Sacramental Theology
What are the three essential elements required for the validity of a sacrament: the minister, the matter, and what third element?
Answer: The form.
How many natures does Christ have?
Answer: Two: divine and human.
What is transubstantiation?
The bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood of Christ substantially
What is the minimum age for a man to be ordained to the priesthood under the Latin Code of Canon Law?
Answer: 25.
What is the liturgical book containing the rites for Mass used by the priest?
→ Roman Missal.
What theological principle means that the sacraments confer grace by virtue of the sacramental action itself, rather than because of the personal holiness of the minister?
Answer: Ex opere operato.
How many Persons are there in Christ?
Answer: One — the divine Person of the Son.
What is the Real Presence?
The Catholic belief that Jesus Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the Holy Eucharist—body, blood, soul, and divinity—under the appearances of bread and wine
What canon establishes that a cleric must be incardinated in a particular Church or other juridically recognized entity?
Answer: Canon 265.
What is the Lectionary?
→ The liturgical book containing the Scripture readings.
In sacramental theology, what is the distinction between validity and liceity?
Answer: A valid sacrament truly takes place; a licit sacrament is celebrated according to the Church’s law and norms. A sacrament can therefore be valid but illicit. Canon 841 explicitly distinguishes the Church’s authority concerning requirements for validity from norms governing licit celebration.
What is the hypostatic union?
Answer: The union of Christ’s divine and human natures in the one divine Person of the Son.
What does the Church mean when it says Christ is present totus et integer under each Eucharistic species?
Answer: Christ is whole and entire under the species of bread and whole and entire under the species of wine.
Which canon defines the Roman Pontiff as possessing supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church?
Answer: Canon 331.
What does Sacrosanctum Concilium call the liturgy in relation to the Church’s activity?
→ The summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed and the font from which her power flows.
Which three sacraments confer an indelible sacramental character and therefore cannot be repeated?
Answer: Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders.
What does the term communicatio idiomatum mean?
Answer: The communication of idioms/properties: because Christ’s divine and human natures belong to the one Person, predicates proper to either nature can be truly attributed to the one Person.
Hence Catholics can say “God suffered” or “God died”—not because the divine nature suffered or died, but because the Person who is God truly suffered and died according to His human nature.
According to Catholic theology, why does Christ remain fully present when the consecrated Host is divided?
Answer: Because Christ’s presence is substantial rather than spatial or quantitative; dividing the appearances does not divide Christ’s substance.
What canon states that only a priest can validly confect the Eucharist?
Answer: Canon 900 §1.
According to Sacrosanctum Concilium, in what ways is Christ present in the liturgy besides His Eucharistic presence?
→ In the minister, in the Eucharistic species, in the sacraments, in His Word, and when the Church prays and sings.
In Thomistic sacramental theology, what is the distinction between the res et sacramentum and the res tantum?
Answer: The res et sacramentum is the sacramental reality that is both signified and itself a sign of a further reality, while the res tantum is the ultimate sacramental effect/reality signified without itself being a sacramental sign.
Which Christological heresy is contradicted by the Church’s teaching that Christ possesses a complete human intellect and human will in addition to His divine intellect and will?
Answer: Monothelitism (and, more broadly, the related Monenergist controversy).
What is the Thomistic distinction between the Eucharist as sacramentum tantum, res et sacramentum, and res tantum?
Answer:
What is the canonical distinction between an ecclesiastical law that invalidates an act and one that merely renders an act illicit?
Answer: An invalidating law explicitly establishes that an act is null or invalid if its conditions are not met; an irritating/invalidating norm affects validity, whereas a purely directive/prohibitive norm affects liceity without necessarily invalidating the act.
What is the theological distinction between ars celebrandi and the mere external correctness of following liturgical rubrics?
→ Ars celebrandi is the art of celebrating the liturgy well, integrating ritual fidelity, interior disposition, proclamation, gesture, silence, prayer, and participation in the mystery; it is not reducible to merely performing rubrics correctly.