De Intentione: Reality and Efficacy of the Sacraments

This discusses the invalidity of the ordinations by Marcel Lefebvre.

by Andre Perlant, 1990 or 1991
In Kyrie Eleison, the Catholic Review edited by Mrs. Elizabeth Gerstner in Overath-Immekemmpel, a suburb of Cologne, the Reverend Fr. August Grosz has written a series of articles, the purpose of which is to prove that Marcel Lefebvre is, in fact, a bishopof he Roman-Catholic Church, even in case his consecrator had been a member of the Grand Orient, as has been affirmed by the Marquis de la Franquerie.  We know that the master of Econe has not protested against this allegation: He has only regretted the fact, adding that thiscould nothave any effect on the reality and validity of his ordination as a priest and consecration as a bishop.  The Rev. Grosz is an erudite priest, who supports the thesis upheld by Econe, and by other writers, declaring that they oppose the pantheist church that is occupying the Holy See henceforth.  According to this opinion, which they expound as an evident dogma, the intention of the minister who is engaged in, or manufactures, a Sacrament, cannot in any case, and of necessity, invalidate the Sacrament to be realized.  For completeness’ sake the Rev. Grosz has also raised the problem of the recipient of the Sacrament of Ordination: a logical solution shows, at first sight, that Lienart’s elevation to the episcopate would have been invalidated owing to his previous apostasy.  But the Rev. Grosz cursorily comes to the opposite conclusion upon only the criterion of the intention of therecipient, which he places on the same level as the intention of the dispensing minister.  Neither does he examine the influence of the state of grace of the ordinand, nor that of the latter’s membership in a religion other than the Catholic one, particularly of a Luciferian sect.  He starts his demonstration in Number 1 of Kyrie Eleison (1987), beginning with a very detailed history of the problem.  Next he sets out, in a masterly way, his main argument: If the intention of a false brother could destroy the Sacraments, manufactured by him in a normal way, the Church would be in a pitiful state.  The faithful would never know if the Sacraments they receive, are valid.  The absolutions they receive could only depend on the perfection of their repentance, and their Holy Communions could only be communions of desire.  But the worst would be that – as a result of invalid ordinations since the invasion of the Church by the modernists passing for Catholic priests or bishops, whose aim, however, is only to make the circulation of the Sacraments to run dry – there would be an incalculable number of good Christians thinking themselves members of all ranks of clergy, while – in a caonical and mystical reality – they would be no more than laymen.  The extent of the catastrophe that would result from the Masons’ planning to destroy the authentic clergy appears to be an irrefutable argument to the Rev. Grosz: a situation that disastrous is excluded, and fortunately, or so he thinks, we are not yet in that dire plight.  Only this diagnosis justifies, in the eyes of the Rev. Grosz, the doctrine that reminds us of, and with the first part of which we can only agree, for what he puts forward is accurate:
1.It is not the minister who gives his grace, but Jesus Christ whose instrument he onlyis.
2.If the minister would be in the state of mortal sin, or, if he would not be one of the faithful, or an atheist, he would not – by that very fact – be prevented from dispensing valid Sacraments.  So can, e.g. (in an emergency) a Moslem layman validly baptize.
3.The only necessary, and sufficing conditions are that the Sacrament is manufactured by the minister ad-hoc, that he wishes to do what the Church does and that he actually does so.  Ex opera operato then, that is, through, and on behalf of, the ritual act performed.  God produces without fail the grace signified by the Sacrament.
So far all this is clear.  But there the Rev. Grosz, in Number 3 of Kyrie Eleison, still in 1987, begins to expatriate on the notion of desire or intention. For that German priest the apparent intention, shown off by the minister’s behaviour, is fully efficacious.  That is the thesis held, e.g., by Ambrosius Catharinus O.P., who died in 1535.  The Rev. Grosz is therefore compelled to fight the teaching of the official handbooks, such as, e.g., “L’Abrege de Dogmatique Catholique” by Ludwig Ott, edited in Fribourg (1952).  They say that the “intention mere externa” does not suffice: foir the Sacrament to be valid the celebrant’s intention should also be internal, that is, real.
