What Are the Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church?
Posted by Brother Oscar
Seven moments where the Church says God does something visible
A child is carried to a stone font and water is poured over her head three times. A boy of fourteen stands in front of a bishop and is marked on the forehead with oil that smells of balsam. Two people say a sentence to each other that neither of them can take back. A priest is telephoned at two in the morning and drives to a hospital room with a small silver container in his coat pocket.
Catholics call these moments sacraments, and the Church counts seven of them — no more, no fewer. That number was not chosen for symmetry. It emerged from centuries of Christian practice, was drawn into a settled list by medieval theologians, was affirmed by two councils in the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and was finally defined as a matter of faith in 1547. What follows is an explanation of the whole system: what a sacrament actually is, how the seven fit together, what each one uses as its sign, who is allowed to administer it, and which of them a person can only ever receive once.
The seven sacraments of the Catholic Church are Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony. Catholic teaching defines a sacrament as an efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, and groups the seven into three families: initiation, healing, and service of communion. Three of them — Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders — can be received only once in a lifetime.
What Is a Sacrament in Catholic Teaching?
The definition the Church uses is compact. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the sacraments as efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is given to us (CCC 1131). Every word in that sentence is doing work. A sacrament is a sign — something you can see, hear, taste or feel. It is efficacious, meaning it does not merely point at something; it brings about what it points at. And it is entrusted, meaning no individual invented it and no individual can alter it.
That combination of physical sign and real effect is the whole logic of Catholic sacramental thinking. God does not deal with people as though they were disembodied minds. He deals with them through water, oil, bread, wine, hands and words — the ordinary furniture of human life. Saint Leo the Great, writing in the fifth century, put the principle in a single line that the Catechism still quotes today.
"What was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries."
— St. Leo the Great, quoted in CCC 1115
Two further ideas complete the picture. The first is a way of analysing sacramental signs that medieval theologians borrowed from philosophy and that is still used today: the language of matter and form, meaning roughly the element or gesture on one hand and the words on the other. It is a genuinely useful tool, and it fits some sacraments cleanly — water and the Trinitarian words in Baptism, bread and wine with the words of consecration in the Eucharist. It fits others only by analogy. In Penance the "matter" is not a substance at all but the acts of the penitent, and in Matrimony the exchange of consent functions as both element and words at once. The framework describes a real requirement — that the essential sign and words of each sacrament not be altered — rather than imposing a single mechanical template on all seven.
The second idea is a phrase you will meet in any serious discussion of the subject: ex opere operato, literally "by the very fact of the action being performed" (CCC 1128). It means the power of a sacrament comes from Christ's saving work, not from the personal holiness of the priest performing it. A sinful priest still baptises validly, which is why Catholics do not need to investigate their clergy before approaching a sacrament. The Catechism adds one balancing sentence, though: the fruits of a sacrament do depend on the disposition of the person receiving it. It is not a mechanism, but an encounter that can be entered wholeheartedly or barely at all.
Why the Church Recognises Seven — and How That Number Was Settled
The honest answer is that the number seven was not announced; it emerged. Neither the word "sacrament" nor the figure seven appears in the New Testament. What appears in the New Testament is a set of practices — washing with water, breaking bread, laying hands on people, anointing the sick with oil, forgiving sins, blessing marriages — carried out by the apostles and their successors as things Christ had handed to them.
For roughly a thousand years, Christian writers used the Latin word sacramentum loosely. It could cover the Creed, the washing of feet, the blessing of a church, the sign of the cross. Medieval authors counted differently from one another, and some lists ran to a dozen or more. The narrowing happened in the schools of Paris in the twelfth century, and the formulation that carried the day is usually credited to Peter Lombard, whose Sentences set out exactly seven and became the standard theology textbook of medieval Europe. By the thirteenth century the list was simply assumed.
From there the number moved into official teaching in stages, and the distinction between those stages matters. The Second Council of Lyons in 1274 included the seven in a profession of faith. The Council of Florence enumerated them in its Decree for the Armenians in 1439, describing the matter, form, minister and effects of each. By this point the seven were the ordinary teaching of the Church, taught in every school and assumed in every manual — not an open question awaiting resolution.
