Validity and liceity are concepts in the Catholic Church. Validity designates an action which produces the effects intended; an action which does not produce the effects intended is considered "invalid".[1][2]Liceity designates an action which has been performed legitimately; an action which has not been performed legitimately is considered "illicit".[3][4] Some actions can be illicit, but still be valid.[3][4]
Catholic canon law also lays down rules for licit, also called lawful, placing of the act, along with criteria to determine its validity or invalidity. Valid but illicit or valid but illegal (Latin: valida sed illicita) is a description applied in the Catholic Church to describe either an unauthorized celebration of a sacrament or an improperly placed juridic act that nevertheless has effect. Validity is presumed whenever an act is performed by a qualified person and includes those things which essentially constitute the act itself as well as the formalities and requirements imposed by law for the validity of the act.[5][6]
Baptism
The 1983 Code of Canon Law states: "Except in a case of necessity, it is unlawful for anyone without due permission to confer baptism outside his own territory, not even upon his own subjects".[7] In the Latin Church, administration of baptism is one of the functions especially entrusted to the parish priest.[8]
However, according to the same Code, any person, even someone not baptized, can baptize, if he has the required intention. The intention required is to will to do what the Catholic Church does when she baptizes, and to apply the Trinitarian baptismal formula.[9]
In 2008, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) stated the baptism formulae "I baptize you in the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier" and "I baptize you in the name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer", were invalid.[10]
In 2020, the CDF stated the formula "We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" was invalid for the purposes of conferring baptism. This made it so Matthew Hood, a Catholic priest of Detroit who had been baptised by Mark Springer by this formula, was not considered a priest anymore as Hood had been baptised with this formula (Hood was later properly baptised and ordained). This 2020 statement created other difficulties, as other people from Detroit had been baptised with the same formula by Springer, and other people had received sacraments from Hood since the latter's ordination 2017.[10] Due to the same 2020 statement, another US priest, Andrés Arango, who had baptised using the same formula, had to properly baptise those he had invalidly baptised.[11]Thomas Reese and retired sacramental theology Prof. Peter Fink have criticized the CDF statement, saying the "We" formula was valid.[10]
Confirmation
In the Latin Church, a bishop is the ordinaryminister of confirmation and he may licitly administer it to his own subjects everywhere and, in his own territory, even to Catholics who are not his subjects, unless their ordinary has expressly forbidden it.[12] In the Latin Catholic Church, simple priests (presbyters) can validly and licitly confirm in some circumstances, such as when they baptize adults or receive them into the church and when there is danger of death.[13]
Priests of the Eastern Catholic Churches can validly confer the sacrament on any Catholic, even a Catholic of the Latin Church, but they can do so licitly only on those who belong to their own particular church and on other Catholics who meet the conditions of either being their subjects or of being lawfully baptized by them, or of being in danger of death.[14]
Eucharist
A prime example of valid but illicit celebration of a sacrament would be the use of leavened wheaten bread for the Eucharist in the Latin Church[15] or in certain Eastern Catholic Churches.[16] If, on the other hand, rice or rye flour are used instead of wheat, or if butter, honey, or eggs are added, particularly in large quantities, the Mass would be invalid ("transubstantiation" would not occur).[17]
Likewise, wine used for the Eucharist must be valid. Invalid wine would be any wine made of non-grape fruits or wine mixed with any other substance apart from "a small quantity of water".[18]
Church laws regarding confession require that priests who are hearing confessions must have valid faculties and jurisdiction. As penance is not only a sacramental act but also one of jurisdiction, such faculties are required for both for validity and liceity.[20]
Those who are provided with the faculty of hearing confessions by reason of office or grant of a competent superior of a religious institute or society of apostolic life possess the same faculty everywhere by the law itself as regards members and others living day and night in the house of the institute or society. They also use the faculty licitly unless some major superior has denied it in a particular case as regards his own subjects.[21]
Confessions in which the priest does not have the faculties to hear confession, yet without good reason pretends to have them, are valid but illicit. The church supplants the faculties leading to validity of the sacrament (canon 144).
