Dist. 13, Art. 1, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/13/q/bon-sent-IV-d13-a1-q1
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### Treatment of the Questions.

For the understanding of this part, two things are principally asked.

*First*, there is asked concerning the power of the one who confects.

*Second*, there is asked concerning the one who receives.

Concerning the first, four things are asked.

*First*, it is asked whether every priest can confect.

*Second*, whether priests alone [can].

*Third*, it is asked in what the greater power for consecrating resides, in the priest or in the word.

*Fourth*, it is asked whether the Mass of a good priest is better than that of a bad one.

### Article I. *On the power of the one who confects.*
### Question I. *Whether every priest can confect [the Eucharist].*

Concerning the first [point], one proceeds thus.

1. Augustine, in the book of the *Sentences of Prosper*: «*There is no place of true sacrifice outside the Catholic Church*»; but a heretic is outside the Catholic Church: therefore in him there is no true sacrifice, and so on.

2. Likewise, Jerome: «*Heretics eat polluted bread*»; but this bread cannot be polluted: therefore they do not eat this bread.

3. Likewise, the same Jerome: «*God hates the sacrifices of heretics, he detests the stench*»: therefore he sends neither himself nor the Angels, nor consequently do they themselves send [anything] into heaven: therefore they do not confect, nor do they say Mass, and they say falsely: *Go, the Mass is [ended]*.

4. Likewise, Cyprian: «*The Sacraments of heretics are sacrileges*»; but this bread is holy: therefore, etc.

5. Likewise, from the Council of Laodicea: «*One ought not to receive the blessings of heretics; for they are rather maledictions*».

6. Likewise, it seems by reason: because this Sacrament is the Sacrament of union: therefore those who are separated from the Church are altogether alien from this Sacrament; and if this be so, they cannot confect.

7. Likewise, those who are separated and heretics, although they have order, cannot loose and bind; and if they loose, they do nothing: therefore by the same reasoning neither [can they] confect.

8. Likewise, «*he deserves to lose the privilege who abuses the power granted to him*»; but the heretic and schismatic abuse the power of confecting; therefore, just as God gave the power, so too he ought to take it away.

9. Likewise, it belongs to a superior power to restrain an inferior one, if the powers are ordered [to one another]: therefore if the Pope, or a bishop, forbids a priest to confect, he can no longer confect. If you say that he cannot by right, yet he can in fact; on the contrary: a man can do before God only that which he can by right; but the power of confecting is a power with respect to God: therefore if he cannot by right, in no way can he.

**On the contrary:** 1. Augustine to Parmenianus, speaking of heretics and schismatics: «*Just as in them*

*baptism remained, so also ordination [remained] intact; in the separation there was a fault, which is corrected in the peace of unity, not in the Sacraments, which, wherever they are, are themselves true*».

2. Likewise, Cause one, question one: «*The Sacraments, after the manner of light, cannot be defiled by the unclean*».

3. Likewise, a priest confects either because he is *good* or because he is a *priest*. If because he is *good*; but one is not certain of [his] goodness: therefore neither is one certain whether he confects. If because he is a *priest*; since on account of heresy he does not cease to be a priest, it is clear, etc.

4. Likewise, for the Sacrament, on the part of the one dispensing it, no more is required than «*order and intention and action*»; but all these are present in the one cut off: therefore, etc. If you say that goodness is required: then our salvation is placed in the hand of another.

> **Conclusion.** In every priest proceeding duly the truth of the Sacrament is preserved, but not its usefulness for the one confecting if he be bad or excommunicate.

**I respond:** Certain men wished to distinguish — among whom the Master seems to have been — that some bad priests are bad secretly and [yet] are of the Church, at least by number and as to outward appearance; and these can [confect]. But others are manifestly bad and cut off from the Church; and these cannot. — But this position seems to accord with the position of Cyprian, who held that heretics do not have true Sacraments; which Augustine sufficiently disproves.

On account of this it must be said otherwise, that in the Sacrament two things are to be considered, namely the *truth* of the Sacrament, which consists with respect to the first thing, and the *usefulness* of the Sacrament, which consists with respect to the ultimate thing, which is incorporation or union with respect to the mystical body. If we speak of the truth of the Sacrament, the truth is preserved where, on the part of the minister, there is order and intention and the utterance of the word, when the due element is present. — But if we speak with respect to usefulness, it must be said that a *good* priest confects unto the usefulness of himself and of those assisting; a *secretly bad* one unto his own harm, yet nonetheless unto the usefulness of those assisting who hear the Mass with faith and devotion; but a *cut-off and heretical* one unto the damnation of himself and of all those assisting. — Since therefore in the manifestly cut-off and heretical the Sacrament is deprived of all fruit, although the true body of Christ be there; therefore the sacred canons and the authorities of the Saints speak, detesting their sacrifices, not by reason of the work worked, but of the harm.

1–5. And thus the authorities are resolved, and thus it is to be believed that the Master understood [it].

6. To that which is objected, that the cut-off cannot [confect], because it is the Sacrament of union; it must be said that it is the Sacrament of union by reason of [its] efficacy, and the cut-off confect without efficacy and fruit.

7. To that which is objected, that they cannot loose; it must be said that it is not similar: because the power of loosing is a power ordered to another, which consists not only in *order*, but in *jurisdiction*, which the heretic does not have.

8. To that which is objected, that he ought to lose the privilege; it must be said that he is deserving [to lose it] of himself, but nevertheless the bounty of God does not take away what it imprints as perpetual; and because the priestly character is such, therefore it remains unto the glory of the divine bounty and unto the perpetual damnation and ignominy of the bad, and consequently unto the manifesting of God's justice.

9. To that which is objected, that a superior power can restrain an inferior; it must be said that it can restrain according to that respect in which it is superior; but it is not superior with respect to the power of confecting — for all priests can equally confect — but with respect to ordered, due, and orderly execution it is superior, and with respect to this it rightly restrains. Whence if a cut-off or excommunicate person confects, he does indeed do that for which he has the potency, but nevertheless he does not do it duly and in an orderly way, nay rather unto his own damnation.