Folio 297

Council of Trent, 1545-1563

printed p. 265 · pdf p. 297

Canons on the Sacrament of Confirmation1

871. Can. 1. If anyone shall say that the confirmation of those baptized is an empty ceremony and not rather a true and proper sacrament, or that in former times it was nothing more than a kind of catechism, by which those approaching adolescence gave an account of their faith before the Church: let him be anathema.

872. Can. 2. If anyone shall say that they who ascribe any power to the sacred chrism of confirmation offer an outrage to the Holy Spirit: let him be anathema.

873. Can. 3. If anyone shall say that the ordinary minister of holy confirmation is not the bishop alone, but any simple priest: let him be anathema.

JULIUS III 1550-1555

COUNCIL OF TRENT, continued

Session XIII (Oct. 11, 1551)

Decree On the Most Holy Eucharist2

873a. The sacred and holy ecumenical and general Synod of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Spirit with the same legates and nuncios of the Apostolic See presiding therein, although it has convened for this purpose not without the special guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit, namely to publish the true and ancient doctrine concerning faith and the sacraments, and to provide a remedy for all the heresies and other very serious troubles by which the Church of God is at present wretchedly agitated and torn into many different factions, yet from the beginning has had this especially among its desires, to uproot the "cockles" of execrable errors and schisms, which the enemy in these troubled times of our has "sown" [Matt. 13:25 ff.], in the doctrine of the faith, in the use and worship of the sacred Eucharist, which our Savior, moreover, left in His Church as a symbol of that unity and charity with which He wished all Christians to be mutually bound and united. Therefore, this same sacred and holy synod, transmitting that sound and genuine doctrine of this venerable and divine sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Catholic Church, instructed by our Lord Jesus Christ himself and by his Apostles, and taught by the "Holy Spirit who day by day brings to her all truth"

  1. CTr V 996; Rcht 47; Msi XXXIII 55A; Hrd X 54 E f.; Bar(Th) ad 1547 n. 40 (33, 212 a). ↩

  2. Rcht 62 f.; Msi XXXIII 8 D f.; Hrd X79 A f.; Bar(Th) ad 51 n. 43 f. (33, 406 b f.).  ↩