| RELIGIOUS RITES |
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| 4 THE CONCEPT AND FORMS OF RITUAL |
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The Latin word sacramentum, which etymologically is an ambiguous theological term,
was used in Roman law to describe a legal sanction in which a man placed his
life or property in the hands of the supernatural powers that upheld justice and
honoured solemn contracts. It later became an oath of allegiance taken by
soldiers to their commander when embarking on a new campaign, sworn in a sacred
place and using a formula having a religious connotation. |
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When sacramentum
was adopted as an ordinance by the early Christian Church in the 3rd
century, the Latin word sacer ("holy")
was brought into conjunction with the Greek word mysterion ("secret rite"). Sacramentum was thus given a sacred mysterious significance that
indicated a spiritual potency. The power was transmitted through material
instruments and vehicles viewed as channels of divine grace
and as benefits in ritual observances instituted by Christ.
St. Augustine defined
sacrament as "the visible form of an invisible grace" or "a sign
of a sacred thing." Similarly, St.
Thomas Aquinas wrote that anything that is called sacred may be called sacramentum.
It is made efficacious by virtue of its divine institution by Christ in
order to establish a bond of union between God and man. In the Anglican
catechism it is defined as "an outward and visible sign of an inward and
spiritual grace." (see also
Christianity, sacred
and profane) |
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The term sacrament has become a
convenient expression for a sign or symbol of a sacred thing, occasion, or event
imparting spiritual benefits to participants; and such signs or symbols have
been associated with eating, drinking, lustration (ceremonial purification),
nuptial intercourse, or ritual techniques regarded as "means of grace"
and pledges of a covenant relationship with the sacred order. In this way the
material aspects have become the forms of the embodied spiritual reality. |
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The several types of sacraments (i.e.,
initiatory, purificatory, renewal, communion, healing, cultic elevation) are
well exemplified in Christianity, though they also may be found in other Western
religions, the Eastern religions, and preliterate religions. In the 12th century
the several sacraments of the Western Christian Church were narrowed by Peter
Lombard (12th-century theologian and bishop) to seven rites, viz.,
Baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist (the Lord's Supper), penance, holy orders,
matrimony, and extreme unction. This enumeration was accepted by St. Thomas
Aquinas, the Council of Florence in 1439, and subsequently by the Council of
Trent (1545-63). All these rites were thus affirmed by the Roman
Catholic Church as being sacraments instituted by Christ. The number,
however, has been modified by modern theologians since the precise origins of
some of the seven sacraments are uncertain. Protestant Reformers of the 16th
century accepted two or three sacraments as valid: Baptism, the Lord's Supper,
and, in some fashion, penance. Both Roman Catholicism and Eastern
Orthodoxy accept the sevenfold enumeration. In addition to these, any
ceremonial actions and objects related to sacraments that endow a person or
thing with a sacred character have been designated "sacramental,"
though they are differentiated from those of dominical (i.e.,
Christ's) institution in conveying divine grace ex opere operato (it works by itself) or in conferring an indelible
character on the recipient, such as Baptism, confirmation, and holy orders.
Sacramentals include the use of holy water, incense, vestments, candles,
exorcisms, anointing and making the sign of the cross, fasting, abstinence, and
almsgiving. (see also Protestantism) |
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The word sacrament, in its broadest
sense as a sign or symbol conveying something "hidden," mysterious,
and efficacious, has a wider application and cosmic significance than that used
in Christianity. For example, the evolutionary process is viewed by some as a
graded series in which the lower stratum provides a basis for the one next above
it. The lower, indeed, seems to be necessary to the growth of the higher. This
view has introduced concepts of new powers and potentialities in organic
evolution culminating in the human synthesis of mind transcending the process.
