Home > Catholic sacraments
The practice of the Roman Catholic Church includes seven sacraments. As defined by Catholics, a sacrament is a material and spoken action which confers divine grace upon a person, especially what is called sanctifying grace . There are seven sacraments:
Sacraments are fundamentally different then what are called sacramentals (things such as normal blessings, crosses, medals, holy water). Sacramentals merely symbolize things and their usefullness is dependant on the subjective understanding of the people involved. Sacraments on the other hand work under the system called ex opere operado . That is, "by the work performed". What this means is for example, that a person intending to perform a baptism on someone by sprinkinling water on him and saying the right words, causes the grace of God to actually work, even though he might personally not fully understand the theology behind the sacrament or feel emotionally good in doing what hes doing. To put it another way, Catholic's don't believe holy water (a sacramental) has any power in and of itself, but being baptized however does).
The Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches likewise have sacraments (also called mysteries) but neither formally restricts the number of sacraments to seven. Likewise, doctrines regarding the details of sacraments may differ between Roman Catholicism and the two Orthodox communions. Like Catholicism, Orthodoxy holds that sacraments mediate divine grace. Protestant churches may or may not be sacramental, but most of those that consider themselves sacramental would recognise fewer sacraments, usually only Communion and Baptism.
Three of the seven sacraments may be received only once in a lifetime:
baptism, confirmation, and ordination to a particular order (for example,
a man who has been ordained a deacon can be ordained a priest, but cannot
again receive the diaconal ordination). In case of uncertainty about
whether a person has received one of those three sacraments at an earlier
time, he or she may receive the sacrament conditionally. In a conditional baptism, the minister of the sacrament, usually a deacon or a priest, rather
than saying "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit," says "If you are not baptized, I baptize you" etc. The reason for this prohibition is that these three sacraments are held to imprint a sacramental character on the recipient's soul.
While these are the seven acknowledged sacraments of the Roman Catholic church, it is also recognized that a sacrament is received at any time a person is made to know that he/she is in the presence of God or the Holy Spirit. The seven sacraments are acknowledged as such because it is believed that at these specific times the Holy Spirit is present during these rites.
The administration of sacraments also plays the more mundane role of providing a sense of how active a parish churchA parish church is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church is fundamental to the life of the community. The ch is. Bishops sometimes use a sacramental indexThe sacramental index is a statistic sometimes used by Roman Catholic bishops as a rough approximation of how active a parish is, based on the occurrence of sacraments or rites of passage. The precise formula varies; in the Archdiocese of Boston, the sacr to measure parish activity, as they allocate priests and resources to serve the needs of their parishoners.
Sacraments have a "form" and "matter." A "form" is the script, both verbal and physical which is followed. The "matter" is the term for any material objects used. Both of those things need to be present and followed for the sacrament to have any effect. Many sacraments are also only supposed to be done by a specific type of person, but there are exceptions allowed for emergancies. One final criteria for the Sacrament to actually work is that the minister has to have the right intention, the intention of actually doing the sacrament and actually doing what the church does (meaning someone teaching how to do a baptism for example, by not intending to actually do one, doesn't actually do one). There might customarily be a large amount of ritual besides the form and matter, but nothing is stricly necessary besides the form and matter.
