On February second and third of this year, two seemingly unrelated events happened, one in a hospital in southwestern Louisiana, the other, at the Vatican. In chronological order, these were the publication, on the Feast of the Purification, of the new DDF document on sacramental validity, Gestis Verbisque; and, the next day, the death of the respected Mariologist, Monsignor Arthur B. Calkins.
Both are significant to the Church. The second is significant to me in a very personal way that happens to tie the two things together so that they are actually related.
The subject of Gestis Verbisque is sacramental validity; specifically, this DDF “Note” sets about to correct the horrible abuse of tampering with the proper form, matter, and intention that are requisite for the minister to confect a Christian sacrament validly. The document explicitly references the sad fact that there were putative “priests” who discovered, after they had been in active ministry for some time, that they had been invalidly baptized. We mentioned two of these cases shortly after they were made public: Father Matthew Hood, and Father Zachary Boazman. In each of these cases, a deacon had taken it upon himself to use invalid baptismal formulae — a grave sin, even if it had not actually invalidated the sacrament, which, sadly, it did in these cases. Of course, these men, who had been functioning as priests for years, were not actually priests. They had to be baptized, confirmed, and then ordained, first to the diaconate, then, to the priesthood. The pastoral nightmare this caused was a genuine scandal.
Monsignor Arthur Burton Calkins, besides being a Mariologist and Official of the Holy See, was the parish priest who baptized me in 1970. How do he and his death connect to Gestis Verbisque? In the early 1990’s, I was informed of Modernist liturgical “experimentation,” of the sort mentioned above, having come into vogue in progressive circles around the very time I was baptized in 1970.
Years later, I very providentially learned that Monsignor Calkins was an Official of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, so I wrote him with my concerns, enclosing a copy of my baptismal certificate with his name and signature on it.
Here, in part, is what I wrote:
As I write you, I am looking at my baptismal certificate from St. Edward the Confessor Church in Metairie, Louisiana. It is signed by the pastor, Father Ray Hebert, who testified that you, Father Arthur B. Calkins, baptized me on July 5, 1970. My name on the certificate is Louis Paul Villarrubia. I mention that because, in 1993, I entered religious life, taking the name Brother André Marie.
The reason I am writing you, Monsignor, is because a nagging doubt — perhaps a scruple — bothers me from time to time. I have been told that, around the time of my baptism, there were many priests — liberals — who were using an experimental form for the baptismal rite, something like “I baptize you in the name of the creator, the redeemer, and the sanctifier.” I guess the purpose was to be “gender neutral.” The prospect of my possibly not being validly baptized was something I dismissed when my parents could not remember any such violation of the sacramental form when you baptized me. I have, for about twelve years, not really worried about this.
I was especially put at ease when I learned of your reputation for orthodoxy. …
Monsignor Calkins wrote me back — fairly quickly — to assure me that he had never departed from the Church’s liturgical formulae in any sacrament he administered, and I could consequently rest assured that I was validly baptized. Regrettably, I could not find his letter in my files, otherwise, I would have been able to give his exact reply.
Some time later, I dedicated something I wrote to him: Friends Forever: St. Augustine, Friendship, and Catholic Evangelism:
In gratitude and friendship
to Monsignor A.B.C.,
who did a friendly thing
when he baptized me.
To cut to the chase with Gestis Verbisque, Monsignor Calkins did exactly what the document says must be done — or not done: don’t mess with the sacraments!
At this point, I will present some of the contents of Gestis Verbisque in a very unofficial translation. The footnotes all link to the Vatican website. I have translated the otherwise untranslated Latin in brackets.