The entire universe, therefore, can be said to have a sacramental significance
in which the "inward" (or spiritual) and the "outward" (or
material) elements meet in a higher unity that guarantees for the latter its
full validity. Thus, the sacred meal has been at once a sacramental communion
and a sacrificial offering (e.g.,
wine, bread, or animal as a sign or symbol of a divine death and
resurrection for the benefit of man) in which the two fundamental and
complementary rites have been closely combined throughout their long and varied
histories. |
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In preliterate society everyday events
have been given sacramental interpretations by being invested with supernatural
meanings in relation to their ultimate sources in the unseen divine or sacred
powers. The well-being of primitive society, in fact, demands the recognition of
a hierarchy of values in which the lower is always dependent on the higher and
in which the highest is regarded as the transcendental source of values outside
and above mankind and the natural order. To partake of the flesh of a
sacrificial victim or of the god himself or to consume the cereal image of a
vegetation deity (as was done among the Aztecs in ancient Mexico), makes the
eater a recipient of divine life and its qualities. Similarly, portions of the
dead may be imbibed in mortuary sacramental rites to obtain the attributes of
the deceased or to ensure their reincarnation. To give the dead new life beyond
the grave, mourners may allow life-giving blood to fall upon the corpse
sacramentally. In this cycle of sacramental ideas and practices, the giving,
conservation, and promotion of life, together with the establishment of a bond
of union with the sacred order, are fundamental. In Paleolithic hunting
communities this sacramental idea appears to have been manifested in the
sacramental rites performed to control the fortunes of the chase, to promote the
propagation of the species on which the food supply depended, and to maintain
right relations with the transcendental source of the means of subsistence, as
exemplified in paintings--discovered in the caves at Altamira, Lascaux, Les
Trois Frères, Font-de-Gaume and elsewhere in France and Spain--that show
men with animal masks (illustrating a ritual or mystical communion of men and
animals that were sources of food). (see also
primitive religion, human
sacrifice, cannibalism,
death rite, afterlife,
prehistoric religion, nature
worship) |
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When agriculture and herding became the
basic type of food production, sacramental concepts and techniques were centred
mainly in the fertility of the soil, its products, and in the succession of the
seasons. This centralization was most apparent in the ancient Near East in and
after the 4th millennium BC. A death and resurrection sacred drama arose around
the fertility motif, in which a perpetual dying and rebirth in nature and
humanity was enacted. In this sequence birth, maturity, death, and rebirth were
ritually repeated and renewed through sacramental transitional acts, such as
passage rites, ceremonies ensuring passage from one status to another. In
passage rites the king often was the principal actor in the promotion of the
growth of the crops and the propagation of man and beast and in the promotion of
the reproductive forces in nature in general at the turn of the year. (see also
fertility cult) |
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In the Greco-Oriental mystery cults the
sacramental ritual based on the fertility motif was less prominent than in the
Egyptian and Mesopotamian religions. It did, nevertheless, occur in the Eleusinia,
a Greek agricultural festival celebrated in honour of the goddess Demeter and
her daughter Kore. The things spoken and done in this great event have remained
undisclosed, though some light has been thrown upon them by the contents of the
museum at Eleusis, such as the vase paintings, and by later untrustworthy
references in the writings of the early Church Fathers (e.g., Clement of Alexandria) and some Gnostics (early Christian
heretics who held that matter was evil and the spirit good). The drinking of the
kykeon--a
gruel of meal and water--can hardly be regarded as a sacramental beverage since
it was consumed during the preparation for the initiation rather than at its
climax. There is nothing to suggest that a ritual rebirth was effected by a
sacramental lustration, or sacred meal, at any point in the Eleusinian ritual.
What is indicated is that the neophytes (mystae) emerged from their profound
experience with an assurance of having attained newness of life and the hope of
a blessed immortality. From the character of the ritual, the mystery would seem
to have been connected with the seasonal drama in which originally a sacred
marriage may have been an important feature, centred in Demeter, the corn
mother, and Kore (Persephone), the corn maiden. (see also
Greek religion, mystery
religion) |
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In the 6th century BC, or perhaps very
much earlier, the orgiastic religion of the god Dionysus,
probably originating in Thrace and Phrygia, was established in Greece. In the
Dionysiac rites the Maenads
(female attendents) became possessed by the spirit of Dionysus by means of
tumultuous music and dancing, the free use of wine, and an orgiastic meal (the
tearing to pieces and devouring of animals embodying Dionysus Zagreus with their
bare hands as the central act of the Bacchanalia).
