UPDATE:
People don’t always read carefully before they react.
Let me be clear. It is okay – it is good – for parents to bless their children by tracing the sign of the Cross on their foreheads.
Stop sending me questions about that. Read what is posted, below.
It is NOT okay for lay people to attempt to exorcise things. It is NOT okay for lay people to attempt to bless in the manner of a priest, that is by making the sign of the Cross over someone in the usual way that priests do.
___ Original Published on: Aug 3, 2017
From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
In a fairly popular book about celebrating the liturgical year at home, The Year and Our Children, the author recommends purchasing “the Ritual, that slim black book the priest carries about when he gives the blessings.” She goes on to explain how her family “blessed” their own herbs. Can you tell me if laypersons can bless objects and if so, under what conditions? Thank you!
I don’t know that book. You haven’t quoted any of the book, so – since your planet’s yellow star doesn’t give my the psychic power I would need to know what it says – I don’t know what it says. However, my first reaction is…
NO!
Lay people should not do anything like that, especially involving making the sign of the Cross over anything, as if they were ordained priests.
NO! I say, and again I say NO!
Take things to the priest to bless.
Ask Father to come to bless things.
This is not DIY, people.
If you are not a priest, don’t do these things. Don’t use the Rituale for anything, especially if there is something to do with exorcisms. You do NOT want to get into it with the Enemy when you don’t have the grace of ordained priesthood and the authority and power that comes with it.
There is no reason why lay people can’t ask God to bless things. However, it should not be done with accompanying gestures of blessing, etc.
The moderation queue is ON.
The other day I 
Today my friend 
The largest cross-boarder Lefeverist smuggling tunnel to date was discovered in a midnight raid earlier today by Swiss Guards. The smugglers fled, abandoning contraband with a street value of over 3 million euros.
Use of the cassock.
According to the Novus Ordo calendar, today is the Feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori. In the traditional calendar it falls tomorrow. He is a Doctor of the Church, whose writings set the Church’s approach to moral theology on a healthy course enduring to this day among the faithful. I once had the astounding, intimidating privilege of holding in my hands his own manuscript of his Moral Theology, replete with glued in pages and scraps of notes and corrections. Moreover, his Stations of the Cross, his version is what I will always hear for that devotion, his Manual for Confessors strongly shaped my approach to the sacrament, his Novena Prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help formed my earliest sense of truly pious Catholics.
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf on ROME 26/6 – Day 74-75: Last Day: “Eugene: I suppose that it has been the custom in Italy going way back. In fact, in older rites books…”
