Sacramental Uncertainty

  • Thread starter Thread starter obvious_ron
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
O

obvious_ron

Guest
If a sacramental validity is based on the intention of the priest, how can we be sure that we are truly experiencing a sacrament? I discovered a quote from Cardinal Bellarmine:
No one can be certain, with the certainty of faith, that he has received a true sacrament, since no sacrament is performed without the intention of the ministers, and no one can see the intention of another.
Click to expand...
Thoughts?
 
The short answer is faith, I would think. I am a part of my priest’s flock, so I try to trust him like a sheep would its shepard.
 
Well, Cardinal Bellarmine was correct. It isn’t that hard to understand.
 
Last edited:
With the sacraments, matter, form, and intent is required. The personal frame of mind of the priest actually has less impact on what we consider intention in sacramental theology than you might imagine. If I get up and say Mass, and at the very minimum, use the correct book and the correct matter and say the correct words, then I have confected the Eucharist, even if I was half asleep in so doing, even if I don’t really believe in the Eucharist. As long as I don’t have a positive intention to exclude having consecrated the Eucharist, I do it each and every time I use bread and wine and the proper formula.

You are right that there isn’t really a way to tell, short of reading minds. People have faked performing sacraments–people have faked being priests. But be at peace, these sorts of things are rare anyway. If you intend to receive what you believe in good faith to be a sacrament, all other factors being equal (that is, proper matter, form, intent, and the correct minister), then there’s nothing for you to worry about.

-Fr ACEGC
 
And Bellarmine is a doctor of the Church. If I remember my history correctly, St. Robert was a great defender of the Roman Church against the heresy of Luther and his cohorts. It was Bellarmine’s belief (and the Church’s today) that those who were in a state of apostasy as followers of the “reformers” were not validly ordained priests of the Roman Rite and the “sacraments” they administered were either invalid or illicit. Take Bellarmine’s quote in the context of the time it was written. And take edwardgeorge’s to heart. Father knows best!
 
The Jesuits came into existence for the Counter-Reformation and to fight protestantism. Bellarmine is the #2 Jesuit saint (after Ignatius of Loyal himself).

He also made the statement to the effect that obedience to the church and professing acceptance of its teaching on one’s lips was sufficient, but I forget the exact wording and can’t find it (I did attend a high school named for him, though).
 
We don’t have “the certainty of faith” about all sorts of things. Yet life goes on.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top