How to understand sacramental intention—Abbé Hervé Belmont
The necessary intention for sacramental validity can be a complex area of theology, and seems to be frequently misunderstood. Abbé Hervé Belmont gives an explanation, and applies it to the new rites.
Editors’ Notes
In disputes about the post-conciliar sacramental rites, it is common to hear some parties claim that the new rites themselves are valid, but due to various ambiguities, the minister may fail to have the proper intention necessary for valid administration.
In some ways, this seems to be a neat way to avoid concluding that the new rites are themselves doubtful or invalid—and thus to avoid the complex ecclesiological consequences of such a conclusion. After all, it is indeed always possible for a minister to fail to form the appropriate intention and thus invalidate the sacrament which he apparently administers.
However, this is to conflate the “normal” risk of an hypothetical minister without the proper intention with a different and very abnormal situation. In this article, Abbé Hervé Belmont explains why the “intention” arguments about the new rites cannot form a basis of prudent doubt about the new sacraments without leading us to the conclusion that these rites cannot have come to us with the Church’s authority or guarantees at all.
Once we have arrived at that point, it is hard to see how any course can be justified except for the conditional repetition of sacraments confected with the new rites, at least for those which were changed in their essentials (Holy Eucharist, Confirmation, Orders and Extreme Unction), as we have discussed elsewhere.
Intention and the Sacraments
Abbé Hervé Belmont
8 March 2006
Published with permission. Original French here.
Headings and some line breaks added by The WM Review
Abbé Belmont is a French priest, ordained by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and adhering to the “Cassiciacum Thesis” of Bishop Guérard des Lauriers. He is located in Saint-Maixant, France. His articles and essays are available in French at Quicumque.com.
Abbé Belmont gave us permission to publish translations such as this in 2022, but he is unable to approve them personally due to the language.
Intention in the Sacraments
The question of the intention necessary for the valid confection of the sacraments often lies at the heart of the study of the liturgical reform. This issue is more complex than some hasty simplifications suggest. It seems important to me to recall a crucial point: intention is not subjective; it resides primarily on the side of the rite that specifies it.
Intention and Rite
To validly confer a sacrament, a minister must have the intention to do what the Church does. It is this intention that makes him, in the moment, the minister of the Church and an instrument of Jesus Christ. This is why it is necessary.
The object of this intention is that which the Church does; that is to say, that which the Church accomplishes through the hands of the minister, that which the Church gives to the minister for this purpose: it is the rite of the Church, the fruit and expression of the Church's faith. It is the Church’s faith in act.
“… [the] sacraments correspond to faith, as protestations of it and having power from it.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, IV Sent. D. I Q. 1 a. 2 sol. 5).
“… it should be said that an instrument does not receive power in the mode mentioned except when it is joined with a principal agent, so that his power is in a way poured out into the instrument. But the principal agent acting per se for justification is God as efficient cause, and Christ’s Passion as the meritorious cause. A sacrament is joined to this cause by the faith of the Church, which both refers this instrument to the principal cause, and refers the sign to the signified.
“And thus the efficacy or power of instruments or of sacraments is from three things: namely, from divine institution as from the principal agent cause, from the Passion of Christ as from the first meritorious cause, and from the faith of the Church as from the one joining the instrument to the principal agent [Jesus Christ].” (IV Sent. D. I Q. 1 a. 4 sol. 3).
“Faith [of the Church] gives efficacy to the sacraments inasmuch as in a way it joins them to the principal cause [Jesus Christ], as was said. And thus faith in the Passion, from which the sacraments have efficacy directly and immediately, gives abundant efficacy to the sacraments.” (Ibid.)
The sacramental intention is not an intention whose object is the finis operantis (the reason that prompts the agent to act), but rather the intention directed toward the finis operis (the end goal of the action)—the action itself as the object of the will.
The minister of a sacrament is an instrument—and a free instrument. However, his freedom is only a freedom of execution:
To act or not to act
To simulate [through malice, or for the purpose of a liturgical rehearsal, etc.] or not to simulate.