It is not possible to go into all the details of the demonsotraion which the Rev. Grosz develops on 25 pages at the beginning of that number 3, already referred to.  Let us succinctly say this, that the German theologian affirms that the internal intention implies much more than the simple desire to do what the Church does and to require it would be harmful.  In particular a pious Moslem would not be able to baptize.  He relies on the Encyclical “Apostolicae Curae”, issued by Leo XIII in 1896 in order to explain, for once and for all, why the ordinations celebrated in the Anglican Church are absolutely invalid.  This pope actually says: “On the mental dispositions, or objectives, which, by nature, are internal, the Church does not express her judgment; but she must do so according as these objectives are becoming manifest.”  If therefore anyone, while manufacturing and dispensing a Sacrament, exactly performs all the prescriptions in respect of its MATTER and FORM, he must be considered to certainly have the intention to do what the Church does.  That is the reason why – even in the case the dispensing minister should be a heretic he is able to confer the Sacrament. (Note the original is scrambled, so the last sentence has been reconstructed.)
We are not going to discuss the argument, according to which the internal intention automatically adds to the desire to do what the Church does, the intention to realize what the Sacrament signifies and to reach the aim that Jesus Christ had at heart; we are not going to assess the religious desire of a Moslem who, while baptizing, would verily have the intention to manufacture the rite that he knows as being the one practiced by Christina.  That is a problem of psychology and concerns a logic other than that which has to do with canonical norms.  Let us allow the Rev. G. to believe what he wants. (Editor’s note.  There is a fictional story of a pagan doctor attending a dying catechumen who wishes Baptism.  He sent for the nuns (no priest being available), who arrived after the man had died.  The doctor explained that since the man was dying, he had done what he had seen them do in the past, that is baptized the man as the man desired.)
It is on the other hand clear that certain celebrations are not of the nature to amek one believe that the minister has the intention to do what the Church does.  The Rev. G. admits that actors on the stage or playing children simulate a non-existent intention; or, also, that those on drugs don’t very well know what they want.  He quotes cases from history in which Rome has thus been able to judge the genuine intention.  So has Pope Cornelius (251-3) declared null and void the episcopal consecration of Novatian, because the consecrators were drunk.  Nevertheless the theologian of Kyrie Eleison considers as appropriate the comedy acted by simulators, once those hypocrites are not performing on the stage, but acting in a real context, e.g. in a church.
As a result the Rev. G. cannot but avoid going beyond the ex cathedra definition of Pope Alexander VIII, expressed by the anathema fulminated against the propagators of the following doctrine: (DZ 1318) “Baptism is valid when conferred by a minister who observes all the external rite and form of baptizing, but within his heart resolves, I do not intend to do what the Church does.”
It is therefore “de fide” that the opposite proposition is true: such a baptism is invalid.  This would also appear to be clear for the Rev. G. who feels obliged to say that this definition is nowise contradicted by Leo XIII.  He gets out of this, or so he believes, but two arguments.  First he remarks that “Apostolicae Curae” only deals with the external intention, whereas Alexander VIII deals with the case in which another intention, internal and conflicting, is added.  Is this here then a simple quarrel about words?  For, surely, two popes cannot defend two conflicting doctrines.  Leo XIII, now, is in perfect agreement with the fact that the real intention in the internal forum nullifies the conflicting act of the liturgy; the difficulty is how to distinguish it.
In “Apostolicase Curae” he has therefore declared misleading the Anglican ritual which was made compulsory under Edward VI (1547-1553) by Cramner, owing to the intention – on the part of the founders of Anglicanism – to deceive.  He has judged their conscience (the forum internum) on criteria other than the liturgical act they performed; they pretended to avail themselves of the Graeco-Catholic rite which sufficed within its context.
