Article II: On the Requisites for Licit Reception

96. Principle I. For the licit reception of a sacrament in an adult there are required: a) the capacity and intention necessary for validity; - b) the disposition necessary for fruit or effect.

For fruitful reception, one disposition is required in the sacraments of the living and another in the sacraments of the dead. In these latter there are required faith, hope, and attrition, without which no adult can be justified; but not charity. In the former there is required consciousness of the state of grace, i.e., that by which he does not know himself to be in the state of sin. But if someone is conscious of sin and wishes to receive the Eucharist, he must confess by a special precept; for the other sacraments of the living, even an act of charity or of perfect contrition also suffices.

97. Principle II. He commits a grave sin of sacrilege who receives a sacrament unworthily; namely:

1. he who receives a sacrament without capacity or intention, because it is a simulation and mockery of the sacrament. Thus a woman who would approach ordination, one asking for absolution without attrition, one receiving Confirmation while not baptized;

2. he who receives a sacrament without the disposition required for fruit, because he deprives the sacrament of its principal effect, namely grace, to signify and produce which it was instituted; whence he renders the signification of the sacrament partially false and evacuates its end.