 In his Epistle (Ch. 5:14-15) James did not intend to promulgate a Sacrament of Christ but only commend a pious custom. If in this custom he happens to distinguish a means of grace, it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was taken by the theologians who laid down the notion and number of the Sacraments.
Here we see a classic case of Modernist misdirection and interpretation in this particular passage in which the Apostle Saint James was indeed speaking of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction by the very mention of "anointing him with oil, in the name of the Lord" and the fact that this could only be done by "priests of the Church". It was, as Bishop Laravoire Morrow affirms in My Catholic Faith "to cure the sick and console the afflicted that Our Lord worked many of His miracles. The Gospels give us vivid pictures of Him as He went about doing good and preaching and 'healing every disease and every sickness among the people' (St. Matthew 4: 23)." We know also that Christ instituted the Sacrament of Extreme Unction as St. Luke records in chapter 4: 40, "Now when the sun was down, all they that had any sick with divers diseases, brought them to Him. But He laying His hands on every one of them, healed them." This, to all mindless Modernists is what a sacrament is: AN OUTWARD SIGN INSTITUTED BY CHRIST TO GIVE GRACE. St. Mark verifies this in chapter 6: 13, that when Jesus sent His Apostles out He sent them to "cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many sick people, and healed them." You see if healing and anointing with oil by a priest is the form and matter and conveys the grace to heal a person both spiritually and temporally, and was established by Christ, then what part of "not a sacrament" are these Modernist misfits trying to peddle? You'll note they went after St. James, not St. Mark or St. Luke. One reason is because Protestants are less inclined to accept St. James, and secondly Mark and Luke, as well as St. Matthew and St. John speak of the Son of God's miracles. Modernists can't have that so they try to undermine the credibility by positing a ridiculous claim that "it is not in that rigorous manner in which it was taken by the theologians who laid down the notion and number of the Sacraments." Where is their proof for such a statement? Again, as usual, Modernists can never provide proof for their outrageous claims. Instead they use verbal engineering to undermine so subliminally, choosing words such as "only commend a pious custom" and "rigorous manner" and "notion" to place doubt in the mind of the common Catholic. If they pepper them with enough of these doubts, one's fallen human nature will make it that much more difficult to decipher what is true and what isn't unless a person truly knows his or her faith. Why do you think, over the last 45 years, the counterfeit church of conciliarism has presided in dumbing down the faithful by filling them with all these ambiguities and gray areas? To strengthen the faith of the flocks? Not on your life! They seek to sow confusion with those who have not taken their faith and salvation as seriously as they should. By dismissing Extreme Unction, they reduce the necessity of preparing one's soul for death, the first of the final four things - Death, Judgment, Heaven and hell. By downplaying this they take man away from thinking about the supernatural and place it on the natural humanistic level. It also serves to diminish the God-given powers of the sacerdotal office of His priests and thus, once Giovanni Montini dared to tinker with the holy Sacraments, reduced Holy Orders to no longer ordaining priests who could confect the Holy Eucharist and heal the sick and dying through the graces conferred via their ordination, but mere presiders who officiate at services whose purpose is not spiritual, but sociological for the important thing to conciliarists is the "unity of community." The charismatic movement, a satanic creation, has further diluted the office and power of the priest by giving the impression that anyone can heal today with the laying on of hands and constant babblings in tongues that totally misses what the Apostles experienced in "speaking in tongues." Many in the charismatic collective love to "rest in the spirit", but what they can't definitely tell you is what spirit? It is surely not the Holy Ghost or they'd know better than to give any credence whatsoever to Modernist mindcontrol.
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