But before giving the last word to that document, let me point out a couple of things. First, it is a pure fiction that the “revision of the rites” of the sacraments after Vatican II “more clearly express[es] the holy realities they signify and produce.” That is neither the case with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass nor with any of the sacramental rites. I am not saying that Sacrosanctum Concilium did not call for that; I am saying that the post-Conciliar liturgical “reform” simply did not, in my estimation, accomplish this goal. On the bright side, the Note quotes or cites the Council of Trent six times (five of which appear in the section below), and the Council of Florence once (which citation is also below). Lastly, and very appropriately, this treatment of sacramental validity also cites Leo XIII’s 1896 Apostolic Letter, Apostolicae curae, which famously declared Anglican orders to be, “absolutely null and utterly void.” Curiously, a mere nine days before the document was published, the head of the Anglican communion, “Archbishop” Justin Welby, celebrated an ‘Anglican Eucharist’ in the Roman Basilica of Saint Bartholomew on Isola (the island in the Tiber).
Thanks to Gestis Verbisque, we can remain very certain of what we already knew: the simulation that took place in Saint Bartholomew’s was not a valid Mass.
Without any further ado, here is the entire second section of the three-part Note in an unofficial translation.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
II. The Church guards and is guarded by the Sacraments.
11. The Church is “minister” of the sacraments, not master of them.[24] By celebrating them she herself receives their grace, she guards them and is in turn guarded by them. The potestas [power] which she can exercise in reference to the Sacraments is analogous to that which she possesses in regard to sacred Scripture. In the latter the Church recognizes the Word of God, put in writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, establishing the canon of the sacred books. At the same time, however, she submits to this Word, which she “devoutly hears, scrupulously guards, and faithfully explains.”[25] In like manner the Church, assisted by the Holy Spirit, recognizes those sacred signs by which Christ bestows the grace that emanates from Easter, determining their number and indicating, for each of them, the essential elements.
In doing so, the Church is aware that to administer God’s grace is not to appropriate it, but to make herself an instrument of the Spirit in transmitting the gift of the Paschal Christ. She knows, in particular, that her potestas [power] in regard to the sacraments stops at their substance.[26] Just as in preaching the Church must always faithfully proclaim the Gospel of Christ who died and rose again, so in sacramental gestures she must guard the saving gestures Jesus entrusted to her.
12. It is also true that the Church has not always univocally indicated the gestures and words in which this substance divinitus instituta [divinely instituted] consists. For all sacraments, in any case, those elements that the ecclesial Magisterium, listening to the sensus fidei [sense of the faith] of the people of God and in dialogue with theology, has called matter and form, to which the minister’s intention is added, appear fundamental.
13. The matter of the Sacrament consists of the human action through which Christ acts. In it there is sometimes a material element (water, bread, wine, oil), at other times a particularly eloquent gesture (sign of the cross, laying on of hands, immersion, infusion, consent, anointing). Such corporeality appears indispensable because it roots the Sacrament not only in human history but also, more fundamentally, in the symbolic order of Creation and leads it back to the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word and the Redemption wrought by Him.[27]
14. The form of the Sacrament is constituted by the word, which imparts transcendent meaning to matter, transfiguring the ordinary meaning of the material element and the purely human meaning of the action performed. Such word always draws inspiration in varying degrees from sacred Scripture,[28] is rooted in living Church Tradition and has been authoritatively defined by the Church’s Magisterium through careful discernment.[29]
15. Matter and form, because of their rootedness in Scripture and Tradition, have never depended nor can they depend on the will of the individual or the individual community. For in regard to them, the task of the Church is not to determine them at the will or arbitrariness of anyone, but, safeguarding the substance of the Sacraments (salva illorum substantia).”[30] to point them out authoritatively, in docility to the action of the Spirit.
For some Sacraments, the matter and form appear substantially defined from the beginning, so that their foundation by Christ is immediate; for others, the definition of the essential elements has only come to be specified in the course of a complex history, sometimes not without significant evolution.
16. In this regard, it cannot be ignored that when the Church intervenes in determining the constituent elements of the Sacrament, she always acts rooted in Tradition to better express the grace conferred by the Sacrament.