Every priest can administer the sacrament of anointing of the sick validly. The duty and the right to administer it pertains to the priest to whom the spiritual care of the person concerned is entrusted. However, any other priest may administer it instead for a good reason if he has the presumed consent of the priest who has the duty and right.[23]
Holy orders
All bishops are able to ordain a deacon, priest, or bishop. In the sacrament of holy orders, a valid but illicit ordination, as the name suggests, is an ordination in which a bishop uses his valid ability to ordain someone a bishop without having first received the required authorization. The same would apply to a bishop's ordaining of a man who has not undergone and completed necessary seminary schooling, as required by canon law. The bishop is then acting in a manner deemed illicit or illegal.[24][25]
A Latin Catholic bishop who consecrates someone to the episcopate without a mandate from the pope is automaticallyexcommunicated according to Catholic canon law, even if his ordination may be considered valid. The person who receives consecration from him is also automatically excommunicated. Pope Pius XII declared that the consecration of a bishop against the express orders of the Pope may be valid but is 'gravely illicit i.e. criminal and sacrilegious'.[26] The excommunication can be lifted by only the Holy See.[27]
In the 20th century, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was automatically excommunicated for his valid but illicit ordinations of four bishops for the SSPX without a papal mandate. After Lefebvre's death, the Holy See, on 21 January 2009, lifted the excommunication of the four bishops.[28][29] However, his defenders argue that he acted under grave necessity, which the 1983 canon law stipulates is an excuse to avoid automatic excommunication in this case (canon 1323, §4).[30]
Marriage
A marriage celebrated in due form but without express permission of the competent authority of the Catholic Church between a Catholic and another baptized person enrolled in a church or ecclesial community not in full communion with the Catholic Church is "prohibited" (illicit) but valid.[31] On the other hand, a marriage celebrated in due form between a Catholic and an unbaptized person is invalid unless dispensation has previously been obtained from the competent church authority.[32]
Other cases in which a marriage is both illicit and invalid are indicated in canons 1083 to 1094 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.[33]
In Christianity, an episcopus vagans is a person consecrated, in a "clandestine or irregular way", as a bishop outside the structures and canon law of the established churches; a person regularly consecrated but later excommunicated, and not in communion with any generally recognized diocese; or a person who has in communion with them small groups that appear to exist solely for the bishop's sake.
In Christian denominations that practice infant baptism, confirmation is seen as the sealing of the covenant created in baptism. Those being confirmed are known as confirmands. For adults, it is an affirmation of belief. It involves laying on of hands.
The Society of Saint Pius X is a canonically irregular traditionalist Catholic fraternity of priests founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Lefebvre was a leading traditionalist at the Second Vatican Council with the Coetus Internationalis Patrum and Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers until 1968. The society was initially established as a pious union of the Catholic Church with the permission of François Charrière, the Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg in Switzerland.
Marriage in the Catholic Church, also known as holy matrimony, is the "covenant by which a man and woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring", and which "has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized". Catholic matrimonial law, based on Roman law regarding its focus on marriage as a free mutual agreement or contract, became the basis for the marriage law of all European countries, at least up to the Reformation.
Latae sententiae and ferendae sententiae are ways sentences are imposed in the Catholic Church in its canon law.
In keeping with its prevailing self-identity as a via media or "middle path" of Western Christianity, Anglican sacramental theology expresses elements in keeping with its status as a church in the catholic tradition and a church of the Reformation. With respect to sacramental theology the Catholic tradition is perhaps most strongly asserted in the importance Anglicanism places on the sacraments as a means of grace, sanctification and forgiveness as expressed in the church's liturgy.
The Sacrament of Penance is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, in which the faithful are absolved from sins committed after baptism and reconciled with the Christian community. During reconciliation mortal sins must be confessed and venial sins may be confessed for devotional reasons. According to the dogma and unchanging practice of the church, only those ordained as priests may grant absolution.
