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DICASTERY FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH

Note

GESTIS VERBISQUE

On the Validity of the Sacraments

Presentation

In their January 2022 Plenary Assembly, the Cardinal and Bishop Members of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith expressed concern about the increasing number of situations in which Sacraments were being celebrated invalidly. The grave modifications that were made to the matter or form of the Sacraments, which nullified those celebrations, led to the need to track down those who were involved and repeat the Rite of Baptism or Confirmation, and a significant number of the faithful rightly expressed their distress. For example, instead of using the established formula for Baptism, formulas such as the following were used: “I baptize you in the name of the Creator…” and “In the name of your dad and mom…we baptize you.” Even some priests found themselves in such a grave situation, for, having been baptized with formulas of this type, they painfully discovered the invalidity of their Ordination and that of the Sacraments they had celebrated up to that time.

While there is ample room for creativity in other areas of the Church’s pastoral action, such inventiveness in celebrating the Sacraments transforms into a “manipulative will” and, thus, it cannot be invoked.[1] Indeed, modifying the form of a Sacrament or its subject matter is always a gravely illicit act and deserves exemplary punishment because such arbitrary actions can seriously harm the faithful People of God.

In his address to this Dicastery at its recent Plenary Assembly on 26 January 2024, the Holy Father recalled that “through the Sacraments, believers become capable of prophecy and witness. In our time, there is a particularly urgent need for prophets of new life and witnesses of charity: let us, therefore, love and help others love the beauty and the salvific power of the Sacraments!” In this context, he also noted that “special care is required on the part of those who administer them and unveil to the faithful the treasures of grace they communicate.”[2]

In this way, the Holy Father invites us to act in such a way that the faithful can fruitfully approach the Sacraments while, at the same time, he strongly emphasizes the call to exercise “special care” in their administration.

For this reason, we ministers must have the strength to overcome the temptation to think that we own the Church. We must, on the contrary, become very receptive to a gift that precedes us: not only the gift of life or grace, but also the treasures of the Sacraments entrusted to us by Mother Church. They are not ours! And the faithful, for their part, have the right to receive them just as the Church provides; it is, in this way, that the celebration of the Sacraments corresponds to Jesus’ intention and makes the Paschal event effective today.

As ministers, with our religious respect toward what the Church has established regarding the matter and form of each Sacrament, we manifest before the community the truth that “the Head of the Church—and thus, the true Presider of the celebration—is Christ alone.”[3]

This Note, therefore, does not deal with a merely technical or even a “rigorist” issue. Rather, in publishing it, the Dicastery primarily intends to shed light on the priority of God’s action and humbly safeguard the unity of the Body of Christ, the Church, in its most sacred actions.

May this Document, which was unanimously approved on 25 January 2024 by the Members of the Dicastery gathered in the Plenary Assembly and then approved by Pope Francis himself, renew in all the ministers of the Church the full awareness of what Christ told us, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” (Jn. 15:16).

Víctor Manuel Card. Fernández
Prefect

[1] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Note on the Modification of the Sacramental Formula of Baptism (24 June 2020), note 2: L’Osservatore Romano, 7 August 2020, 8.

[2] Francis, Address to Participants at the Plenary Assembly of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Sala Clementina (26 January 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 26 January 2024, 7.

[3] Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Note “Gestis Verbisque” on the Validity of the Sacraments (2 February 2024), no. 24.

Introduction

1. With intimately connected deeds and words, God reveals and enacts his plan of salvation for every man and woman, destined for communion with him.[1] This salvific relationship is realized efficaciously in the liturgy, where the announcement of salvation resounding in the proclaimed Word is actualized in sacramental gestures. They make God’s saving action present in human history—an action that culminates in Christ’s Passover—and their redemptive power continues the history of salvation that God is bringing about in time.

Instituted by Christ, the Sacraments are actions that, through perceivable signs, enact the living experience of the mystery of salvation, thereby enabling our participation in the divine life. They are the “masterworks of God” in the New and Eternal Covenant, forces that come from the Body of Christ, and actions of the Spirit working in his Body, the Church.[2]

Therefore, with faithful love and veneration, the Church celebrates in the liturgy the Sacraments that Christ himself entrusted to her so that she may preserve them as a cherished inheritance and a wellspring of her life and mission.

