Roman Catholics and the “Sign of the Cross”

One of the most common and distinguishing practices of Roman Catholics is the sign of the cross. Surely, I must have addressed this practice after 5.5 years of blogging and 1844 posts, right? Wrong. I searched my archives and couldn’t find a single post dedicated to it. Okay, let’s finally examine the ubiquitous sign of the cross.

The Roman Catholic church considers the sign of the cross to be a “sacramental,” something not as powerful as a sacrament, but still very helpful. The church officially defines sacramentals as “holy things or actions of which the church makes use to obtain for us from God, through her intercession, spiritual and temporal favors.”

In the sign of the cross, a Catholic touches the fingers of the right hand to the forehead, to the chest, and to both shoulders while saying or silently invoking the trinitarian formula: “In the name of the Father…