The sacrament of holy orders in the Catholic Church includes three orders: bishops, priests, and deacons, in decreasing order of rank, collectively comprising the clergy. In the phrase "holy orders", the word "holy" means "set apart for a sacred purpose". The word "order" designates an established civil body or corporation with a hierarchy, and ordination means legal incorporation into an order. In context, therefore, a group with a hierarchical structure that is set apart for ministry in the Church.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, an impediment is a legal obstacle that prevents a sacrament from being performed either validly or licitly or both. The term is used most frequently in relationship to the sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders. Some canonical impediments can be dispensed by the competent authority as defined in Catholic canon law.
An emergency baptism is a baptism administered to a person in danger of death. This can be done by a person not normally authorized to administer the sacraments.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP) is an independent international organization that claims a connection to the Roman Catholic Church. It is descended from the Danube Seven, a group of women who assert that they were ordained as priests in 2002 by Rómulo Antonio Braschi, before being excommunicated by the Vatican, and their request for a revocation of the excommunication denied, in Decree on the Attempted Ordination of Some Catholic Women. According to a book published by the organization, Women Find a Way: The Movement and Stories of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, at least two other unnamed bishops were involved in the ordination. In addition, the RCWP considers these bishops to be in good standing, and the RCWP says the bishops acted in full apostolic succession.
Canon 915, one of the canons in the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, forbids the administration of Holy Communion to those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, or who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin:
Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion.
Natural marriage is the name given in Catholic canon law to the covenant "by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring", and is distinguished from a sacramental or Christian marriage, in which the two parties involved are baptized.
The canonical situation of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a group founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, is unresolved. The Society of Saint Pius X has been the subject of much controversy since 1988, when Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson and Alfonso de Galarreta were illicitly consecrated at Ecône, at the International Seminary of Saint Pius X as bishops in violation of canon law. Lefebvre and the four other SSPX bishops individually incurred a disciplinary latae sententiae excommunication for the schismatic act; the excommunications of the four living SSPX bishops were remitted in 2009.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, excommunication is a form of censure. In the formal sense of the term, excommunication includes being barred not only from the sacraments but also from the fellowship of Christian baptism. The principal and severest censure, excommunication presupposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Catholic Church can inflict, it supposes a grave offense. The excommunicated person is considered by Catholic ecclesiastical authority as an exile from the Church, for a time at least.
There are seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, which according to Catholic theology were instituted by Jesus Christ and entrusted to the Church. Sacraments are visible rites seen as signs and efficacious channels of the grace of God to all those who receive them with the proper disposition.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, a person is a subject of certain legal rights and obligations. Persons may be distinguished between physical and juridic persons. Juridic persons may be distinguished as collegial or non-collegial, and public or private juridical persons. The Holy See and the Catholic Church as such are not juridic persons since juridic persons are created by ecclesiastical law. Rather, they are moral persons by divine law.
In the Catholic Church, communicatio in sacris, also called communicatio in divinis or communicatio in ritibus, designates the regulations for the partaking of a Catholic person to a non-Catholic sacrament or liturgical celebration, or for the partaking of a non-Catholic person to a Catholic sacrament or liturgical celebration. The expression is also used to refer to said acts of partaking themselves.
A conditional sacrament or sacramentsub conditione is in some Christian denominations a sacrament administered "on the condition that the faithful [receiving it is] able and legitimately entitled to receive the sacrament". An example of conditional sacrament is conditional baptism.
↑ Apostolicae curae, "Whenever there is no appearance of simulation on the part of the minister, the validity of the sacrament is sufficiently certain".
↑ Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 1952, p. 456. "Every validly consecrated bishop, including heretical, schismatic, simonistic, or excommunicated bishops, can validly dispense the Sacrament of Order, provided that he has the requisite intention, and follows the essential external rite (set. Certa). Cf. D 855, 860; CIC 2372."
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