Fostering the sacred in a secular society: Catholic women practicing religion through intimate relationships

ABSTRACT

This article aims to contribute to the body of scholarship on lived religion by using intimate relationships as a lens in order to examine religiosity. Based on ethnographic research carried out among practicing Catholic women in Belgium, I unpack Catholic women’s understanding of the entanglement between religiosity and relationships by showing the ways in which these women perceive intimate relationships to enable—and at times hinder—their performance of religiosity. I draw on the study of lived religion in a twofold manner. Firstly, I mobilize it as an ethnographic tool to capture the experiences and practices of the women with respect to intimate relationships. Secondly, I contribute to the further theorization of the field by investigating religiosity and how religion is practiced in a non-religious setting, i.e. coupledom in a secular society. Hence, in this article I propose a novel road of inquiry that utilizes intimate relationships as a lens to understand how religion is enacted on an everyday basis. In doing so, we may come to see intimate relationships as a site where religiosity is constructed and performed, in particular against the background of a secularizing society in which Catholicism is no longer the default option as it once was.

KEYWORDS:

• Catholicism
• Catholic women
• lived religion
• intimate relationships
• Belgium

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Chia Longman and Nella van den Brandt for providing insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article. She also wants to express her gratitude to the anonymous referees of the Journal of Contemporary Religion who helped to improve the manuscript through their constructive feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Similar to the observation that the emotional labor in intimate relationships is often framed as the responsibility of women (Illouz 2012), it is interesting to note that, among my interviewees, this uneven investment is also the case in terms of practicing religion. The majority of the women who had a Catholic partner indicated that they engaged (much) more than their partner in religious activities and practices, such as participating in prayer groups and attending Church services. They also declared to be more apt to share their religiosity with others and thus felt more of an urge to participate in religious group activities. This also came to the fore when I talked to an employee working in the pastoral service for families, who stated that it is mostly “the girl who takes the initiative in the marriage preparation course” (personal interview, 11 June 2020). One of my interviewees said that she often observed in her circle of friends that “the man is dragged along by his girlfriend” (personal interview, 1 April 2021) to religiously inspired group activities. Hence we might notice gendered patterns not only in the fabric of intimate relationships, but also in levels and/or expressions of religiosity.

2 The tasks they perform include, but are not limited to: teaching religious education, providing pastoral care, and being involved in the everyday organization of their local parishes.

3 For instance, Kim had a profile on the dating application Tinder to meet someone. She told me that she had a match with a man with whom she began to chat. The conversation went well until they started talking about their respective hobbies. The moment Kim told him that she was active in the Catholic Church and that this took quite a lot of her free time, he did not respond any more and ‘ghosted’ her—ended communication abruptly and without further explanation. A similar experience happened to Silke. During one of the first dates she had with a man, the topic of religion was brought up, resulting in an awkward atmosphere. Kim and Silke understood to a certain extent that being religious and active in the Church could discourage (non-religious) men from starting a relationship, as religion takes up a major part of their lives in terms of time and engagement.

4 Maintaining religious practices proved to be even more difficult for women with non-Catholic partners during the pandemic. Due to the multiple lockdowns in Belgium, taken as measures to combat COVID-19, Church activities were extremely limited and took place almost only online. As a result, Hanne, for instance, found it a challenge to keep in touch with her religion, especially because her boyfriend did not engage in religious activities with her, for instance, watching the livestreamed Mass with her. See Huygens (2021) for a more extensive overview of religiosity and religious practices during the pandemic.

5 In the Catholic Church, marriage between a Catholic and a non-baptized person is possible. I did not inquire whether the partners of the women in my study were baptized. Nevertheless, due to the presence of socio-cultural Christianity in Belgium, the non-religious partners are probably baptized and thus formally Catholic, even if they describe themselves as atheist or non-religious.

Additional information

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Eline Huygens

Eline Huygens was affiliated to the Centre for Research on Culture and Gender in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University, Belgium. She was a PhD candidate for a joint doctorate in Gender and Diversity Studies at Ghent University and in Religious Studies at KU Leuven and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University and KU Leuven. In her doctoral study, she investigated how religion shapes the experiences and practices of Catholic women pertaining to intimate relationships and sexuality. Her research interests include gender, religion, and diversity. She is book review editor of the journal Religion and Gender. CORRESPONDENCE: Sint-Michielsstraat 4 - bus 3101, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.