Though not necessarily sacramental, these rites enabled the Maenads to surmount
the barrier that separated them from the supernatural world and to surrender
themselves unconditionally to the mighty powers that transcended time and space,
thus carrying them into the realm of the eternal. Ecstatic rites of this nature
did not commend themselves to the Greeks of the unemotional nonsacramental
Homeric tradition; such rites did appeal, however, to many, some of whom had
come under the influences of the Orphic
mysteries in which it was possible for them to rise to a higher level in its thiasoi
(brotherhoods). The purpose of the Orphic ritual was to confer divine life
sacramentally on its initiates so that they might attain immortality through
regeneration and reincarnation, thereby freeing the soul from its fleshly
bondage. (see also ecstasy) |
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To what extent, if at all,
metempsychosis (the passing of the soul at death into another body) was
introduced into Greece from India can be only conjectural in the absence of
conclusive evidence. Though belief in rebirth and the transmigration
of souls has been widespread, however, especially in preliterate religions, it
was in India and Greece that the two concepts attained their highest
development. In post-Vedic (the period after the formulation of the Hindu sacred
scriptures, the Veda) India, belief in the transmigration of souls became a
characteristic doctrine in Hinduism,
and the priestly caste (i.e., the
Brahmins) reached their zenith as the sole immolators of the sacrificial
offerings; but sacramentalism was not a feature in the Brahmanasthe ritual texts complied by the Brahmins. In the earlier Vedic
conception of somathe personification of the fermented juice of a plant, comparable to that of
ambros in Greece, kava in Polynesia,
and especially haoma in Iran, the
sacramental view is most apparent (see HINDUISM
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In Zoroastrianism
haoma(Sanskrit soma, from the root su or bu,
"to squeeze" or "pound") is the name given to the yellow
plant, from which a juice was extracted and consumed in the Yasna
ceremony, the general sacrifice in honour of all the deities. The liturgy of
the Yasna was a remarkable
anticipation of the mass in Christianity. Haoma
was regarded by Zoroaster as the son of the Wise Lord and Creator (Ahura
Mazda) and the chief priest of the Yasna
cult. He was believed to be incarnate in the sacred plant that was pounded
to death in order to extract its life-giving juice so that those who consumed it
might be given immortality. He was regarded as both victim and priest in a
sacrificial-sacramental offering in worship. As the intermediary between God and
man, Haoma acquired a place and sacramental significance in the worship of
Mithra (an Indo-Iranian god of light) in his capacity as the immaculate priest
of Ahura Mazda with whom he was coequal. The Mithraic
sacramental banquet was derived from the Yasna
ceremony, wine taking the place of the haoma
and Mithra that of Ahura Mazda. In the Mithraic initiation
rites, it was not until one attained the status of the initiatory degree
known as "Lion" that the neophyte could partake of the oblation of
bread, wine, and water, which was the earthly counterpart of the celestial
mystical sacramental banquet. The sacred wine gave vigour to the body,
prosperity, wisdom, and the power to combat malignant spirits and to obtain
immortality (see ZOROASTRIANISM AND
PARSIISM ). (see also Avesta) |
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The early Christian leaders noticed the
resemblances between the Mithraic meal, the Zoroastrian haoma ceremony, and the Christian Eucharist;
and between Mithraism and Christianity, to some extent, there was mutual
influence and borrowing of respective beliefs and practices. But Mithraism's
antecedents were different, being Iranian and Mesopotamian with a Vedic
background before it become part of the Hellenistic and Christian world (c.
