4. About the Double Power of the Priest in the Use of the Aforesaid Keys

54. As to the fourth article [n.17]: an active power to which at once a passive power corresponds, and which cannot be impeded, is always a power proximate to acting. But if there is a power to which there does not at once correspond anything passive in nature, or which, when the passive thing is had, can be prevented, it is not, while it is actually being prevented, the proximate power but a remote power. It is plain in Metaphysics 9.5.1048a5-7, where the Philosopher holds that the active and passive thing, when they have their active and passive power completely, at once act. And it is not necessary to add ‘with nothing preventing from the outside’, because this is included in the idea of what is potent, and it is not true save of the potent as this states a power proximate to act.

55. As to the issue at hand, the power of confecting has the matter at once in nature, because it has any wheaten bread. And it is a power that cannot be prevented, because whenever anyone through it attempts to act on determined and due matter, he does act. If it were this way with the key, namely that a penitent sinner would at once correspond to it as matter, and it could not by anyone else’s act be impeded but that he who is intending to use it would do what he intended, then the key would be the proximate power of absolution. And then it would follow that a priest, from the fact he had been ordained, could absolve any sinner who confesses - not indeed that he could do so licitly (but he would sin mortally if he were to attempt it against the prohibition of a superior), yet he would do it; just as a priest, however much prohibited, does consecrate if he attempt to consecrate.

56. But these two suppositions are not held to. For the first at least is not held, namely that from his ordination he has matter, but there must, before he have jurisdiction, be someone who is subject to him - not so he may absolve ritually, but so he may absolve absolutely, because a sentence not passed by its judge is null [n.13]. And it would seem it should in consistency thus be said about the second, because a superior could for a time remove the subject by suspension of the priest; and then his power would be impeded simply, such that if he attempt to absolve he would not in fact absolve.

57. The power of confecting [the Eucharist], then, according to this opinion is a proximate power, but the key is a remote power: both because, from the fact that the key is in someone, nothing passive corresponds to it unless made passive from elsewhere; and because, if the key is in someone, it can be impeded by some prohibiting superior.

58. And a reason for the unlikeness might perhaps be posited, that from the beginning no one was harmed, nor was the ordination of the Church, by the fact that any priest consecrated any matter. But there would have been harm if, by the conferring of the keys in ordination, any priest would have been judge of any penitent, and could, however much he was prohibited, have performed the act of the key, because thereby he could act to the prejudice of someone else whose subject he is.

59. How, then, according to this common way, will the proposition be saved that ‘to every active power there corresponds a passive power’? For if in nature there were a power to which a passive subject could not correspond save through another active power, that power would not be an active power. Therefore, by similarity here, since there could, through the key, be no matter corresponding to it save through another active power, namely jurisdiction, it follows that the key is not an active power.

60. And there could be a confirmation about this judiciary power: for no one seems to have the power of judging who has no one subject to him as judgeable by him; therefore the key, by the fact it is the key, is not a power of judging.

61. If you say that an active power, however much it is perfect, requires matter, this is true; and the power of confecting [the Eucharist] requires matter, namely bread, but yet as soon as the power of confecting is possessed, there is no need to require another active power so that the bread be capable of being consecrated. For if, in order for the bread to be capable of being consecrated, it were necessary that there be an owner of the bread, the priestly power would now be only the remote power for confecting. So in the issue at hand, it is very necessary that there be some penitent offering himself to the priest for absolution; but if he can only be matter for absolution if he be made such through another concurrent power, this power [of absolving] does not seem to be an active power of absolving.

62. Similarly, this proposition is universally true in natural things, that when to an active power of one idea there primarily correspond a passive power of another idea, anything under the latter corresponds to anything under the former provided there is no loss of active force. But in the issue at hand it is not so, because this person corresponds to this key as absolvable by it and not to another key, unless it be said that to a key the sinner as penitent does not correspond but the sinner as the penitent subjected to that key.