2. Regrettably, one must acknowledge that liturgical celebrations, especially those of the Sacraments, are not always carried out in full fidelity to the rites prescribed by the Church. On several occasions, this Dicastery has intervened to settle dubia about the validity of Sacraments celebrated in the Roman Rite where the liturgical norms were disregarded. In some instances, the Dicastery had to conclude with a painful negative response, noting that the faithful were robbed of what rightfully belongs to them: “namely, the Paschal Mystery, celebrated according to the ritual that the Church sets down.”[3] Consider, for example, those baptismal celebrations in which the sacramental formula was modified in one of its essential elements. Such a change nullified the Sacrament and thereby also compromised the future sacramental journey of the faithful. With grave disturbance, they had to repeat not only their Baptism but also the Sacraments they received thereafter.[4]

3. In some situations, one can perceive the good intentions of some ministers who, either inadvertently or driven by sincere pastoral motives, modified the essential formulas and rites established by the Church in the Sacraments they celebrated. They might have believed these alterations would render the rituals more suitable and understandable. However, quite often, “recourse to pastoral motivation masks, even unconsciously, a subjective deviation and a manipulative will.”[5] This also reveals a gap in the minister’s formation, especially in understanding the value of symbolic action—an essential element of the liturgical-sacramental act.

4. To aid Bishops in their role as promoters and guardians of the liturgical life of the particular Churches entrusted to them, in this Note, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith intends to offer some elements of a doctrinal character that can aid in discerning the validity of the celebrations of the Sacraments, while also taking into account some disciplinary and pastoral implications in this domain.

5. While the purpose of this Note applies to the Catholic Church in its entirety, the theological arguments that inspire it sometimes draw upon categories proper to the Latin tradition. Therefore, the Synod or Assembly of Hierarchs of each Eastern Catholic Church is entrusted with the task of adapting the directives of this document by employing its own theological language, where it differs from that used in this text. The result is to be submitted to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for approval prior to publication.

I. The Church Receives and Expresses Herself in the Sacraments

6. The Second Vatican Council analogically refers the notion of a Sacrament to the whole Church. In particular, when the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy affirms that “from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the Cross […] there came forth ‘the wondrous sacrament of the whole Church,’”[6] it links back to the typological reading of the relationship between Christ and Adam that was favored by the Church Fathers.[7] The conciliar text alludes to the well-known statement of St. Augustine,[8] that “Adam sleeps that Eve may be formed; Christ dies that the Church may be formed. From the side of Adam who sleeps, Eve is formed; from the side of Christ who died on the Cross, struck by the lance, flow the Sacraments by which the Church is formed.”[9]

7. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church reiterates that the Church is “in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race.”[10] This is realized primarily by means of the Sacraments, for, in each one, the sacramental nature of the Church, the Body of Christ, is made present in its own way. The meaning of the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation “shows how the sacramental economy ultimately determines the way that Christ, the one Savior, through the Spirit, reaches our lives in all their particularity. The Church receives and at the same time expresses what she herself is in the seven Sacraments, thanks to which God’s grace concretely influences the lives of the faithful, so that their whole existence, redeemed by Christ, can become an act of worship pleasing to God.”[11]

8. By establishing the Church as his Mystical Body, Christ gives believers a share in his own life, uniting them to his Death and Resurrection through the Sacraments in a real and mysterious way.[12] The sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit acts in the faithful through sacramental signs,[13] making them living stones of a spiritual edifice founded on the cornerstone that is Christ the Lord.[14] This constitutes the faithful as a priestly people, sharers in the one priesthood of Christ.[15]

9. The seven vital actions that the Council of Trent solemnly declared to be of divine institution[16] thus constitute a privileged place of encounter with Christ the Lord, who bestows his grace and who—through the Church’s words and ritual actions—nourishes and strengthens the faith.[17] In the Eucharist and all the other Sacraments, “we are guaranteed the possibility of encountering the Lord Jesus and of having the power of his Paschal Mystery reach us.”[18]

10. Realizing this, the Church, from her origins, has taken special care of the sources from which she draws the lifeblood for her existence and witness: the Word of God (attested in Sacred Scripture and the Tradition) and the Sacraments (celebrated in the liturgy, through which she is continually led back to the mystery of Christ’s Passover).[19]

The interventions of the Magisterium in sacramental matters have always been motivated by a fundamental concern for fidelity to the mystery being celebrated. Indeed, the Church must ensure the priority of God’s action and safeguard the unity of the Body of Christ in those actions that are without equal, for they are sacred par excellence with an efficacy guaranteed by Christ’s priestly action.[20]

