This GCSE RE quiz on Catholicism will challenge you on rites and sacraments. While the very term ‘religion’ refers to common beliefs and practices that bind faith-communities together (like ‘link’ and ‘ligature’ and indeed, even ‘intel-lig-ent’: capable of discerning the bonds between ideas), each individual religion will of course have its own range of special artefacts and procedures. A cross would be potentially confrontational to a Muslim; a symbolic or ritual dagger would be seen as anathema to a pacifist Buddhist, or indeed to certain more ascetic Christians.
Two such sets of concepts are particularly important to Catholics. The first of these are Rites, several of which mark the ‘life milestones’ or Rites of Passage similarly to how other faiths do: birth &/or naming; transition into being an adult member of the faith community; marriage and the foundation of a household / family; and in due course, death. In the case of Catholicism there are a handful of other significant ones as we shall see.
The second such ‘set’ are the Sacraments (‘special things’), some again of which are core to all Christian traditions such as the Sacrament of Communion, but here too Catholics value certain others that divergent denominations may not rate quite so ‘highly nor holy’. Let’s get stuck into investigating what these are!