The Catholic Church recognizes seven specific actions as sacraments:
Baptism, Eucharist, Penance, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, Marriage, and Holy Orders. For Catholics these are expressions of the nature and mission of the Church. Written records are associated with some of these events. Some of these records are of great value to family historians, others are not.

• Child's name, birthdates, baptismal date, father's name, mother's maiden name, sponsors, presiding priest and annotations (notes added throughout a person's life to indicate when and where certain other sacraments have been received: confirmation, marriage/annulment, holy orders).
• Less commonly found are parent's home address and child's birthplace.
• Extremely rare is information regarding a specific birthplace of the child's parents.
• This is not a birth record; sometimes children were baptized months or even years after birth.

• Names of the bride and groom, marriage date, groom's father's name, groom's mother's maiden name, bride's father's name, bride's mother's maiden name, witnesses, presiding priest.
• Less commonly found is information regarding time and place of baptism of the groom and bride.
• Marriages generally took place at bride's church.

• Name of deceased, spouse's name, children's names, age at death, place of death, date of death, date of burial, place of burial (i.e. name of cemetery), presiding priest.
• Sometimes a cause of death is given
• I have never seen information regarding the birth-place of the deceased or information on their parents or siblings

• Name of confirmand, confirmation name, sponsor's name, date of confirmation, presiding bishop/priest

• Communicant's name, date of communion