II. The Church Preserves and is Preserved by the Sacraments

11. The Church is the ‘minister’ of the Sacraments, but she does not own them.[21] By celebrating the Sacraments, she receives their grace—and as she preserves them, she is also preserved by them. The power (potestas) that she can exercise in relationship with the Sacraments is analogous to that which she has regarding Sacred Scripture. In the latter, the Church acknowledges Scripture as the Word of God, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; on this basis, she establishes the canon of sacred books. At the same time, she also submits to this Word, “listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully.”[22] Similarly, the Church, aided by the Holy Spirit, recognizes those sacred signs through which Christ bestows the grace that emanates from Easter; she determines their number and identifies the essential elements for each of them.

In doing this, the Church is aware that administering God’s grace does not mean appropriating it. Rather, it means making herself an instrument of the Spirit in handing on the gift of the Paschal Christ. In particular, she knows that her power (potestas) regarding the Sacraments does not extend to their substance.[23] Just as the Church, in her preaching, must always faithfully proclaim the Gospel of Christ, who died and rose again, so also in her sacramental actions, she must preserve the saving actions that Jesus entrusted to her.

12. The Church has not always univocally indicated the actions and words that constitute the divinely instituted (divinitus instituta) substance. Nevertheless, for all the Sacraments, the fundamental elements are those that the Magisterium of the Church—listening to the “sense of the faith” (sensus fidei) of the People of God and in dialogue with theology—has designated as “matter” and “form,” to which the intention of the minister is added.

13. The matter of the Sacrament consists of the human action through which Christ himself acts. Sometimes, a material element is present (such as water, bread, wine, or oil), and other times, it involves a particularly eloquent action (like the sign of the cross, the laying on of hands, immersion, infusion, anointing, or marital consent). This corporeal dimension is indispensable because it roots the Sacrament not only in human history but, more fundamentally, in the symbolic order of creation—leading it back to the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word and the Redemption accomplished by him.[24]

14. The form of the Sacrament is constituted by the word, which gives a transcendent meaning to matter, thereby transfiguring the ordinary meaning of the material element and the purely human significance of the action performed. This word always draws inspiration in varying degrees from Sacred Scripture,[25] is rooted in the living Tradition of the Church, and is defined authoritatively by the Church’s Magisterium through careful discernment.[26]

15. Because of their rootedness in Scripture and Tradition, the matter and the form of the Sacraments have never depended on, nor could they depend on, the will of individuals or specific communities. The Church’s responsibility is not to determine these elements at someone’s whim or pleasure, but—provided their substance is preserved (salva illorum substantia)[27]—her task is to point them out authoritatively, in docility to the action of the Holy Spirit.

For some Sacraments, the matter and form were substantially defined from the beginning so that their foundation by Christ is immediately evident. For others, the definition of their essential elements was specified only over the course of a complex history that sometimes involved a significant evolution.

16. It should be noted that whenever the Church intervenes in determining the constituent elements of a Sacrament, she always does so in a way that is rooted in Tradition, with the goal of more evidently expressing the grace conferred by the Sacrament.

It is in this context that the liturgical reform of the Sacraments, which took place following the principles of the Second Vatican Council, called for a revision of the rites so that they might more clearly express the sacred realities they signify and bring about.[28] The Church, with its magisterium in sacramental matters, exercises its power (potestas) on the basis of that living Tradition, “which comes from the Apostles [and] develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit.”[29]

In this way, the Church, guided by the Spirit, has recognized the sacramental character of certain rites and deemed that they correspond with Jesus’ intention to open the Paschal event to our participation today.[30]

17. For all the Sacraments, in any event, observance of both the matter and the form has always been required for the validity of the celebration. Arbitrary changes to one or the other—the severity and invalidating force of which must be ascertained on a case-by-case basis—jeopardize the effective bestowal of sacramental grace to the clear detriment of the faithful.[31] Both matter and form, summarized by the Code of Canon Law,[32] are established in the liturgical books promulgated by the competent authority. Those books must be faithfully observed; one may not “add, remove, or change anything.”[33]

18. Related to matter and form is the intention of the minister who celebrates the Sacrament. Here, the issue of the minister’s intention should be distinguished clearly from that of his personal faith and moral condition, which do not affect the validity of the gift of grace.[34] Indeed, the minister must have the “intention of doing at least what the Church does,”[35] which makes the sacramental action a truly human act, removed from any automatism, and a fully ecclesial act, removed from personal arbitrariness. Moreover, since what the Church does is precisely that which Christ has instituted,[36] the intention—together with matter and form—also contributes to making the sacramental action an extension of the Lord’s saving work.

