Sacraments and Learning Having a Catholic background but not being particularly religious, I learned a lot from this course about the history of the Church's use of sacramentals and sacraments, rituals and symbols. Whereas before, I was somewhat aware of these without really understanding their significance or their origins, now I can appreciate what they mean and how they developed out of cultural and historical practices. What I expected to learn from taking this course was far exceeded by what I actually learned, which was a greater appreciation of the way that the Catholic Church has integrated signs and symbols into Her rites and rituals as a way of conveying a sense of the religious faith and mystery that goes along with religious practice. Before this class, these symbols were like a wall to my understanding but now they are like a door or window into the mindset of the Church and her adherents. I see too from an anthropological perspective, how culture and history plays into the dissemination and formation of all religious customs, how ideas and rituals are not simply created or established out of the blue but rather come from a seriously thought-out and studied examination of how a people will respond to concepts and what they are used to over time.

One of the big questions I had coming into the class was why the Church would use such outmoded and outdated examples or signs of the ideas behind the religion to convey those concepts. Even with the updated rates and ideas instituted after the Second Vatican Council, I also had some sense that some people still preferred the old rites and customs of the pre-Vatican II Church and wanted the Mass said in Latin and wanted the priest to face the altar among other practices. In the 21st century it would seem to me that these ways of doing religious services would seem contradictory to modern sensibilities and yet I was aware that these customs were actually preferred -- so in this class I suspected I might find an answer for that. With the help of the instructor and the book Sacraments and Sacramentality, I was able to see these people in a new way that I could better appreciate and understand.

Sacraments are for people, as Cooke points out in his book (9) and that basic concept was what putting everything into perspective. I had always assumed that sacraments were for the Church and by the Church instead of for the people as instituted by God. I viewed them as a means of control whereby the Church could hold notions of sin and guilt over the people. I didn't really understand that there was a substance and a form to the conveyance of grace and that people who adhere to the Church believe that these sacraments are necessary for receiving this grace. So they go to make a confession or they go to have a baptism or they are married in the Church and many other things besides -- all of this is part of the life of grace that the Catholic wants to maintain. Instead of the Church using sacraments as a kind of monopoly over faith, it is the opposite -- it is the people of faith who maintain the support of the sacraments and without these people there would be no more sacraments in the world because the Church cannot give what people do not want. So this helped to explain to me some of the mystery of why certain people would want to go back to the old ways of doing things in the Church, such as having the Mass in Latin and kneeling for Communion, etc., while others would be okay with the Mass in their own language and receiving Communion in the hand, because for them it is not a lessening of the sacrament -- it is still the same.

The aspect of examining each chapter of the book and devoting time to answering any one question of the author I thought was extremely helpful in obliging us to focus on the text and the ideas therein. It gave me an opportunity to really look more deeply into the concepts behind what I was reading. Instead of glossing over things, I contemplated them and even researched some concepts more closely such as where the sacraments came from and what others thought about this. I looked up those chapters in the New Testament where Church Doctors pointed out...

The Last Supper, for instance, was something I had never viewed as being the time when Christ instituted the priesthood and the sacrifice of the Mass with the Holy Eucharist. But rereading these passages put this episode in a better light and I could see clearly the portions of the Mass still said today, for example, when Christ points out that "This is my Body" and "This is my Blood," which is still said by the priest at Mass when the sacrament of the Eucharist is confected. That was really most interesting for me as I could finally really understand how the Mass was built around this moment in history as depicted in the Bible. I now could see the Mass as growing out of this sacrament rather than the sacrament being something that was done in the Mass. Everything that is in the Mass leads up to this moment and the moment of grace for the people, which is why they come to Church in the first place: they believe in God and want grace in their souls and take what they have been taught seriously.
I am not sure how and when I will use the knowledge that I have learned from this course. Right now I am simply digesting what I have learned and getting comfortable with the ideas that now seem to be circulating in my mind -- namely that society and culture flow into and out of religious worship, that it is a two-way street. When I think of modern society and how materialistic it is and how unmindful it is of religious things I wonder if this is connected to any of the problems that we now face in society, such as the worsening conditions of the social fabric, with more and more laws being created in order to keep people from harming themselves, which only seems to aggravate the situation while others, like those on Wall Street who run hand-in-hand with the government, get away with massive theft and are never punished. I see that there is something missing in society with the rise of the PC culture which is meant to make everyone respect everyone but it adds to bitterness and resentment and blowback. So perhaps there needs to be some more attention given to religion by people like me, who never really saw the value of it before, primarily because though I was raised in the background, it was never properly explained to me and I was never made to see why and how it was important in my own life. But now I see that there is some reason and justification for these practices or for the history of the sacraments, how it holds society together in a way by giving it a way out of whatever is oppressing in everyday life and focusing on the spiritual life as the most important aspect of life. This spiritual life can then have a greater impact on society because instead of fostering bitterness and resentment through more laws and unjust practices, it can act as a conduit for grace and love and mercy and charity -- all things that people want and need in order to become better to themselves and to each other.

The instructor contact throughout this class was always very good and positive and the course materials were helpful in guiding the way to a better understanding of the sacraments and the way that communities and societies express and embrace religious worship. I liked the book that was used and it made me want to look at the subject more in-depth, which I think is one of the best things that anyone can say about a book. The focus on a particular question from each chapter provided a sufficient framework for study, and so we could see where symbols came from and how the Christian community reacted to the institution of sacraments and why Christ's sacrifice is manifested in the sacraments in some way, since the Christian identity grows out of this sacrifice of Christ for sinners. Also interesting was the Eucharist as a story, with the Mass acting like a narrative, which was something I also had not thought of before. Likewise, the concept of sacraments being for healing of human society really helped to show why people would be so devoted to them (Cooke 195).

In conclusion, this class offered a lot more than I initially…