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Dear catholic.com visitors: This Catholic Answers website, with all its free resources, is the world’s largest source of explanations for Catholic beliefs and practices. We receive no funding from the institutional Church and rely entirely on your generosity to sustain this website with trustworthy, accessible content. If every visitor this month donated $1, catholic.com would be fully funded for an entire year. If you’ve never made a gift, now is the time. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar this week only. Thanks and God bless.

Is it permissible to sell items such as rosaries, medals, Bibles, etc., that have been blessed?

Question:

Is it permissible to sell items such as rosaries, medals, Bibles, etc., that have been blessed?

Answer:

Items may be sold; blessings may not. Any blessed item that is sold should be sold for its intrinsic value apart from the blessing. To sell the blessing itself would amount to simony.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses this:

Simony is defined as the buying or selling of spiritual things. To Simon the magician, who wanted to buy the spiritual power he saw at work in the apostles, St. Peter responded: “Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money!” Peter thus held to the words of Jesus: “You received without pay, give without pay.” It is impossible to appropriate to oneself spiritual goods and behave toward them as their owner or master, for they have their source in God. One can receive them only from him, without payment. (2121)

 

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