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Q&A Revised: 18 January, A.D. 2002 A Rigorist Denial of Sacramental Effectiveness Reprinted
from: Our Lady of the Rosary Parish Bulletin -- April 1995 Question: The priest who married us got in trouble and is no longer a priest. Does that mean that we are no longer married? What if he wasn't living a holy life when he married us? What about any of the other Sacraments he might have conferred? Answer: The holiness of the person who confers a Sacrament (the term "minister" is used, as not all Sacraments are always conferred by priests) may contribute indirectly to the graces received from a Sacrament. Likewise, the dignity and care exercised by the minister may contribute to our esteem for the holy thing being carried out. But, as long as the proper minister uses the appropriate matter, form, and intention, the Sacrament is effective without regard to his personal state of grace. The spiritual benefits of receiving the Sacraments from a holy person are incidental and do not relate to the validity of the Sacrament. In the case of marriage, it is the bridal couple who confer the Sacrament on each other by their mutual exchange of consent to live the rest of their lives as man and wife. The priest is essentially a witness of the Church and civil society, who together with two other witnesses, is qualified to testify to the fact that the marriage took place. In the sense that the priest is not the minister of the Sacrament, his own personal holiness is of even less importance than it might be in conferring those Sacraments of which he is the actual minister. From early on, the Church has taught that the validity of the Sacraments is unaffected by the worthiness of the minister. Although someone in the state of serious sin conferring a Sacrament may sin again by doing so, the recipient still receives the Sacrament and all of its graces. If this seems strange at first, a little reflection will assure us that it has to be this way. If only a holy person could administer a Sacrament, we would never be able to be sure that we were receiving any of them validly. How could you possibly know that the priest who baptized you, or the bishop that confirmed you, or the minister of any sacrament that you received was in the state of grace at the time? St. Thomas Aquinas likens the minister to "a pipe through which water passes, be it silver or lead." He concludes:
In 254 AD, Pope St. Stephen I ruled on the validity of baptism administered by ministers outside of the Church:
A century and a half later, St. Augustine, speaking of those who had severed themselves from the Catholic Church, says:
Elsewhere the Saint explains:
In northern Africa, by Augustine's time, the possibility of lapsed Christians conferring the Sacraments had become a burning issue. Before the rule of the Emperor Constantine (312 AD), Christians were subject to severe persecution. Some of them, including priests and bishops, were induced to deliver the Sacred Scriptures over to the Roman authorities, and a few even offered incense to the pagan gods. Some of those who persevered in spite of the persecution began to question whether or not the "traditores" had lost the powers of the Sacraments they had received before giving in to the authorities. The issue of re-baptism was important, of course, but the matter came to a head when Cæcilian of Carthage was elected bishop in 312. He himself had been accused of compromising during the persecution under the Emperor Diocletian and was consecrated by a bishop who had done likewise. The "Donatists" (probably named for one of their leaders, Donatus of Casae Nigrae) insisted that a lapsed bishop lost the power to confer any Sacraments, let alone consecrate someone else a bishop. The Donatists installed their own bishops in various cites where the Catholic bishop was said to have lapsed. Violence erupted sporadically. To preserve the peace, Constantine asked Pope Melchiades to rule on the issue and designate the legitimate bishop for those cities with two. Pope Melchiades condemned Donatus as a re-baptizer, confirmed Cæcilian as archbishop of Carthage, and decided that in those cities with two bishops the senior would remain in office. Despite papal condemnation of the heresy, Donatism remained powerful in Africa for roughly a century. Around 400 AD, St. Augustine wrote several books to combat it. In 412 and again in 428 civil laws prescribed fines, beatings, and exile for those heretics who persisted. Other than a brief resurgence during the reign of Gregory the Great, the legal penalties and the invasion by the Vandals, brought the end of Donatism. (Except for an occasional relapse by "holier than thou" and poorly educated Catholics.) Over the centuries the Church has consistently applied the concept that the Sacraments are valid without regard to the holiness of the minister. Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders confer a "mark" or "character" on the soul, and therefore cannot be repeated without sin.5 They may be given again conditionally ("If you are not baptized, then I baptize you....") only if there is good reason to doubt some aspect of their administration. For this reason, converts are not re-baptized if they come from a denomination that validly baptizes. They are not re-confirmed or re-ordained if they come from a denomination that possesses valid Holy Orders (e.g. converts from the Greek Orthodox or Old Catholic churches). Likewise, such a convert would not be required to confess the sins for which he had already been absolved. And, certainly, his conversion would not nullify his marriage even if his spouse refused to convert with him. On occasion the Church has received entire non-Catholic churches into union.6 None of the Sacraments were reconferred and the hierarchies of the formerly non-Catholic churches generally remained intact. Even in cases where the minister of the Sacrament is a non- believer, Pope Leo XIII tells us:
We find what is probably the "classic" case in the activities of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. Talleyrand was consecrated a bishop (through his father's influence with Louis XVI) in 1789 in spite of his publicly sinful life. He was a leader in the intellectual circles of the French Revolution, and was numbered among the founders of the secret society known as the "Illuminati" in France.8 Describing Talleyrand as an "apostate" -- one who has fallen completely away from the Faith -- is not overly harsh. When the Revolution required French priests and bishops to swear an oath to the new Constitution, most refused, left France, went into hiding, or died. Talleyrand was called upon to put on the sacred vestments for the last time in order to consecrate bishops loyal to the Revolution. When Napoleon sought to restore order following the Revolution, one of the first things he did was to negotiate a concordat with Pope Pius VII. Among other things, the Concordat of 1801 required the resignation of all French bishops loyal to the Pope, and granted Napoleon the right to appoint bishops for all the dioceses of France. Napoleon appointed roughly as many "constitutional" bishops as he appointed "non-juring" (those who had not sworn the oath to the revolutionary constitution) bishops.9 Once again, the Church upheld the validity of the Sacraments conferred by evil men, those separated from Itself, and even "skeptics" like Talleyrand. In Summary, no one should be concerned that they may have received the Sacraments invalidly because the minister later departed from the Faith or because he was a sinner or a skeptic. The Church assures that such doubts are unwarranted.
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