What happened in 1547 was different in kind rather than in content. At its seventh session the Council of Trent, responding to the Protestant Reformers, took what was already universally held and defined it dogmatically: that the sacraments of the new law were all instituted by Christ, and that they are neither more nor fewer than seven. Trent did not decide the number. It closed the question formally, attaching the weight of a definition to a list the Church had already been living by for three centuries.
The Catechism's own account is refreshingly unembarrassed about how long this took. It says the Church, guided by the Spirit, has gradually recognised this inheritance and discerned across the centuries that among her many liturgical celebrations there are seven that are sacraments in the strict sense (CCC 1117). The claim is not that the Church invented seven rites, but that she recognised which of her actions were of a different order from the rest — and that the recognition, not the reality, was what developed.
Other Christians land in different places. The Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate the same seven mysteries, though they have treated the number as a useful summary rather than a strict definition. Most Protestant traditions recognise two — Baptism and the Lord's Supper — holding that only these were directly instituted by Christ in the Gospels.
The Seven Sacraments at a Glance
Before looking at each family in turn, it helps to see the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church in one view: what each uses as its principal sign, who ordinarily administers it, and whether it can be repeated.
| Sacrament | Group | Principal Sign | Ordinary Minister | Received |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baptism | Initiation | Water, with the Trinitarian formula | Bishop, priest or deacon; in an emergency, anyone with the right intention | Once only |
| Confirmation | Initiation | Anointing with sacred chrism, laying on of hands | Bishop; a priest where the faculty is granted, and ordinarily the priest in the Eastern Churches | Once only |
| Eucharist | Initiation | Wheat bread and grape wine, with the words of consecration | A validly ordained bishop or priest | Repeatedly |
| Penance | Healing | Confession and contrition, met by the words of absolution | A bishop or priest | Repeatedly |
| Anointing of the Sick | Healing | Anointing with blessed oil of the sick, with prayer | A bishop or priest only | Repeatedly |
| Holy Orders | Service of communion | Laying on of hands and the prayer of consecration | A validly ordained bishop only | Never repeated; degrees received successively |
| Matrimony | Service of communion | The exchange of consent between the spouses | The spouses themselves in the Latin Church; the priest or bishop in the Eastern rite of Crowning | Once, while the bond lasts |
The grouping in the second column is the Catechism's own. It arranges the seven by analogy with the stages of a natural human life: you are born, you grow up, you are fed, you are healed when you are hurt, and eventually you are given a role that serves other people (CCC 1210). That analogy is the key to the rest of this guide.
The Sacraments of Initiation
Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist are called the sacraments of Christian initiation because together they lay the foundation of a Christian life (CCC 1212). Pope Paul VI described the pattern plainly: the faithful are born anew in Baptism, strengthened in Confirmation, and receive in the Eucharist the food of eternal life. Birth, growth, nourishment. Not three unrelated ceremonies, but one movement in three stages.
Baptism comes first because everything else depends on it. It is the sacrament by which a person is washed of sin, given new life, and made a member of the Church — and it is the door to the other six. Nobody can be confirmed, absolved, ordained or married sacramentally without first being baptised. Its sign is water together with the words naming Father, Son and Holy Spirit, echoing the command at the end of Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 28:19). Christians have understood the rite in the light of Christ's own baptism in the river Jordan, without treating the two as the same thing — a distinction explained further in our guide to the Jordan River and its meaning for Christians.
Confirmation completes what Baptism began. The candidate is anointed on the forehead with sacred chrism and receives the laying on of hands, and the sacrament is understood as a fuller outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the sake of witness. Practice differs between East and West here more than anywhere else in the sacramental system: in the Eastern Churches, an infant is normally chrismated immediately after Baptism, while the Latin tradition ordinarily separates Confirmation from infant Baptism and uses the age of discretion as a reference point, with the precise age varying by local discipline.
The Eucharist completes initiation and holds a place unlike any other. The Catechism calls it the "Sacrament of sacraments" and says all the others are ordered towards it as to their end (CCC 1211). Its signs are wheat bread and grape wine, over which the words of Christ at the Last Supper are spoken. It is also the only sacrament of initiation meant to be received again and again — which is why a Catholic baptised as an infant and confirmed at thirteen goes on completing his initiation, in a sense, every Sunday for the next sixty years.
