Chapter — Prümmer, Manuale Theologiae Moralis
Chapter III. On The Minister Of Confirmation
Principle. The ordinary minister of confirmation is a bishop; the extraordinary minister is a priest duly delegated.
158. 1. That a bishop is the ordinary minister of confirmation is of faith, defined at the Council of Trent: "If anyone says that the ordinary minister of holy confirmation is not the bishop alone, but any simple priest, let him be anathema."50 This doctrine is also clearly gathered from Acts, chapter 8, where Peter and John were sent into Samaria to administer the sacrament of confirmation to those who had been baptized by Philip the deacon. St. Thomas gives this reason of fittingness: The bishop is in the Church as a leader in an army, to whom it belongs to receive and mark soldiers. Now, through confirmation man becomes a soldier of Christ.
In another diocese a bishop cannot licitly administer confirmation without at least the reasonably presumed permission of the local Ordinary, unless it concerns his own subjects, to whom he confers confirmation privately and without crozier and miter. On the contrary, a bishop can administer this sacrament in his own diocese to all, even to travelers who are not his subjects, provided, however, that the express prohibition of their own Ordinary does not stand in the way.51
The obligation of administering confirmation. Since the bishop is the ordinary minister of confirmation in his diocese, and since so great a good comes to the faithful from confirmation worthily received, he is therefore bound to provide, insofar as it can be done, that this sacrament be administered to his subjects at least within every five-year period.52 Nor can he demand any temporal recompense for this administration of the sacrament, unless a contrary and reasonable custom has already existed for a long time.53 But if a bishop delays for eight or ten years to make a circuit at least of the principal places of his diocese for this purpose, he sins mortally, unless a moral impossibility is present.54 Theologians commonly teach, however, that a bishop is not bound to confer confirmation upon every dying person who asks for it.55 For the sacrament of confirmation is not of such great necessity, and it would be too great a burden, and indeed sometimes morally impossible, for the bishop to confirm all dying persons who ask. Thus much concerning the strict obligation. But a bishop acts laudably if he administers confirmation more frequently in the different parishes of his diocese, or if he even sometimes visits a dying person to confirm him, as St. Charles Borromeo did.
50 Sess. 7, can. 3 on confirmation (Denz., n. 873). Cf. also sess. 23, can. 7 on orders (Denz., n. 967).
51 Code of Canon Law, c. 783.
52 Cf. ibid., c. 785.
53 Cf. Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, March 28, 1778.
54 Cf. St. Alphonsus, Theol. mor., l. 6, n. 175.
55 Cf. ibid.
159. 2. The extraordinary minister of confirmation is a priest to whom that faculty has been granted either by common law or by a particular indult of the Holy See. Thus teaches the certain opinion, which is confirmed both by the Council of Florence56 and by the constant practice of the Church. The Code of Canon Law, c. 782, § 2, establishes the same. Durandus, Estius, and a few others contradicted it. This delegation is granted by the Supreme Pontiff alone, who nevertheless sometimes commits to a bishop the designation of one or another priest to administer the sacrament of confirmation.57 By the law itself the following are delegated: Cardinals; an abbot or prelate nullius; an Apostolic Vicar; and an Apostolic Prefect. But the latter three cannot validly administer this sacrament, unless they are bishops, outside the boundaries of their territory or after their office has expired.58 A delegated priest must observe those things which are prescribed to him in the instrument of delegation with respect to places, times, persons, and so forth. Especially, however, he cannot confirm except with chrism blessed by a Catholic bishop, and not by a schismatic bishop. Moreover, before the solemn administration of this sacrament he must always expressly admonish the people in the vernacular language that he is the minister of confirmation only by a special delegation. This admonition does not pertain to the validity of the administration, but it must by all means be made.59
In the Greek Church all priests, even schismatics, confirm validly, unless this power has been expressly taken away from them, as, for example, in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Italy, and so forth. The Holy Office replied several times, for example, on July 5, 1853, April 2, 1879, and January 14, 1885, that it is not expedient that those who were confirmed by schismatic priests be anointed again by a bishop, unless there is among them someone who is to be promoted to Tonsure and Orders, or unless they themselves or their parents request it; in that case the sacrament of confirmation is to be conferred secretly and, ordinarily, conditionally. It is forbidden for priests of the Eastern rite who enjoy the faculty or privilege of conferring confirmation together with baptism upon infants of their own rite to administer the same to infants of the Latin rite.60 It is established generally: A priest who shall have presumed to transgress the limits of the faculty granted to him for administering confirmation is by that very fact deprived of the same faculty.61
56 Denz., n. 697.
57 Cf. Holy Office, May 4, 1903, and Instruction of the Sacred Congregation of the Sacraments, Pentecost 1934 (Acta Apostolicae Sedis XXVII, 11 sqq.).
58 Code of Canon Law, c. 782, § 3.
59 Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, September 11, 1841 (Collectan. de Prop. Fide, nn. 940 and 1539).
60 Code of Canon Law, c. 782, § 5.
61 Ibid., c. 2365.