Ex Opere Operato

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First, some background: I am a committed Catholic married to an LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) woman. For the most part, we respect each other’s faith and attend worship at both churches on Sundays. Sometimes we have minor disputes, but overall we have an understanding and I love answering questions about the Catholic faith. Because I want to evangelize and fully understand her faith, as well as my own, I occasionally read into LCMS teachings and articles. I was reading an LCMS blog and came across this paragraph (among others):
Being a Sacramental Church is uniquely Lutheran. Rome teaches a sacrament that is ex opera operato – meaning man is doing the work, man’s work and sacrifice toward God. The Reformed and Calvinists Churches do not hold to the Sacraments at all, but rather believe that God is Sovereign, out there somewhere, but not Immanuel (God with us) for me! In you!
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My understanding (briefly) of ex opere operato is that it is not the work of man that validates the sacrament, but, in fact, that it is the work of Christ. Thus we also have the understanding of in persona Christi. So, is my understanding of Catholic teaching flawed? Or maybe is my interpretation of what the author said flawed? If neither are flawed, then do you think that the author is blatantly misrepresenting the Church or does he/she really not know? Do Catholics do this with other faiths?
 
NightFisher said:
First, some background: I am a committed Catholic married to an LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) woman. For the most part, we respect each other’s faith and attend worship at both churches on Sundays. Sometimes we have minor disputes, but overall we have an understanding and I love answering questions about the Catholic faith. Because I want to evangelize and fully understand her faith, as well as my own, I occasionally read into LCMS teachings and articles. I was reading an LCMS blog and came across this paragraph (among others):

My understanding (briefly) of ex opere operato is that it is not the work of man that validates the sacrament, but, in fact, that it is the work of Christ. Thus we also have the understanding of in persona Christi. So, is my understanding of Catholic teaching flawed? Or maybe is my interpretation of what the author said flawed? If neither are flawed, then do you think that the author is blatantly misrepresenting the Church or does he/she really not know? Do Catholics do this with other faiths?
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One of the fundamental issues in the period was the worthiness of the priest - how could a bad man forgive sins or act in the person of Christ to offer His sacrifice? The Church answered that the validity of the sacrament comes from the divine operation in the sacrament, in the mystery given to the Church. God is not separate from the sacramental action. The effectiveness of the sacrament depends on how the person receives it, just as it depended on the person who encountered Christ in His earthly ministry whether to follow Him or turn away from Him.
 
CarmelJerome said:
One of the fundamental issues in the period was the worthiness of the priest - how could a bad man forgive sins or act in the person of Christ to offer His sacrifice? The Church answered that the validity of the sacrament comes from the divine operation in the sacrament, in the mystery given to the Church. God is not separate from the sacramental action. The effectiveness of the sacrament depends on how the person receives it, just as it depended on the person who encountered Christ in His earthly ministry whether to follow Him or turn away from Him.
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The author doesn’t understand the vocabulary he is using.

Ex opere operato does not mean what the author thinks it means.

The author is confusing a similar term ex opere operantis.

From the Catechism
1128 This is the meaning of the Church’s affirmation49 that the sacraments act ex opere operato (literally: “by the very fact of the action’s being performed”), i.e., by virtue of the saving work of Christ, accomplished once for all. It follows that "the sacrament is not wrought by the righteousness of either the celebrant or the recipient, but by the power of God."50 From the moment that a sacrament is celebrated in accordance with the intention of the Church, the power of Christ and his Spirit acts in and through it, independently of the personal holiness of the minister. Nevertheless, the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.
vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s1c1a2.htm
 
Thank you all. It appears as though my understanding was not wrong (though difficult to describe in a short post), and in fact the author was incorrect. I appreciate that the author could be confusing this with ex opere operantis, which I had never heard of previously. It would still be nice to not have such misinformation so readily available to people, but I suppose this example is just a drop in a vast ocean…
 
FrDavid96 said:
Ex opere operato does not mean what the author thinks it means.

The author is confusing a similar term ex opere operantis.
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FWIW, it seems the grammar on deponent verbs can get tricky. Also apparently trying to translate them.

So I looked it up. The verb form is “operor, operari, operatus sum.” Listed under participles: Active voice: Present: operans (operatis), Perfect: operatus (-a, um). I’m guessing the latter’s use in the phrase is ablative*, and the former’s use is genitive. So there is a difference in meaning.
  • tricky as used here because opere is also ablative of “ex” but it was in the Trent documents.
catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=33474
 
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