The Sacraments of Healing
The second group answers a problem the first group creates. If Baptism gives new life, what happens when a baptised person damages it? The Church's answer is two sacraments given for the healing of body and soul: Penance and the Anointing of the Sick.
Penance — also called Confession or Reconciliation — restores what sin has broken. It asks three acts of the person: sorrow for what was done, confession of it, and some act of amends. To these the priest adds the words of absolution. What makes this a sacrament rather than a conversation is the conviction that Christ gave his apostles a real authority to forgive, recorded in John 20:23. If the practice is unfamiliar and you want a gentler place to begin, our collection of prayers for forgiveness and reconciliation is a reasonable starting point.
The Anointing of the Sick is the more misunderstood of the two. Its scriptural charter is a passage in the Letter of James, and its sign is anointing with blessed oil accompanied by prayer.
"Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil."
— James 5:14
For several centuries in the West this sacrament was pushed to the very end of life and became known as Extreme Unction — the last anointing. The Second Vatican Council deliberately reversed that drift. The sacrament is for anyone whose health is seriously impaired by illness or age, it can be given before a major operation, and it may be received again if a person recovers and later falls gravely ill, or if the same illness worsens (CCC 1514–1515). It is not reserved for the dying, and asking a priest for it is not an admission that hope has run out. Alongside it, many families also lean on the Church's tradition of Catholic prayers for healing, which accompany the sacrament rather than substituting for it.
The Sacraments at the Service of Communion
The last two sacraments work differently from the first five, and the Catechism says so directly. Holy Orders and Matrimony "are directed towards the salvation of others; if they contribute as well to personal salvation, it is through service to others that they do so" (CCC 1534). They are not primarily about the person receiving them. They confer a mission.
Holy Orders is the sacrament of apostolic ministry, conferred in three degrees — deacon, priest and bishop — by the laying on of a bishop's hands followed by a prayer of consecration. Only a validly ordained bishop can confer it (CCC 1576). A deacon is ordained for service: preaching, baptising, witnessing marriages, works of charity. A priest is ordained to preach and to celebrate the sacraments. A bishop receives the fullness of the ministry, and among his particular responsibilities is the consecration of the oils his whole diocese will use for the coming year.
Matrimony is the sacrament many people find most surprising, because its minister is not the clergyman. In the Latin Church the spouses themselves are understood to confer the sacrament on each other by exchanging consent before the Church; the priest or deacon receives that consent as the Church's official witness, alongside two others (CCC 1623). In the Eastern liturgies the pattern is different — there the rite is called the Crowning, and the priest or bishop who crowns the couple is the minister. Christians have long read the wedding at Cana in this light, where Christ's first recorded sign took place at a marriage feast in Galilee, an episode you can read about at the site of the miracle of water into wine.
Which Sacraments Can Be Received Only Once
Three of the seven can never be repeated: Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders. The reason is not administrative tidiness. Catholic teaching holds that these three confer, in addition to grace, a sacramental character — a "seal" that configures the person to Christ and to the Church in a particular way, and that this seal is indelible. Because it remains for ever, the sacrament that imparts it cannot be given a second time (CCC 1121).
This has practical consequences that surprise people. A Catholic who leaves the faith for thirty years and returns is not re-baptised; the mark was never lost. Someone baptised in another Christian community with water and the Trinitarian formula is not baptised again on entering the Catholic Church. A priest who is laicised may be barred from exercising his ministry, but he does not stop being ordained.
Holy Orders needs one further clarification, because it is the sacrament most often described loosely. The sacrament imprints an indelible character and is never repeated — a man ordained to the priesthood is not ordained to the priesthood a second time. But the sacrament exists in three degrees, and a man may receive them successively: ordained deacon, then priest, and in some cases consecrated bishop. Each ordination confers a distinct degree of the one sacrament of Holy Orders rather than repeating it. The same logic applies to a permanent deacon, who receives the diaconate and remains at that degree.
The other four are meant to recur, each in its own rhythm. The Eucharist can be received daily. Penance is available as often as it is needed. The Anointing of the Sick can be repeated with each new serious illness. Matrimony is the subtle case: it is not repeatable while the bond lasts, since the sacrament creates a lifelong bond between two living people, but a widow or widower is free to marry again sacramentally.
