Permanent Characters
How many Catholics take their sacramental characters anywhere near as seriously as the characters they tattoo on their bodies?
Those of us of a certain age remember the illustration in the Baltimore Catechism when it came to talking about how three sacraments—Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders—imprint a spiritual “character” on the soul that cannot be effaced and which, therefore, renders those three sacraments unrepeatable. The picture was usually of two little kids with Jesus looking at them and a Chi Rho on their…