A. About the Power to Confect Simply

171. Speaking of the power to confect simply, nothing beyond due matter (spoken of at the end of d.11 nn.361-389) is required save a due minister - for whom three conditions are required, namely: that he be a priest, that he can pronounce the words of consecration, and that he can have the due intention of acting, namely that he intend to do what the Church intends to do.

172. The second and third condition are common here also to one who ministers the other sacraments: because of defect of the second condition, a mute cannot confect; because of defect of the third, someone lacking the use of reason cannot confect; and the same way about baptizing and conferring any other sacraments.

173. But the first condition is proper here, because only a priest has the power, and any priest can to whom can belong these two conditions: namely, pronouncing and intention.

174. Now, that only a priest has the power is proved by Gregory IX, Decretals 1 tit.1 ch.1, ‘About the supreme Trinity and the Catholic faith’, where is said of the Eucharist, “No one can confect this sacrament save only a priest who has received the rite of ordination according to the keys of the Church.”

175. But whence does the Church get the foundation for this opinion?

I reply: from the word of Christ in Matthew 26 [rather I Corinthians 11.25-26], “Do this as often as you do it...” where he is speaking to the Apostles, or at least the disciples, to whom only those succeed who are at least priests in the Church. For to the Apostles succeed bishops, and to disciples priests, as is contained in Decretum “In the New Testament” [p.1 d.21 ch.2, d.25 ch.1 sect.8]. The same is also contained in the statement of Paul I Corinthians 16.16, “The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ?” ‘Which we break’, he says, supply: ‘we Apostles and disciples’. Now if any of the faithful could confect, there would be no need for anyone to break it for others, but each could communicate from his own sacrifice.

176. The second part, namely that ‘every priest able to pronounce the words with intention can confect’ [n.173], is plain from the authorities brought forward for the opposite [nn.166-168].

177. Nor is it a problem if objection is raised about a degraded priest, that he becomes a non-priest; for if this is true, it is not an objection about a priest!

178. Yet it must be said not to be true, because someone who degrades another does not destroy the character; nor is it conceded that, if someone can ministerially impress a character, he can thus ministerially take it away, for it is said that God has not made him a minister in taking away as he has made him a minister in conferring. And then the rule ‘it is easier to destroy than to build’ is not conceded to apply to a ministerial minister in the sacraments, and for this can be adduced II Corinthians 13.10, “God has not given us power to destroy but to build up.”

179. If the objection is also made about a degraded priest that he does not remain a priest, because he is deprived of clerical privilege and is handed over to the care of the secular power [cf. Ord. d.25 q.1 n.4], I reply that having that concomitant privilege is not essential in the case of Orders. Sufficient evidence for this is that the privilege seems to have been conceded by the Emperor Constantine; for at some point the Orders even of a priest were without such privilege, namely before the concession. This however could be a brocade shared with jurists, because the privilege consists in this, that a priest cannot be judged in a cause of blood save by an ecclesiastical judge.

180. But if the Pope takes from someone ecclesiastical privilege, committing him to the care of the secular power, the secular judge is minister or executor of the ecclesiastical judge; but no one other than an ecclesiastical judge can commit him to a secular judge; therefore it is only possible for him to be committed to a secular judge as to a minister of the ecclesiastical judge; and consequently he is not deprived of the privilege, because while the privilege remains no secular can be minister of an ecclesiastical judge over him.

181. If objection is made about a schismatic or heretic that they cannot confect, because a priest does not offer the sacrifice in his own person but in the person of the

Church, of which he is minister, and a schismatic or heretic has been cut off from the Church (and Maser Lombard in the text seems to rely on this reason; he proves the antecedent by the fact that a priest says ‘We offer to Thee etc.’ and not ‘I offer to Thee’) - I reply that offering does not belong to the idea of consecration, nor is it a necessary requirement that a non-consecrated host be offered when it is offered, and then it is a not yet sacrificed sacrifice (just as the consecrated Eucharist conserved in a pyx is the sacrament, though it only be, as it is there, a sacrifice aptitudinally).

182. Let it also be true that anyone who confects must confect in the faith of the Church, yet not only a schismatic but a heretic too (which is more, posit he is a heretic) can well have about the Eucharist the intention of the Church in confecting, and have this intention in a universal way, namely by intending to do what the Church does and what Christ instituted should be done, even though he not intend specifically, because he believes the Eucharist not to have power or to do anything, as is said in Prior Analytics 2.21.67a35-36, “it is possible to know that every mule is infertile and to be in doubt about this mule.” And enough was said about this intention in the matter of baptism, IV d.5 nn.17, 22-23.