Matter, form, and intention are intrinsically united. They are integrated into the sacramental action such that intention becomes the unifying principle of the matter and form, making them into a sacred sign by which grace is conferred ex opere operato.[37]

19. Unlike matter and form, which represent the perceivable and objective element of the Sacrament, the minister’s intention—along with the recipient’s disposition—represents the Sacrament’s interior and subjective element. However, by its very nature, this element tends to be manifested externally by observance of the rite established by the Church. For this reason, the grave alteration of the essential elements also introduces doubt about the minister’s real intention, vitiating the validity of the Sacrament celebrated.[38] For, as a principle, the intention to do what the Church does is expressed in the use of the matter and the form that the Church has established.[39]

20. Matter, form, and intention are always placed within the context of the liturgical celebration. This does not constitute a ceremonial adornment (ornatus) to the Sacraments, nor is it a merely didactic introduction to the reality being fulfilled. Rather, as a whole, it constitutes the event in which the personal and communal encounter between God and us continues to take place, in Christ and in the Holy Spirit: an encounter in which, through the mediation of perceivable signs, “perfect glory is rendered to God and humankind is sanctified.”[40]

In this way, the necessary concern for the essential elements of the Sacraments, on which their validity depends, must accord with the care and respect owed to the entire celebration. In that celebration, the meaning and the effects of the Sacraments are made fully intelligible by a multiplicity of actions and words, thereby fostering the actuosa participatio of the faithful.[41]

21. The liturgy itself allows for the variety that keeps the Church from “rigid uniformity.”[42] This is why the Second Vatican Council decreed that “provisions shall also be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples, especially in mission lands, provided that the substantial unity of the Roman Rite is preserved.”[43]

By virtue of this, the liturgical reform desired by the Second Vatican Council authorized Episcopal Conferences to introduce general adaptations to the Latin typical edition (editio typica) and envisioned the possibility that the minister of the celebration could make specific adaptations, all with the singular purpose of meeting the pastoral and spiritual needs of the faithful.

22. However, so that variety does “not hinder unity but rather contribute toward it,”[44] outside of the cases expressly indicated in the liturgical books, “regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church.”[45] Depending on the circumstances, this authority resides in the Bishop, the territorial Episcopal Assembly, or the Apostolic See.

Indeed, it is clear that “modifying on one’s own initiative the form of the celebration of a Sacrament does not constitute simply a liturgical abuse, like the transgression of a positive norm, but a wound (vulnus) inflicted upon the ecclesial communion and the identifiability of Christ’s action, and in the most grave cases it renders invalid the Sacrament itself because the nature of the ministerial action requires the transmission with fidelity of that which has been received (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3).”[46]

III. Presiding at the Liturgy and the “Ars Celebrandi”

23. The Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar Magisterium make it possible to situate the ministry of presiding at the liturgy in its proper theological meaning. The Bishop and the priests who collaborate with him preside over liturgical celebrations—above all, the Eucharist, the “source and summit of the whole Christian life”[47]—in persona Christi (Capitis) and nomine Ecclesiae. Both of these formulas, albeit with some variation, are widely attested by the Tradition.[48]

24. The formula “in persona Christi”[49] (“in the person of Christ”) means that the priest re-presents Christ himself in the celebration. This is realized above all when, in the consecration of the Eucharist, the priest pronounces the Lord’s own words with the same efficacy, identifying, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, his own “I” with that of Christ. When the Council then specifies that priests preside at the Eucharist “in persona Christi Capitis”[50] (“in the person of Christ the Head”), it does not intend to endorse an understanding whereby the minister, as “head,” possesses a power to be exercised arbitrarily. Indeed, the Head of the Church—and thus, the true Presider of the celebration—is Christ alone. He is “the Head of the Body, that is, the Church” (Col. 1:18) insofar as he causes her to spring from his side and insofar as he nourishes and cares for her by loving her to the point of giving himself up for her (cf. Eph. 5:25, 29; Jn. 10:11). The minister’s power (potestas) is a service (diakonia), as Christ himself teaches the disciples during the Last Supper (cf. Lk. 22:25-27; Jn. 13:1-20). Those who are configured to him by virtue of sacramental grace and who, therefore, participate in the authority with which he leads and sanctifies his People, are called—in the liturgy and in their entire pastoral ministry—to conform themselves to this same logic. For, they have been constituted shepherds, not to lord it over the flock, but to serve it after the model of Christ, the Good Shepherd of the sheep (cf. 1 Pt. 5:3; Jn. 10:11, 14).[51]