67 BC to about AD 385). |
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The recurrent and widespread practice of
holding sacred meals in the sacramental system, in addition to being well
documented in the Greco-Roman world, also occurred in the pre-Columbian Mexican
calendrical ritual in association with human sacrifice on a grand scale. In the
May Festival in honour of the war god Huitzilopochtli,
an image of the deity was fashioned from a dough containing beet seed, maize,
and honey; then the image was covered with a rich garment, placed on a litter;
and carried in a procession to a pyramid-temple. There pieces of paste similarly
compounded and in the form of large bones were tranformed by rites of
consecration into Huitzilopochtli's flesh and bones. A number of human victims
were then offered to him, and the image was broken into small fragments and
consumed sacramentally by the worshippers with tears, fears, and reverence, a
strict fast being observed until the ceremonies were over and the sick had been
given their communion with the particles. This ceremony was repeated at the
winter solstice when the dough was fortified with the blood of children, and
similar images were venerated and eaten by families in their houses. The main
purpose of the sacrament was to secure a good maize harvest and a renewal of the
crops, as well as human health and strength. In Peru at the Festival of the Sun,
after three days of fasting, llamas,
the sacred animals, were
sacrificed as a burnt offering, and the flesh was eaten sacramentally at a
banquet by the lord of the Incas and his nobles. It was then distributed to the
rest of the community with sacred maize cakes. Dogs, regarded as divine
incarnations, also were slain and parts of their flesh solemnly eaten by the
worshippers. (see also Aztec
religion, cannibalism, Inca
religion) |
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Similar rites were celebrated in North
America by Indians at the Feast of Grain among the Natchez
of Mississippi and Louisiana and among the Creeks
in the Mississippi Valley when the corn was ripe. Among the Plains
Indians sacrificial blood was employed sacramentally to make the earth
fruitful by the fructifying power of the sun. |
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Though the widespread conception of the
sacramental principle is an ancient heritage, in all probability going back
before the dawn of civilization, it acquired in Christianity a unique
significance. There it became the fundamental system and institution for the
perpetuation of the union of God and man in the person of Jesus Christ through
the visible organization and constitution of the church, which was viewed as the
mystical body of Christ. |
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Baptism, as the initial rite, took the
place of circumcision in Judaism in which this ancient and primitive custom was
the covenant sign and a legal
injunction rather than a sacramental ordinance. Baptismal immersion in water was
practiced in Judaism for some time before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and it
was adopted by John the Baptist (a Jewish prophet and cousin of Jesus Christ) as
the principal sacrament in his messianic movement. |
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The purificatory lustration
of John the Baptist, however,
was transformed into the prototype of the Christian sacrament by the baptism of Jesus
in the river Jordan and by the imagery of this event combined with the imagery
of his death and resurrection. A distinction was made, however, between the
water baptism of John and the Christian Spirit Baptism in the apostolic
church. Under the influence of the missionary Apostle
St. Paul, the Christian rite was given an interpretation in the terms of
the mystery religions, and the catechumen (initiate instructed in the secrets of
the faith) was identified with the death and Resurrection of Christ (Rom. 6:3-5;
Gal. 3:12). The bestowal of the new life constituted a sacramental rebirth in
the church in union with the risen Lord as its divine head. |
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With the development of infant Baptism,
the regenerative initial sacrament was coupled with the charismatic apostolic laying
on of hands as the seal of the Spirit in the rite of confirmation (Acts
8:14-17). By the 4th century, confirmation became a separate "unction"
(rite using oil) administered by a bishop or, earlier and in the Eastern Church,
by a priest to complete the sacramental baptismal grace already bestowed at
birth or on some other previous occasion. At first, especially in the East, a
threefold rite was performed consisting of Baptism, confirmation, and first
communion; but in the West, where the consecration of the oil and the laying on
of hands were confined to the episcopate, confirmation tended to become a
separate event with the growth in the size of dioceses. It was not, however,
until the 16th century that Baptism and confirmation were permanently separated.