Water, Oil, Bread and Hands: The Signs and Their Ministers
Every sacrament is anchored in a physical thing. Water for washing. Bread and wine for eating. Hands laid on a head. Oil rubbed into skin. These are not decorations added to a spiritual event; in Catholic teaching they are the event's visible half.
Oil deserves particular attention, because three distinct oils circulate through the system and they are easily confused — and because the Church treats one of them differently from the other two. The oil of the sick and the oil of catechumens are blessed. Sacred chrism is consecrated, by a prayer of consecration in which the bishop asks God to pour the strength of the Holy Spirit into it. The distinction is not a matter of vocabulary. The liturgical book itself is titled the Order of Blessing the Oil of Catechumens and of the Sick and of Consecrating the Chrism, and the consecration of the chrism is the high point of the rite.
Their uses divide accordingly. Chrism, as a sign of consecration, is used for the anointing after Baptism, for Confirmation, and at the ordination of bishops and priests. The oil of catechumens is used before Baptism, to strengthen and prepare — an anointing that, in the Latin Rite, may be omitted in some circumstances. The oil of the sick signifies healing and comfort (CCC 1294). In the Roman Rite all three are ordinarily prepared once a year by the diocesan bishop at the Chrism Mass in Holy Week and then distributed to every parish, which is why the small stock of oil in a parish sacristy is a physical link back to the bishop's own hands. The Catechism notes one practical exception: the oil of the sick is normally blessed by the bishop, but a priest may bless it himself if necessity requires (CCC 1530).
A common misunderstanding is worth correcting here, since it circulates widely online. Olive oil is the traditional and usual base, but it is not universally required: the liturgical norms specify olive oil or another plant oil, and chrism is made by mixing that oil with balsam or another aromatic substance. What the Church requires is a plant oil, not specifically an oil pressed from olives — a provision that matters in regions where olives do not grow.
That said, the olive is genuinely the tradition's reference point, and not by accident. Olive oil was the ordinary oil of the biblical world, and Scripture uses it constantly: the anointing of kings and priests in Israel, the lamps of the Temple, the Samaritan pouring oil into a stranger's wounds. The Hebrew and Greek words behind "Messiah" and "Christ" both mean the anointed one. When the Church anoints, she is deliberately continuing a gesture that runs back through the whole of Scripture — a thread traced in our article on why the olive tree matters in Christian tradition.
The same is true of the other sacramental signs, though the point should not be overstated. Water, bread and wine are not distinctive to one landscape; they are close to universal. What the biblical setting supplies is the specific vocabulary the Church inherited — the Passover meal behind the Eucharist, the ritual washings behind Baptism, the anointing of kings behind chrism. The wider setting of that inheritance is covered in our guide to what the Holy Land is and why it matters to Christians.
As for ministers, the pattern is consistent: the more a sacrament touches the structure of the Church itself, the higher the office required. Only a bishop can ordain. Confirmation is ordinarily the bishop's, precisely because it strengthens the bond with the wider Church. Only a bishop or priest can consecrate the Eucharist, absolve, or anoint the sick. Deacons may baptise and witness marriages. And at the far end sits the exception the Church has always allowed: in an emergency, any person at all — including someone unbaptised — can validly baptise, using water, the Trinitarian words, and the intention to do what the Church does (CCC 1256). A nurse in a delivery room can do what a cardinal does.
Are the Seven Sacraments Biblical?
This is the question that most often brings non-Catholic readers to this page, and it deserves a careful answer rather than a defensive one. The word "sacrament" is not in the Bible. The number seven is not in the Bible. What is in the Bible is each of the seven actions, described as something Christ commanded or the apostles practised.
Baptism is commanded in Matthew 28:19 and tied to rebirth in John 3:5. The Eucharist is instituted at the Last Supper in all three synoptic Gospels and in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. The authority to forgive sins is given in John 20:22–23. Anointing the sick with oil and calling for the elders of the church appears in James 5:14–15, and the apostles are already doing it in Mark 6:13. Ordination by the laying on of hands is described in Acts 6:6 and 2 Timothy 1:6. Marriage is raised to a sign of Christ and the Church in Ephesians 5:31–32. Confirmation has the least tidy scriptural footprint, but the apostolic practice of laying hands on the newly baptised so that they receive the Holy Spirit is recorded in Acts 8:14–17.