But they had changed the meaning of the words (priest, Mass, etc.)  They wanted to deceive the English by mixing together Catholic priest and Anglican minister.  Leo XIII denounced the forum internum of these heretics, which renders the Anglican rite null and void, in spite of the intention displayed.  Subsidiarily we cannot doubt but that the celebrants – by availing themselves of that rite – wanted to perform the masquerade prepared.  It is precisely on the congruency between the liturgical act and their forum internum, of which nothing permitted to doubt, that Leo XIII then established the certification of invalidity.
Let us examine the Rev. Grosz’s second evasion: It proves that there is, indeed, question of a fundamental opposition between his doctrine and the definition fulminated on the occasion of the Jansenist heresy.  The Rev. G. makes a long study of the anathemas “in globo”, pretending, in this way, to show the true meaning of Alexander VIII’s intervention.  To our stupefaction he finds that it wants to say this: “Baptism dispensed by someone who observes all the external prescriptions of the rite, is valid; even if the fool sins in his heart, saying ‘I don’t want to do what the Church does.’”  This, says the Rev. G., is neither heretical, nor close to heresy, but it is – on the contrary – in accordance with the Church’s doctrine.  Thus he thinks to have proved that none of the bad Freemasons has been able to undertake consecrations which only produced pseudo-bishops.  Marcel Lefebvre, consequently, is indeed successor of the Apostles that he appears to be.
It seems that at leastone of Kyrie Eleison’s readers has been disturbed by this magisterial exegesis.  He actually wrote: “What troubles me is that which the Rev. G. affirms straightaway: ‘According to my conception, which is the Church’s doctrine, it is not necessary for a Sacrament to be valid, that ‘After that the Rev. G. engages thoroughly in a controversy about the apparent intention and the internal forum, taking a position which, so he says, will irrefutably prove the error of ‘all the present-day professors of theology’.  What troubles me is that a theologian such as OTT – who was until recently unknown to me – or the others who are quoted by the Rev. G., have had a free hand to deliver battle while escaping the censure, so that they had to wait for the Ref. G. to be refuted and defeated.  The theologian Ludwig OTT whote his Handbook of Catholic Dogma in 1952.  Since the Magisterium was still functioning with great watchfulness, his work has surely, then, obtained “the imprimatur” and the “nihil obstat”.  How can it have happened that no censure was pronounced?”
In number 3 of Kyrie Eleison (1989), the pages 43-6, the Rev. G. answered this objection, which had been published in number 1 of 1988.  After having repeated his arguments, he at last decides to deal with the question posed.  Here are two sentences which appeare at the end of the article, on page 46: “Well, the authorities in charge of over-all supervision can’t be everywhere, Who had granted OTT the imprimatur? The Holy Roman Office hasn’t done so.”
That is not a nice answer.  Actually, OTT had been appointed censor official by the bishop of Fribourg.  His orthodoxy was already tested.  One cannot say that there has been a plot of heretics, or that he had been censured “with nobody asking any questions.”  Moreover, Aldophe TANQUEREY, O.P., whose dogmatic treatise was the work of reference both in France and in America, says the same thing as the German theologian.  Can on imagine that he as well as others have been able to escape from the Roman Censure, or from that by the Company of Jesus?
A touchstone of Rev. G.’s theory is evidently the problem of the heretical pope.  Will it be able to enlighten us on the anomaly?  And, in number2 of Kyrie Eleison 1988, the Rev. G. actually announces, triumphantly, that he has managed to explain the vacancy of the Holy See.  With a brand-new proof!
On page 46, then, he starts with a remarkable explanation of the popes’ infallibility.  In particular he doesn’t forget to refute the theory invented by the Rev. Guerard des Lauriers, O.P. in the seventies.  He pretended that the Holy See had an occupate-materialiter who would only become pope formaliter if he should mend his ways and decide to perform his part.
