ABSTRACT
Turner applies the notion of communitas, forged in pilgrimage ritual, to show how pilgrimages and their shrines can also lend themselves to the construction of national identities. Catholicism, he argues, often mobilises national sentiments to stimulate religious practice, while nationalism can receive a sacred status through its endorsement within religion. The revived pilgrimages of post-war Britain were overlaid with appeals to communal identities, both Roman Catholic and national. Post-war Catholicism in Britain, however, was largely a religion of immigrants and often viewed as un-British. Meanwhile Irish and other immigrants sometimes sought to display their own national identities in church architecture, sometimes in tension with such British claims. National identities, however, were subsumed into the broader identity of Roman Catholicism, center on Rome; and communities were also formed around the local centres of the parish and the city. Catholic identity in Britain was fragmented, focused on multiple centre's and allegiances and in an uncertain relationship with the modern nation.