What the Church claims, then, is not that a list of seven can be read straight off the page. Trent's formulation is that all seven were instituted by Christ; the recognition of which practices belonged in that category took centuries. Whether one finds this convincing depends largely on how much authority one grants the Church's reading of her own tradition — which is the real dividing line between Catholic and Protestant sacramental theology, rather than a disagreement about what the Bible says.
What Is Not a Sacrament: First Communion, Last Rites, Funerals and Sacramentals
A good deal of confusion comes from moments that feel like sacraments and are commonly spoken of as though they were. Sorting these out clarifies the system faster than another description of the seven would.
First Holy Communion is not an eighth sacrament. The sacrament is the Eucharist. First Communion is a person's first reception of it — a real milestone in a Catholic family's life, but not a distinct sacrament. A Catholic receives the same sacrament at eight years old and at eighty.
The Last Rites are not a single sacrament either. The phrase is shorthand for a cluster of things the Church offers a person near death: Confession where the person is able, the Anointing of the Sick, and above all Viaticum — the Eucharist given as food for the passage out of this life (CCC 1524). The Catechism groups Penance, Anointing and Viaticum together as the sacraments that complete the earthly pilgrimage, in deliberate parallel with the three that begin it. It is a set of rites, not a rite.
A Catholic funeral is not a sacrament at all. The Catechism is unusually blunt here: the funeral confers on the deceased neither a sacrament nor a sacramental, since the person has already passed beyond the sacramental order (CCC 1684). It remains a liturgical celebration of the Church, and it does real work — for the deceased in prayer, and for the living in consolation — but it is not one of the seven.
Finally there are the sacramentals, and this is the distinction most worth learning. Sacramentals are sacred signs instituted not by Christ but by the Church, which bear a resemblance to the sacraments and dispose a person to receive grace (CCC 1667). They do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way the sacraments do; through the Church's prayer they prepare us to receive grace and help us cooperate with it (CCC 1670). Our guide to Christian relics and sacramentals covers the category in more depth.
Among sacramentals, blessings hold a central place, including blessings of objects (CCC 1671–1672). Rosaries, medals, crucifixes and similar devotional objects also belong to the Church's wider tradition of popular devotion and may themselves be blessed. For that reason, it is better not to infer an object's blessing status simply from what it is, where it was made, or how it is used. Where a religious object is explicitly described as blessed, that claim applies to that specific item; where nothing is said, its blessing status has simply not been stated.
Holy water is the clearest worked example, since it shows what a sacramental does: it recalls Baptism without being Baptism, and carries the Church's prayer without conferring the sacrament. Our explanation of what holy water is and how Christians use it shows the distinction in ordinary practice.
How the Seven Sacraments Accompany a Whole Life
Read as a system rather than a list, the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church track the shape of a human life almost exactly. The Catechism says as much: they touch all the stages and all the important moments of Christian life, giving birth and increase, healing and mission (CCC 1210). Born, strengthened, fed. Forgiven when you fail, anointed when you are ill. Sent to serve, whether at an altar or across a kitchen table.
The order in which a person meets them varies more than most people assume. A cradle Catholic is baptised as an infant, makes a first confession and First Communion around seven or eight, is confirmed in adolescence, and may later marry or be ordained. Eastern Catholics ordinarily receive all three sacraments of initiation in infancy, in a single celebration.
Adults come by two distinct routes, and the difference is often collapsed. An unbaptised adult is a catechumen, and after a period of formation receives all three sacraments of initiation together — Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist — usually at the Easter Vigil. An adult who has already been validly baptised in another Christian community is not a catechumen but a candidate for reception into full communion. That person is never re-baptised, because Baptism cannot be repeated; they make a profession of faith, are received, and are then confirmed and admitted to the Eucharist. Confusing the two categories is the single most common error in popular accounts of adult initiation, and it has real pastoral consequences for the person involved.
This is also why the sacraments are so bound up with family life. They are the occasions when relatives travel, when godparents and sponsors take on a role, when a household marks something publicly. For the day itself, the Church's own words usually serve better than anything improvised — our page of prayers for celebrations and life milestones gathers a number of them.
