The Materiality of Rosary Prayer and the Negotiation of Digital Media at Saint Odilia Parish, Cicadas, Bandung
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61391/sij.v5i1.303Keywords:
Digital Religion, Material Religion, Mediatization of Religion, Praesentia Realis, Rosary Devotion, RSSTAbstract
Catholic devotion in urban settings faces the pressures of mediatization, which bring embodied experience into tension with the touchscreen. This article examines Rosary devotion at Saint Odilia Parish Church in Cicadas, Diocese of Bandung, asking how parishioners practice the devotion, interpret its symbolic meaning, and negotiate it within contemporary social life. The study adopts a qualitative, intrinsic-analytic single-case design. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with the head of the parish youth ministry, observation of devotional artifacts, and analysis of parish bulletins and digital communication channels. The data were examined using critical thematic analysis and interpreted through the theories of the Mediatization of Religion, Material Religion, and the Religious-Social Shaping of Technology (RSST). Three findings emerge. First, devotional motivations differ across generations: older parishioners regard the Rosary as preparation for death, whereas younger Catholics select devotional practices according to their affinity with categorical communities. Second, parishioners continue to use physical rosary beads; digital Rosary applications are not customary, either individually or communally. Third, the parish treats digital media as an auxiliary resource for catechesis and emergency pastoral care (the cyberpulpit), without allowing it to displace the teaching on the real presence (praesentia realis), the materiality of the sacraments within incarnational theology, or the bodily assembly of the faithful (assemblea).
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