1. What is sacramental for you?

Sacramental derives from what a sacrament is. I guess in this context, what you actually mean is
Sacrament. Sacramental is perhaps used descriptively, and not as a noun. Anyway, in the Catechism of
the Catholic Church, a sacrament is taught as visible sign of invisible grace. What this means is that
since we humans are both body and soul, our experience of grace also happens through our senses.
Does grace happen even without us sensing it? Yes. But it becomes more meaningful, more tangible for
us if we have visible, tangible even eat-able realities which communicate to us Gods grace. What the
Church calls as sacraments is often the Seven sacraments, which Jesus Christ himself instituted and is
passed on to us through the Church. (if you ask about sacramentals, these go beyond the seven
sacraments, but are still visible reminders to us of Gods love and essentially of Gods grace and
presence among us.

2. So how is the Church considered sacramental, then?

Beyond the seven sacraments, we also say that the Church itself is a sacrament. (Note that when I say
Church, it is the Church with the capital C meaning, the people of God, or all of us! When we say
church with a small C, it refers to the church building which is itself a symbol of the people of God!) It
is a sacrament because it is only through the Church that we receive the Sacraments. And the Church
only gives us the sacraments because Jesus entrusted these to the Church. So grace is solely from Jesus,
and from Jesus it is entrusted to the Church, and the Church dispenses it to us.

Apart from this, the Church is primarily sacrament: meaning it is a visible sign of oneness with God who
calls us all each of us and together as one community into a relationship with him. We even describe
the Church as the mystical body of Christ, because we are gathered as one with Christ as our head so
to speak. And as Christs body, the Church is also Christs sacrament because it is Christs instrument
because it is through the Church that Christ also gathers all to himself.

3. What are your beliefs in this sacramental things such as, the rosary, the brown scapular, the crucifix
etc?

As I said, they are not sacraments as in they were not given by Christ by his own instruction, but they
are given to us by the Church as reminders of Gods love for us. The Church, through the centuries,
continued to find ways to remind us of Gods presence in our lives. Hence, through blessings, and the
rosary, and religious images, we are always reminded of Gods grace that is always with us.

4. Does these things have power for people?

These things in themselves do not have power. What does have power is God, whom these things must
remind us of. In the same way, any of these sacraments only have their effect because Jesus is in fact
acting through them. We do not give grace to ourselves. We always just receive it from God.

1. How do you define the church as intellectual?

Perhaps one way that the Church is intellectual is that its faith is not something that we believe in
blindly. The faith which we profess is a faith that can be explained to an extent. It is a mystery, yes, but
we have many ways of explaining it to a certain extent. It is not totally beyond logic or philosophy or
plain explanation. The Church does not also ask us to blindly believe our faith. The Church also asks us to
understand our faith in our own capacities such that our adherence to the faith is something which we
both consent to in our minds and in our hearts.

Another way of putting it is that the Church is intellectual in its teaching. The Church is a teacher it
instructs the hearts and minds of the faithful. It passes on to the faithful what it has received from
Christ. The Church also defines what we believe in has authority and responsibility to instruct the
faithful. This teaching authority of the Church is ultimately from Christ. What Christ handed on to the
Apostles, they in turn handed over to us in their preaching and writing a work now continued by the
Church.

2. Who are these intellectuals?

Primarily, perhaps what we call Church intellectuals are those who actually devote themselves to the
study of our faith, thus the Theologians. But the task of defining what the Church believes and teaches
remains solely with the Pope and the Bishops in communion with him. This is what we call the
Magisterium. The primary task of the Magisterium is to make sure that people believe and profess
correctly what God has given us through Jesus Christ. This is to make sure that we do not start making
up things that we believe in. Hence the Church has our bishops and the Pope to teach us and by
extension, our priests our pastors.

At the same time, we faithful are also asked to be intellectual, in that we are ought to be discerning. We
are not supposed to be just believing whatever our pastors tell us. We are supposed to be able to
believe because we understand. Our faith is a faith that seeks understanding.