The deliberate intention and act of selling and/or buying spiritual goods or material things so connected with the spiritual that they cannot be separated from it. Simony is a violation of the virtue of religion, and a sacrilege, because it wrongfully puts a material price on spiritual things, which can be neither bought nor sold. The term is derived from the name Simon Magus who, in The Acts of the Apostles, tried to buy the power to confirm people in the Holy Spirit.