In England Queen Elizabeth I
was confirmed when she was only three days old; and infant confirmation is still
sometimes practiced in Spain. But the normal custom in Western Christendom has
been for confirmation to be administered at or after the age of reason and to be
the occasion for instruction in the faith, as in the case of the mystae
in the Mysteries of Eleusis. But whether or not confirmation conveys a new
gift of the Spirit or is the sealing of the same grace bestowed in Baptism,
which is still debated, it has come to be regarded in some churches as
conferring an indelible quality on the soul. Therefore, it cannot be repeated
when it has once been validly performed as a sacrament. |
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Together with Baptism the greatest
importance has been given to the Eucharist, both of which institutions are
singled out in the Gospels as dominical (instituted by Christ)
in origin, with a special status and rank. Under a variety of titles (Eucharist
from the Greek eucharistia, "thanksgiving"; the Latin mass; the Holy
Communion; the Lord's Supper; and the breaking of the bread) it has been the
central act of worship ever since the night of the betrayal of Christ on the
Thursday preceding his crucifixion. It was then that the elements of bread and
wine were identified with the body and blood of Christ in his institution of the
Eucharist with his disciples and with the sacrifice he was about to offer in
order to establish and seal the new covenant. This "real
presence" has been variously interpreted in actual, figurative, or
symbolical senses; but the sacramental sense, as the anamnesis,
or memorial before God, of the sacrificial offering on the cross once and
for all, has always been accepted. (see also
atonement) |
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Along these lines a eucharistic theology
gradually took shape in the apostolic and early church without much controversy
or formulation. In the New Testament, in addition to the three accounts of the
institution of the Eucharist in the first three "books" of the New
Testament known as Synoptic
Gospels because they have a common viewpoint and common sources (Matt.
26:26ff.; Mark 14:22ff.; Luke 22:17-20), St. Paul's earliest record of the
ordinance in I Cor. 11:17-29, written about AD 55, suggests that some abuses had
arisen in conjunction with the common meal, or agapewith which it was combined. Like the Iranian haoma ceremony, it had become an occasion of drunkenness and
gluttony. To rectify this, St. Paul recalled and re-established the original
institution and its purpose and interpretation as a sacrificial-sacramental
rite. Fellowship meals continued in association with the postapostolic
Eucharist, as is shown in the Didache(a Christian document concerned with worship and church discipline
written c. 100-c. 140) and in the doctrinal and liturgical development described in
the writings of the Early Church Fathers little was changed. Not until the
beginning of the Middle Ages did controversial issues arise that found
expression in the definition of the doctrine of transubstantiation
at the fourth Lateran Council
in 1215. This definition opened the way for the scholastic interpretation of the
eucharistic Presence of Christ and of the sacramental principle, in Aristotelian
terms. Thus, St. Thomas Aquinas maintained that a complete change occurred in
the "substance" of each of the species, while the
"accidents," or outward appearances, remained the same. During the Reformation,
though the medieval doctrine was denied by the continental Reformers, it was
reaffirmed by the Council of Trent
in 1551. Holy Communion was retained as a sacrament by most of the Protestant
groups, except the Society of Friends,
the Salvation Army, and some
of the Adventist groups, which
abandoned the sacramental principle altogether. (see also
sacrifice) |
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In its formulation, the Christian
doctrine of conciliation, which, as St. Paul contended, required a change of
status in the penitent, had to be made sacramentally effective in the individual
and in redeemed humanity as a whole. In the Gospel According to Matthew
(16:13-20, 18:18) the power to "bind and loose" was conferred on St.
Peter and the other Apostles. Lapses into paganism and infidelity in the Roman
world by the 3rd century had demanded penitential exercises. These included
fasting, wearing sackcloth, lying in ashes and other forms of mortification,
almsgiving, and the threat of temporary excommunication. Details of the sins
committed were confessed in secret to a priest, who then pronounced absolution
and imposed an appropriate penance. In 1215 the sacrament of penance
received the authorization of the fourth Lateran Council and was made obligatory
at least once a year at Easter on all mature Christians in Western Christendom.
