, that is, as an anticipation of eschatological salvation in the marking of the believer's body for the resurrection.