It is in this context that the liturgical reform of the sacraments, which took place according to the principles of the Second Vatican Council, called for a revision of the rites so that they would more clearly express the holy realities they signify and produce.[31] The Church, with its Magisterium in sacramental matters, exercises its potestas in the wake of that living Tradition “which comes from the Apostles and progresses in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.”[32]
Recognizing, therefore, under the action of the Spirit, the sacramental character of certain rites, the Church has deemed them to correspond to Jesus’ intention to make the Paschal event actual and participatory.[33]
17. For all the Sacraments, in any case, observance of matter and form has always been required for the validity of the celebration, with the understanding that arbitrary changes to one and/or the other-whose severity and invalidating force must be ascertained on a case-by-case basis-jeopardize the effective bestowal of sacramental grace, to the obvious detriment of the faithful.[34] Both matter and form, summarized by the Code of Canon Law,[35] are established in the liturgical books promulgated by the competent authority, which must therefore be faithfully observed, without “adding, removing or changing anything.”[36]
18. Related to matter and form is the intention of the minister celebrating the Sacrament. It is clear that here the issue of intention should be well distinguished from that of the personal faith and moral condition of the minister, which do not affect the validity of the gift of grace.[37]He, in fact, must have the “intention to do at least what the Church does.”[38] making sacramental action a truly human act, removed from any automatism, and a fully ecclesial act, removed from the arbitrariness of an individual. Moreover, since what the Church does is nothing other than what Christ instituted,[39] intention, too, along with matter and form, contributes to making the sacramental action an extension of the Lord’s saving work.
Matter, form and intention are intrinsically united: they are integrated into the sacramental action in such a way that intention becomes the unifying principle of matter and form, making them a sacred sign by which grace is conferred ex opere operato [from the work performed].[40]
19. Unlike matter and form, which represent the sensible and objective element of the Sacrament, the minister’s intention-along with the disposition of the recipient-represents its inner and subjective element. It, however, tends by its nature to manifest itself externally as well through the observance of the rite established by the Church, so that the serious alteration of the essential elements also introduces doubt as to the minister’s real intention, thus invalidating the validity of the Sacrament celebrated.[41] Indeed, in principle, the intention to do what the Church does is expressed in the use of the matter and form that the Church has established.[42]
20. Matter, form, and intention are always placed in the context of the liturgical celebration, which does not constitute a ceremonial ornatus [furnishing or adornment] of the sacraments or even a didactic introduction to the reality being fulfilled, but is as a whole the event in which the personal and communal encounter between God and us, in Christ and in the Holy Spirit, an encounter in which, through the mediation of sensible signs, “perfect glory is rendered to God and men are sanctified.”[43]
The necessary solicitude for the essential elements of the Sacraments, on which their validity depends, must therefore accord with care and respect for the entire celebration, in which the meaning and effects of the Sacraments are made fully intelligible by a multiplicity of gestures and words, thus fostering the actuosa participatio [actual participation] of the faithful.[44]
21. The liturgy itself allows for that variety which preserves the Church from “rigid uniformity.”[45] This is why the Second Vatican Council decreed that, “saving the substantial unity of the Roman rite, even in the revision of liturgical books room should be left for legitimate diversity and adaptations to the various ethnic groups, regions, peoples, especially in the missions.”[46]
By virtue of this, the liturgical reform desired by the Second Vatican Council not only authorized the Bishops’ Conferences to introduce general adaptations to the Latin editio typica [typical edition], but also provided for the possibility of particular adaptations by the minister of celebration, with the sole purpose of meeting the pastoral and spiritual needs of the faithful.
22. However, so that variety “does not harm unity, but rather serves it.”[47] it remains clear that, outside the cases expressly indicated in the liturgical books, “regulating the sacred Liturgy is the sole responsibility of the authority of the Church.”[48] which resides, depending on the circumstances, in the bishop, the territorial episcopal assembly, and the Apostolic See.
It is clear, in fact, that “to change on one’s own initiative the celebratory form of a Sacrament does not constitute a simple liturgical abuse, as a transgression of a positive norm, but a vulnus [wound] inflicted at one and the same time on ecclesial communion and on the recognizability of Christ’s action, which in the most serious cases renders the Sacrament itself invalid, because the nature of ministerial action demands that one transmit with fidelity what one has received (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3).”[49]