The instrument does not have the freedom of specification; he cannot “choose its intention”: he must will to do what the Church does.
And what the Church does is its rite: its faith, its intention contained within its rite. It is its rite which is the fruit and expression of its faith.
The minister, therefore, receives the sacramental rite as it is given to him by the Church: he does not choose his intention; he does not form it himself. He receives the intention by receiving the rite and using it.
The Church’s guarantees
This is the guarantee of the validity of the sacraments: the utilisation of the Church's rite—an objective, verifiable reality—ensures [except in cases of deliberate simulation] the reality of the sacrament and its effect—even if the minister is mistaken about the nature or effect of the sacrament, even if he is ignorant, unbelieving, simoniacal, etc.
This is the guarantee of the validity of the sacraments: except in cases of deliberate simulation, the utilisation of the Church's rite—an objective, verifiable reality—ensures the reality of the sacrament and its effect, even if the minister is mistaken about the nature or effect of the sacrament, even if he is ignorant, unbelieving, simoniacal, etc.
When a rite is reformed (and particularly when its form is altered), the use of this new rite necessarily implies the intention to do what was intended by the one who promulgated this rite, the intention specified by the faith of which the rite is the fruit and expression.
If it is the Church that modifies her own rite, then intention, faith, and efficacy (which are necessarily linked) are divinely guaranteed.
If the Church’s promulgation is absent, then such guarantee is absent
If the Church's faith is absent, then intention and efficacy are also absent.
The Church’s faith and the signification of the rite
This faith of the Church is present in the signification of the rite.
If one considers the sacramental sign, the ultimate reality of the union of matter and form is its signification. In the sacramental act, this signification resides on the side of the sign and not on the intention.
But within the rite itself, this signification is the term of the intention provided by the promulgation, and expressed through the whole rite—it is this intention that the minister “adopts” by using the rite. This is why the signification is both the effect and the sign of the intention presiding over the confection of the rite (not the intention as present in the authors, but the intention present in the act of promulgation—which, of course, is not unrelated to that of the authors).
This unity of signification and intention is in the faith of the Church. It is the faith of the Church regarding the sacrament, its nature, and its efficacy. It is the faith of the Catholic Church, of which the meaning and the rite are the fruit and expression.
This is why this unity of meaning and intention can only be guaranteed by the promulgation of legitimate authority (and, by virtue of the Church’s infallibility in such matters, it is guaranteed by that promulgation).
Indeed, it is impossible to dissociate three things:
The conformity of a liturgical rite to Catholic faith (conformity in act)
The validity of the sacrament conferred according to this rite (at least the guarantee of its validity)
The legitimacy of the authority that promulgated this rite.
All Catholic doctrine opposes this dissociation, both in sacramental theology and in the theology of the Church's infallibility in matters of faith and sacraments.
Conclusions in relation to the new rites
If, therefore, the new rites [of Vatican II] come from the true authority of the Church, it is impossible for them to be contrary to the faith or invalid; the assistance of the Holy Spirit guarantees both their agreement with the faith and their efficacy of grace. Therefore:
If the new rites are not in conformity with Catholic faith, then it is impossible for them to come from the Church’s authority, which cannot give the Church a bad law or a contemptible rite
If, in what is essential, they are not aligned with Catholic faith, then they cannot be valid: the absent faith of the Church cannot confer upon them the efficacy we have discussed
If, finally, they do not come from the authority of the Church, there is no guarantee of their validity, which can only be known through faith and the testimony of the Church.
Fin.
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I was pleased to see Fr. Belmont several times mention that a deliberate intention to simulate destroys the requisite intention (and therefore validity).
Some argue that, so long as proper form and matter are used (as though intention were inextricably bound up with intention, or subsisted within it), and there is no manifestation of a contrary intention in the external forum, the sacrament is infallibly valid.
This was the error of Catharinus, who opined that even if the minister formed a covert contrary intention, the sacrament would still be valid, so long as proper form/matter are used.