Validity of Sacraments from Laicised/Disgraced Clerics

by Admin · March 12, 2024

Question: I think that faithful Catholics would like to know about the validity of the sacraments received from disgraced or defrocked priests and bishops. Were sins forgiven in the sacrament of penance? Did the act of consecration take place for the bread and wine to become the body and blood of Christ?

Answer: A friend of mine who was married years ago by a Catholic cleric later removed from ministry likes to tell me – jokingly – that his wedding “did not count” and that he is free now to marry someone else! That, of course, is not true.

The question you raise was answered in the church nearly 1,700 years ago in what was known as the Donatist controversy and ratified later in the teaching of St. Augustine. Since it is really Christ who is acting in the sacraments, the personal unworthiness of the minister would not prevent Jesus from acting.

Later, medieval church theologians would explain it in more formal terms by saying that the sacraments operate “ex opere operato” (“from the work having been done”) and not “ex opere operantis” (“from the work of the worker”).

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states it today, “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” (No. 1128).

Answered by Fr Kenneth Doyle