The instinct to give something lasting at these moments is old, and for anyone facing that decision our guide to choosing a cross for a baptism, confirmation or wedding works through the practical differences between the three occasions.
No single person's pattern is the standard one, because two of the seven correspond to vocations rather than stages. A layperson may receive Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Matrimony and, in serious illness or old age, the Anointing of the Sick. A man ordained to the priesthood in the Latin Church ordinarily receives Holy Orders instead of Matrimony. The two are not strictly exclusive, though: a married man may be ordained a permanent deacon, and a widower may be ordained. Circumstance shapes the rest — someone who dies young may never be anointed, someone who never marries or is ordained receives five, and someone received into the Church as an adult may receive three within a single hour. The seven describe the full range available across Christian lives, not a checklist any one person completes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the 7 sacraments of the Catholic Church in order?
The Catechism lists them as Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, the Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony. This is the order used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which groups the first three as sacraments of initiation.
Which sacraments can only be received once?
Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders can be received only once, because each confers a permanent sacramental character or seal that can never be repeated. The Eucharist, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick may be received many times.
Are the seven sacraments in the Bible?
The Church teaches that all seven were instituted by Christ and each has scriptural foundations, though the word sacrament and the number seven are not themselves in Scripture. The list of seven was drawn together from Scripture and early Christian practice over the first twelve centuries.
What is the difference between a sacrament and a sacramental?
The seven sacraments were instituted by Christ and confer the grace they signify; sacramentals were instituted by the Church and prepare a person to receive grace through her prayer. Blessings are the primary example, and a religious object functions as a sacramental when the Church's blessing has been asked upon it.
Which sacraments use holy oil?
Sacred chrism is used in Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Orders, and the oil of the sick is used in the Anointing of the Sick. An anointing with the oil of catechumens may also precede Baptism.
Is chrism blessed or consecrated?
Sacred chrism is consecrated by the bishop, while the oil of catechumens and the oil of the sick are blessed — a distinction preserved in the title of the liturgical rite itself. All three are ordinarily prepared once a year at the Chrism Mass in Holy Week.
Is marriage a sacrament in the Catholic Church?
Yes. Matrimony is one of the seven sacraments, and in the Latin Church the spouses themselves are understood to be its ministers, conferring it on one another by exchanging consent before the Church.
Do Protestants believe in seven sacraments?
Most Protestant traditions recognise two rites as instituted by Christ, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, rather than seven. The Eastern Orthodox churches generally recognise the same seven mysteries as the Catholic Church, though they have treated the number less as a fixed definition.
What is the most important sacrament?
The Catechism calls the Eucharist the Sacrament of sacraments and teaches that all the others are ordered towards it. Baptism, however, is the gateway, since no other sacrament can be received without it.
Closing Reflection
The reason Catholic theology ties grace to visible signs is not that God requires props. It follows from the Incarnation. Christian teaching holds that God took on a human body, and that what he did in that body was how salvation reached the world. A Church that believes this will not treat matter as incidental to grace. Saint Leo's line, quoted earlier, states the principle exactly: what was visible in Christ has passed over into the Church's sacraments.
That is why the seven use water, bread, wine, oil, hands and spoken words rather than interior experiences alone. The sign is not a symbol standing in for something absent; in Catholic teaching it is the means by which what it signifies is actually given. Which is also why the Church is careful about who may administer each one, what words must be used, and which may never be repeated. If the visible action really does what it says, the details of that action are not ceremony. They are the thing itself.
Sources and Further Reading
This article follows the Church's own texts rather than secondary summaries. The primary and official sources behind it are listed here for anyone who wants to check a point or read further.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Two, Section Two — the seven sacraments, their grouping and their individual treatment (CCC 1210–1690).
- Catechism, "The Paschal Mystery in the Church's Sacraments" — the definition of a sacrament, sacramental character and ex opere operato (CCC 1113–1134).
- Catechism on sacramentals and Christian funerals — the distinction between sacraments and sacramentals (CCC 1667–1690).
- The Ecumenical Councils — including the Second Council of Lyons (1274), the Council of Florence and its Decree for the Armenians (1439), and the Council of Trent, Session VII (3 March 1547).
- USCCB: The Blessing of the Oils and the Consecration of the Chrism — the liturgical norms for the three holy oils, including their permitted matter.
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