Section — Noldin, Summa of Moral Theology
Section 1. On the Faith and Power of the Minister
18. How far they are required. 1. For validly confecting the sacraments, neither faith nor uprightness or the state of grace is required in the minister:1 for the sacraments do not have their efficacy from the disposition of the minister, but from the merits of Christ and from divine institution.
Therefore the Church has always held as valid baptism or order conferred by a heretic or apostate, if nothing else was lacking.
- For validly confecting the sacraments, a divinely conferred power is required in the minister: for God alone can join grace to the sacramental action of the minister.
Certain sacraments can be conferred by bishops alone, either exclusively, as order, or by ordinary power, as confirmation. Others can equally be conferred by a bishop and by priests, yet with due subordination, as eucharist, penance, extreme unction. Others finally do not require a specially consecrated minister, as baptism, which can be validly conferred by any man, and matrimony, whose ministers are the contracting parties themselves.