The Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the Examen, scapulars and medals: where each comes from, how to pray it, and what the Church teaches.
Start →Catholics pray in many ways: the Mass and sacraments first, then the Church’s daily prayer, and a great variety of devotions. Each page explains its history in plain words, separates tradition from what historians can confirm, and gives traditional public-domain prayer texts.
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Catechism · vatican.va
Sacramentals are “sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments” (CCC 1667). They “do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it” (CCC 1670). The Church is clear that they are not charms: to attribute power to prayers or sacramental signs by “their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition” (CCC 2111). Popular devotions “extend the liturgical life of the Church, but do not replace it” (CCC 1675).