Section — Gury-Ballerini, Compendium of Moral Theology (8th ed., 1884)
§ I. On the Attention of the Minister
- DEFINITION. Attention is the application of the mind to those things which are being performed, or it is the act of the intellect by which a man considers that which he does.
Division. A twofold attention is distinguished: one internal, which consists in the advertence itself of the mind to that which is being done; another external, which excludes every action physically incompossible with internal attention. - See what was said above, n. 91; and t. 1, n. 544.
Principles. - I. For the validity of the conferral of the Sacraments no other attention is required except that which is found in every truly human act. Therefore the Sacraments can be validly ministered even by a distracted Minister, or one thinking at the same time about other affairs. The reason is that, in order that an act be and be considered human, not actual attention, but the procession of the act itself from an act of rational will is inspected. Moreover attention often does not depend on the will of man; but Christ could not require in the Minister of the Sacraments a condition that is sometimes impossible. - Thus St. Ligorius, n. 11, and others commonly.
II. For the licit conferral of the Sacraments attention is required, so that every voluntary distraction be absent. The reason is that the reverence due to the Sacrament demands that it be treated diligently, and that the danger of erring be avoided. Nevertheless voluntary distraction, according to the common opinion of Theologians, ordinarily does not exceed venial sin, unless someone exposes himself to the danger of gravely erring in the form. - St. Ligorius, ibid.
They more probably and more commonly except the Eucharist, in the confection of which they judge every voluntary distraction, on account of the greatest dignity of the Sacrament, to be mortal sin. - St. Ligorius, ibid. - Nevertheless Lacroix, lib. 6, part 2, n. 443, Mazzotta, and others deny this not improbably.