สายความเชื่อสิ่งคล้ายศีลของคาทอลิกCatholic sacramentalssacramentalia

This is the one tradition in this atlas that has published a boundary against being in it, and the boundary is the record.

The Church's own definition: sacramentals are "sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments: they signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the Church's intercession." The machinery is deliberately different from the sacraments'. Sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit the way the sacraments do; by the Church's prayer they prepare a person to receive grace and dispose them to cooperate with it. Unlike the seven sacraments, which the Church holds were instituted by Christ, sacramentals were instituted by the Church, which can change their form and number; and they do not act ex opere operato, by the working of the work, but ex opere operantis, by the working of the one who does it. The Catechism puts the distinction in an example: the water of baptism causes the forgiveness of sins within the sacramental celebration, while holy water, which recalls baptism, has no effect in itself and depends on the faith of the person who crosses themselves with it at the church door.

That is the line. On the other side of it, in the same Catechism, comes the condemnation. Paragraph 2111 defines its terms — "Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes" — and says that attributing a magical importance to otherwise lawful practices, or crediting the efficacy of prayers to their external performance apart from the interior dispositions they require, falls under it. Paragraph 2117 is blunter: after condemning magic and sorcery as gravely contrary to the virtue of religion, it adds four words — "Wearing charms is also reprehensible."

And on the third side there is what people do. The Miraculous Medal was distributed by the Daughters of Charity during a cholera pandemic and passed a billion copies within fifty years. Saint Christopher medals are sold with the promise printed on them in French and Spanish. The Agnus Dei, a papal wax disc, was carried against storm, pestilence, fire, flood and the dangers of childbirth. The Brown Scapular carries a promise of salvation to those who wear it piously. The 2004 Enchiridion Indulgentiarum grants a partial indulgence to the faithful who use a crucifix or cross, a crown, a scapular, or a medal blessed by a priest — so the Church attaches a benefit to wearing the object, by its own procedure, in the same book of rules that says wearing charms is reprehensible.

The distinction the Church draws is between an object that disposes a wearer toward grace and an object worked to compel a result. This atlas prints that distinction, prints the condemnation, prints the promise, and prints what a driver with a medal on the dashboard says the medal is for. It does not rule on which of them is describing the same object.