Source and Ministration of the Sacraments

God is the cause of the sacraments, and of their effect on the soul of the recipient. The person who administers a sacrament is God’s instrument. God is the principal cause; the minister is the instrumental cause of thesacraments. Now, the interior effect of a sacrament comes from the principal cause alone.

God alone can cause the justification of the soul by grace. Such justification is the inward effect of the sacraments. Therefore, since only God can give to sacraments their justifying or grace-conferring power, God alone can institute a sacrament.

Christ, as God, as exercising his divine power, instituted the seven sacraments of the New Law. Yet Christ as man has authority over the sacraments, and is their most excellent minister.

Christ can impart to his priests the authority and excellence which he has in respect to the sacraments.

The validity of a sacrament conferred, does not depend upon the worthiness of him who administers it. The instrument cannot change the essence of what is done by the principal cause. Water is water, whether it flow through a pipe of gold or a pipe of lead. Hence, even an evil minister can validly confer a sacrament.

But a wicked person who administers a sacrament does wrong. He commits a sin of irreverence which, in its essential general kind or genus, is a mortal sin. It is called a sin of sacrilege.

The whole power of the sacraments comes from Christ’s Passion which belongs to him as man, even though this power is not imparted to the sacramental signs except by Christ as God, who imparts this power in instituting thesacraments. Since Christ’s suffering and death as man are the source of sacramental power, it belongs to men, rather than to angels, to administer sacraments. Yet God could give this power to angels.

The one who confers a sacrament must truly intend to confer it. He must employ the determinate matter or sign.He must mean the words (the form) which make the signsacramentally significant. If the intention of the minister (thatis, the person who administers the sacrament) is amiss, the sacrament is not validly conferred. {-With regard tothe Holy Eucharist, it must be remembered that the minister is theconsecrating priest, not the priest who distributes Holy Communion.-}

Even should the minister lack faith, he can validlyadminister a sacrament, provided he use the proper sign (matter),and employ the determinate formula of words (form), and have the intention of doing what Christ and the Church intend to have done.

If a qualified minister intends to confer or confect a sacrament, and does all that is required to that purpose by Christ and the Church, the sacrament is true and valid. This is so, even if, by an ulterior intention, the minister’s will is evil. If,for instance, a minister were to baptize a man purely for the sake of some social or personal advantage he hopes to gain from that man, the sacrament is not invalidated by this alien and evil purpose.