Transposing Devotion: Tradition and Innovation in Marian Apparitions

This article extends recent scholarship on new religious movements that has stressed newness, tension, and social alignment. New Catholic communities that have grown around contemporary Marian apparitions allow the application of theoretical models and add nuance to understandings of new movements in the Catholic context. Drawing from fieldwork since 2010 at two apparition sites, rural Emmitsburg, Maryland and suburban Gaithersburg, Maryland, I find that apparitional movements—often marginalized within their parishes—lead to internal tension for individuals involved. The ways that these individuals resolve this tension problematize notions of conflict and alignment, tradition, and innovation. I propose that philosopher Rosi Braidotti’s metaphor of transpositions offers an apt approach to apparitional movements.