ABSTRACT
One of the distinctive characteristics of the Roman Catholic Church is that it is a sacramental Church. Catholics maintain that their experience of God is mediated through their experience of, and relationship with, others, and especially through their participation in the symbolic rituals of their worship. Richter summarizes this principle of ritual mediation well:
Liturgical action depends on symbols because human beings cannot be together and communicate without some kind of encounter in words (verbal symbols) and/or in gestures and actions (nonverbal symbols). All knowledge begins with our senses; this means that an encounter with God is only possible by means of sensible signs [1, p. 9].
