The Postmodern Catholic: Cultural Reasons for Advent and Weak Religiosity of a Faithful Believer.

Abstract

This article aims to explain the cultural modeling or burnishing of a new type of religious believer that emerges as a result of modernity and secularization, and postmodernity and post-secularization. This new homo religiosus, influenced by the cultural forces to which they have been exposed, approaches matters of religion and spirituality with informality and even playfulness. This is due in part to the fact that religious beliefs, ideas, and practices have been trivialized by the global market of religions, which is characteristic of these times of post-secularization. Our new homo religiosus embodies, as we intend to demonstrate, the postmodern Catholic: a type of de-dogmatized Catholic who has no problem adopting beliefs that are different or even contrary to their own creed, perhaps out of fashion or simple recreation. This is because they are accustomed, even neurologically, in this over-technologized society where we are exposed to an excessive circulation of all kinds of data or information that, in some cases, invite us to ephemeral loyalty and fleeting identity. The article concludes by asserting that it is very likely that religion will not completely disappear in the future, but will continue to transform through the inexorable incorporation of religious symbols, ideas, and beliefs into mass esotericism and the global market of religions.