When pilgrimages to the Holy Land, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, or going
on a Crusade could be imposed as penitential exercises, commutation by means of
payment of money led to abuses and traffic in indulgences
and the treasury of merits, a superabundance of merits attributed to Christ and
his saints that could be transferred to sinful believers. The abuses opened the
way for the Lutheran revolt against the penitential system, before they were
abolished by the Council of Trent. The power of absolution
was retained in the Anglican ordinal and conferred upon priests at their
ordination and in the Order of the Visitation of the Sick. The sacrament of
penance, however, ceased to be of obligation in the Anglican
Communion, though it was commended and practiced by John Whitgift,
Richard Hooker, and, after the Restoration in 1660 by the Nonjurors (Anglican
clergy who refused to take oaths of allegiance to William III and Mary II in
1689) and revived by the Tractarians (Anglo-Catholic advocates of High Church
ideals) after 1833, who encountered some Protestant opposition notwithstanding
its entrenchment in canon law and in The Book of Common Prayer. (see also confession) |
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The church has claimed that the ministry
of bishops, priests,
and deacons derives its
authority and sacramental efficacy from Christ through his Apostles. In the
Roman Catholic Church it has been maintained that a special charismatic
sacramental endowment conveying an indelible "character" has been
conferred on those who receive valid ordination by the laying on of hands on
their heads by bishops (who thus transfer to them the "power of
orders"), prayer, and a right intention. In Protestant churches the ministry
is interpreted as a function rather than as a status. Just as the sacramental
power to ordain, confirm, absolve, bless, and consecrate the Eucharist can be
given, so also it can be taken away or suspended for sufficient reason. (see
also episcopacy) |
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In the Roman Catholic Church the
institution of holy matrimony was raised to the level of a sacrament because it
was assigned a divine origin and made an indissoluble union typifying the union
of Christ with his church as his mystical body (Matt. 5:27-32; Mark 10:2-12;
Luke 16:18; I Cor. 7:2, 10; Eph. 5:23ff.). The adherence of Jesus to a rigorist
position in regard to divorce and remarriage (Matt. 19:9; i.e., unchastity the only cause for divorce), similar to that
adopted by the rabbinical school headed by the conservative teacher Shammai
in Judaism, was made the basis of the nuptial union as taught by St. Paul,
except in regard to the dissolution of a marriage contracted between a Christian
and a pagan who refused to live with his or her partner (I Cor. 7:2ff., 15ff.).
(see also marriage
rite) |
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Apart from this deviation, known as the
"Pauline Privilege," which was recognized in canon law in the 13th
century, a marriage validly contracted in the presence of a priest, blessed by
him, and duly consummated has been regarded as a sacramental ordinance by virtue
of the grace given to render the union indissoluble. In Protestant churches,
marriage is regarded as a rite, not a sacrament; views on divorce, however,
vary, and many traditional notions of marriage and divorce are now being
debated. |
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The anointing
of the sick, an initiatory rite, conforms to the general pattern of the
sacramental principle and is comparable to the other rites of passage, such as
those concerned with birth and death, seed time and harvest, and with the
securing of supernatural power and spiritual grace
against the forces of evil that are looked upon as rampant at these critical
junctures. |
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In Christianity anointing of the sick
was widely practiced from apostolic times as a sacramental rite in association
with the ceremony of the imposition of hands to convey a blessing, recovery from
illness, or with the last communion to fortify the believer safely on his new
career in the fuller life of the eternal world. Not until the 8th and 9th
centuries, however, did extreme unction, another term for the final anointing of
the sick, become one of the seven sacraments. In Eastern Christendom, it has
never been confined to those in extremis (near
death) nor has the blessing of the oil by a bishop been required; the
administration of the sacrament by seven, five, or three priests was for the
recovery of health rather than administered exclusively as a mortuary rite.
Extreme unction is also coupled with exorcism
for the restraint of the powers of evil--a practice taken over from Judaism by
the early church and still retained by the Orthodox Eastern Church for mental
diseases. |
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The ecumenical
movement in the 20th century has initiated reforms in liturgical worship
and in private devotions within Christianity. Such reforms, involving the
celebration of sacraments (primarily the Eucharist), have done much to promote
the recovery of a unity among Christians
that transcends differences in beliefs and ritual practices. The second Vatican
Council (1962-65) has played a significant part in the process of recovery of
unity and of renewal. |
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(E.O.J.) |
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