Next, the German theologian examines, in his own way, what happens during the succession of a new pope.  He writes as follows: “The book of Canon law actually says: ‘Once he has been legally chosen as bishop of Rome, the one elected is – the moment he has accepted his election – being invested by Divine right with the power of supreme jurisdiction>’”  Immediatley he comments on his quotation: “Not in the least is there mention of the necessity to BE WITH Jesus in an invisible way, something to which man could say no.  Isn’t God omnipotent?”
He rejects the expression of “to be with” by which Guerard des Lauriers indicated the formal condition for succession to Saint Peter.  This way he applies to the election of a pope his doctrine already explained on the occasion of the various ceremonies of the ordination. By analogy to the Sacraments he therefore takes in account the role of the intention in the production and the acquisition of the graces promised to Saint Peter: The Cardianls have clearly shown their equally has, unequivocally, made know his will to become the new pope.  That is the key to the enigma, for that which appears in the conclave, ahs – exopere operato – a mystical value which the internal forum of the one elected cannot undo.  Strong by this conviction he can explain why God has not bestowed upon Roncalli the charisma of a solid faith and of impeccable orthodoxy, for, thank God, the Rev. G. doesn’t try to deny the usurpation begun in 1958.
He is a cook-a-hoop then with a great assurance: “Here is the solution to the problem of the conciliar popes: for some reason or other that we don’t know of, God, however, does, their election isn’t legitimate.”
Here we have an explanation worth one Moliere put into the mouth of the Bachelor of Medicine who answered the jury: “Quia est in (opio) virtus dormativa, quare opium facit dormire.”  (Ballet of the Malade inaginaire)  We thought as much!
In his answer to the disturbed reader that we have quoted, the Rev. G. shows himself to be kind-hearted: he and the other devout people not only pay the carelessness of the censors of the congregation of the index, but they are also the victims of their too great faith, which borders on gullibility.  They cannot believe that which hurts their piety, that is, that a Satanist is sent them by the Holy Trinity as a successor ofhte apostles.  It is however easy if one well understands his theory “de intentione in sacramentis persolvendis,” which reduces the modern theologians to dust.  Therefore he consoles them, the way Pius VI comforted the Catholics after the council of rebels of Pistoia.  He admits, that – according to the expression of Pius VI – his doctrine is “offiensive to pious ears”.  But the truth is sometimes hard to hear, even for the faithful. (One would be tempted to say that the law isn’t too hard for the delinquents.  It gives them the rights to govern honest people.)
It is therefore reserved to the simple to believe in an authentic catechism with an “imprimatur” and a “nihil obstat”?  Well, what do they read in it, whatever its origin, if it dates before 1958?  That a Sacrament acts “ex opera operato” upon those obtaining it who fulfill the conditions required, among which the intention of the recipient counts just as much as that of the dispenser, whatever the Rev. G. says about it.  It is all very well for him to talk of cheating and of disparaging the piety that misleads.  To say that Satanists can receive the apostolic anointing is actually only scandalous to pious ears who have learned that when a penitent hides some sin, none of his sins are forgiven owing to his intention to deceive the confessor.  They also know, as did Saint Paul, that those who receive the Holy Sacrament of Communion, while their conscience is tainted with mortal sins, eat and drink their own condemnation: they don’t receive Jesus, but, on the contrary, sink the deeper into the reign of Satan.  The God-Man rejects a filthy guest, throwing him into the darkness.
But one objects, that just as the Sacrament of Baptism, so that of Ordination is indelible.  Surely one cannot, actually, receive it more than once.  But we contend that, if the one baptized or ordained has wanted to deceive the Holy Ghost, he has deceived himself.  As a shoot, cut off from the vine, he cannot receive the grace that is the mark ofhte priesthood, and a Sacrament does not give the grace that it signifies, is deprived of its efficacy.