25. At the same time, the minister who presides at the celebration acts “nomine Ecclesiae”[52] (“in the name of the Church”): a formula that makes it clear that while he re-presents Christ the Head before his Body, which is the Church, the minister also presents this Body (indeed, this Bride) before its own Head as the integral subject of the celebration: the all-priestly People in whose name he speaks and acts.[53] After all, if it is true that “when one baptizes it is really Christ Himself who baptizes,”[54] so also “when celebrating a Sacrament, the Church in fact functions as the Body that acts inseparably from its Head, since it is Christ the Head who acts in the ecclesial Body generated by him in the Paschal Mystery.”[55] This underscores the mutually ordered relationship between the baptismal priesthood and the ministerial priesthood,[56] which enables one to understand that the latter exists in the service of the former. In this way, as mentioned above, the minister who celebrates the Sacraments can never fail to have the intention to do what the Church does.

26. The twofold and combined function expressed by the formulas in persona Christi and nomine Ecclesiae, and the mutually fruitful relationship between the baptismal priesthood and the ministerial priesthood—combined with the awareness that the essential elements for the validity of the Sacraments are to be considered in their proper context (that is, the liturgical action)—should make the minister increasingly aware that “liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church.” These actions, though “in different ways, according to their differing rank, office, and actual participation,” “pertain to the whole Body of the Church; they manifest it and have effects upon it.”[57] For this very reason, the minister should understand that the authentic ars celebrandi (art of celebrating) is one that respects and exalts the primacy of Christ and the actuosa participatio (engaged participation) of the entire liturgical assembly, including through humble obedience to the liturgical norms.[58]

27. It is increasingly urgent to develop an ars celebrandi that—keeping itself equally distant from a rigid rubricism, on the one hand, and a limitless imagination, on the other hand—leads to a discipline we are to follow, precisely to be authentic disciples: “It is not a question of following a book of liturgical etiquette. It is, rather, a ‘discipline’—in the way that Guardini referred to—which, if observed authentically, forms us. These are gestures and words that place order within our interior world making us live certain feelings, attitudes, behaviors. They are not the explanation of an ideal that we seek to let inspire us, but they are instead an action that engages the body in its entirety, that is to say, in its being a unity of body and soul.”[59]

Conclusion

28. “We [...] have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor. 4:7). The contrast the Apostle uses to emphasize how the sublimity of God’s power is revealed through the weakness of his ministry as a preacher also describes well what transpires in the Sacraments. The Church as a whole is called to guard the richness contained in the Sacraments so that the primacy of God’s saving action in history may never be obscured, even in the fragile mediation of signs and gestures proper to human nature.

29. The virtus operative in the Sacraments shapes the face of the Church, enabling her to hand on the gift of salvation that Christ, who died and rose again, wants to share—in his Spirit—with every person. The Church’s ministers are entrusted with this great treasure so that as “attentive stewards” of the People of God, they may nourish it with the abundance of the Word and sanctify it with the grace of the Sacraments. Above all, it is up to the Church’s ministers to ensure that “the beauty of the Christian celebration” is kept alive and is not “spoiled by a superficial and foreshortened understanding of its value or, worse yet, by its being exploited in service of some ideological vision, no matter what the hue.”[60]

Only in this way can the Church grow, day by day, in the “in [her] knowledge of the mystery of Christ, immersing [her] life in the mystery of His Death and Resurrection, awaiting his return in glory.”[61]

The Supreme Pontiff, Francis, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on 31 January 2024, approved this Note, decided at the Plenary Session of this Dicastery, and ordered its publication.

Given in Rome, at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2 February 2024, on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.

Víctor Manuel Card. Fernández
Prefect

Msgr. Armando Matteo
Secretary
for the Doctrinal Section