For a crashing demonstration one must read the lesson Saint Peter gives in Acts.  Ananais and his wife had cheated over the name of the gift they had bestowed on the Church, when entering the first community of the Christians.  They said actually that they had given everything, whereas they had preserved a few savings in the event of misfortune.  Saint Peter struck them physically while explaining that the lie of the Church is also a lie to the Holy Ghost, Whom nobody can deceive.  Now then, if this couple had fraudulently got into the Church, its was not to destroy her, but undoubtedly to enter, for once and all, in the Realm of God.  What to think then of the moles that simulate the true faith so as the better to penetrate into the hierarchy?  Here is question not of a small human weakness, but of the sin against the Holy Ghost.  The mark of their ordination is that of their eternal damnation, and of their membership in the realm of Satan.  Not only do they not partake of the clergy, but the nullity of the Sacrament they have received unworthily, is much more harmful than a caustic on a wooden leg.  The indelible mark imprinted on their conscience is “goof for the fire,” or “dead-wood”.  Those intruders, even they manage to “sport” the cassock, after which the miter can no longer – even if they managed to sincerely wish to do so – confer any of the Sacraments of which the dispenser must be a priest or bishop.
It is definitively in order to ward off the frightening perspective of the invasion of the Holy Place that Pope Paul IV furnished us with the support of his Apostolic Constitution “Cum ex apostolatus officio”.  While repeating all the measures against heretics he explains that the deceivers who have gotten into the Church, are not, and never will be able to becomes members of the hierarchy.  No way can a wolf in the disguise of a shepherd become a genuine pastor.  Paul IV tells us that he promulgates the Bull so as not – while still alive to be a witness to the abomination of desolation predicted by Daniel.  He wants to constantly keep the arms operative that have now been provided to chase the foxes away that devastate the vineyard of Our Lord.  According to this great Pope, who was a friend of Saint Gaetan, Lienart has – in the same motion to the episcopate – he was a Luciferian; and so has Roncalli never been a pope, if he was a Modernist before his election to the Holy See.
The rev. Guerard des Lauriers, O.P., knows about this decisive text, but he has preferred to say that this Bull had become obsolete, in other words, invalid, because the Code of Canon Law of 1917 – without abrogating it – mentioned it no longer (Which is not true: cf. Canons 2314/1 and 188/4on the vacancy ipso facto of ecclesiastical offices occupied by heretics).  It is nevertheless clear that this “obsolescence” has deprived the Church of the protection that had smashef the great onslaught from Hell after Luther’s rebellion.  The visible Church has also appeared to be obsolete.  Roncalli has dared to say that she had gone moldy, that he had to allow the invigorating air to enter her from without, from the world.  Without being punished at all the man prepared his New Pentecost.  Rome has become the Seat of Antichrist, and the “clergy” have said “amen” to the accession of the abomination.
“Cum ex apostolatus officio”, on the contrary, just could not be put on the same level with an ecclesiastical measure susceptible to adaptation, as, e.g., the number of fasting days.  This constitution has been explicitly written to defend the Church until the end of time.  The text has been protected by anathemas in plain language, valid for all eternity, and showing that Paul IV clearly demands this perpetuation, which forms part of the infallible magisterium of the Holy See.
We are surprised that the Rev. G., too, can ignore this monument, a rampart not to be violated by Catholics, as has been shown in the article by the Catholic philosopher Myra Davidoglou, an article that was inserted – translated into German - in Kyrie Eleison.  But the house-theologian of this review nowhere mentions the existence of Paul IV’s Bull, which the traditionalists – since long – rescued from oblivion; Anacleto Gonzalez Flores in particular, in his Mexican periodical “Trento.”  This Bull would also have allowed the Rev. G. to pierce the mystery of the “concilar popes”’ but, alas, it would also have demolished the “irrefutable theology” on the efficacy of the internal intention.  He doesn’t therefore defend the validity of the ordinations of moles (heretics) by invoking the argument, in accordance with which the Bull “Cum ex apostolatus officio” only has juridical value, in other words, only pertains to law and order, which a controversy between Dom Gueranger against the Rev. Gretry would prove.
But the famous Benedictine manifestly only deals with temporal problems.  He refers to that part of the constitution that speaks of the ecclesiastical domains of the bishops, or of the laymen (administering revenues or prebends granted since the Church has become the ally of the secular powers) and nowhere to paragraph 6 on the spiritual powers.  Anyway, it seems vain wanting to contract the decrees of the popes to the mystical reality; what they bind on earth is also bound in Heaven.  The Vicar of Christ doesn’t speak in order to say nothing real, when he declares that nothing can make the ordinations, the consecration and the promotions of intruders valid. Here we have a quarrel, certainly, over matters legal, which appears normal to Protestants, but which is heretical in Catholicism. Let us, for that matter, call to mind that the fall of the antipopes, e.f. in the 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries, even in the days of St. Bernard, has been sanctioned by the annulment of the promotions or ordinations of the clergy they had put in place.  To day that an ordination validly manufactured cannot be invalid, although fruitless, owing to the unworthiness of the recipient, cannot mean what has so often been asserted: there is a fruit, but it is a child issuing from adultery that can only be called in mortal danger.  This doctrine – in fact – represents the Hoy Trinity as an honest daughter who is only part-time prostitute.  There is confusion, intentional or otherwise, between the ministry of the infiltrated mole, into the priesthood, and – on the other hand, that of a priest, previously Catholic, but excommunicated after an ordination which cannot in any way be questioned.
What makes the Bull of Paul IV so unpalatable is that it reveals the cancer that has eaten away at the Church; as the German theologian dreads, it proves the existence of false ordinations, and of a false clergy.  It shows the inefficacy of the ordinations and consecrations of modernists as successors of the Apostles.  Thence the immense catastrophe, the existence of which the rev. G. refuses to admit: the Church is no longer led by servants set by Christ.  For how else to find the answer why the Holy Ghost has fled far away from the conclave by which Roncalli was elected; why the “Cardinals” have submitted to the will of the enemy.  The answer of the Tradition, true to the deposit of faith, is that Roncalli was not eligible.  The Rev. Guerard has correctly seen the problem: he knows that – in order to become His Vicar – it was necessary, in an invisible way, to be with Christ.  But he has steered a middle course so as to bring to nought any application of the censure that says that only a man who has got Faith, can be the material to which the rite of the conclave can give the form of Pope.  Because the rev. G. has clearly wanted to console the pious Christians who suffer, when learning that they have possibly been deprived of the Sacraments by hypocrites, sent by the Lord of Hell, we ask him just to think of this: which situation is the more terrible?  To seethe abomination installed by Judases, derailed apostles, or by deceivers whom the Holy Ghost has marked with His reprobation?  To know that the Church is occupied by invaders, or renegades?
In spite of his “Eureka” he admits his helplessness to discover the reason which renders the election of the “conciliar popes” null and void.  For the moles that infested the Church even before Leo XIII, were – in accordance with his theology – suitable to elect another mole as successor of Saint Peter.
The explanation that he gives is the default of the Holy Office that cannot manage to supervise the manuals of theology for universal usage, is absolutely unbelievable!  It appears more logical, according to the words even of Pope St. Pius X, to think that the instruction in the seminaries was perverted by installed Freemasons, or their satellites.  The pernicious interpretations of htedecrees of the Councils of Florence or of Trent; the warping of the decisions of Alexander VIII or by Leo XIII are not the work of OTT in concert with Tanquerey.  But the Rev. G is surely was a good pupil: he repeats with conviction the lessons he has leanred without having recourse to the manuals.
Let us therefore thank him for having exhaustively treated the question: “De intentione in sacraments persolvendis,” and for having been the first, today, to throw light on the difficulties of it.  As regards Marcel Lefebvre, his readers should reflect now, asking themselves why his basic heterodoxy with respect to the question of the poeps hides the illegitimacy of the pseudo-popes.
Copyright © 2006 by Pope Michael, David Bawden

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