Folia Canonica 11. (2008)
PROCEEDINGS OF TENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE. "Questioni attuali intorno al Battesimo" Budapest, 4th February 2008 - Michael Carragher: Intention of the Minister as Substantive Element of Baptism
INTENTION OF THE MINISTER AND BAPTISM 211 dentist, selecting a dentist, and fixing an appointment...). The unity of ends and means is emphasized by St. Thomas in his teaching that choosing means means one constitutes that means as the proximate end for any technique, procedure, or performance used to do or to carry out that choice.10 11 An intention is an act of the will tending towards a known object. It is actual if the mind adverts to the object willed when an action is done. It is virtual, if there is no present advertence to the object willed, and yet an action is done because of a previous act of the will, still exerting a causal influence on behaviour. In such a case the act of the will produces an effect, even though the mind does not advert to it. A habitual intention means an act of the will never revoked, which, however, produces no present effect, as for instance, a will to do what God wants, which remains when one is asleep, but produces then no effect. A direct intention means that the will wills the object, but there is no particular analysis, or even conscious awareness, of one’s will; whereas a reflex intention indicates some conscious awareness, or analysis, of one’s will. To do what the Church does means that the object willed coincides with what the Church does in the sacraments. It specifies an object that is willed. C. The REQUIREMENTS OF THE ORDINARY MINISTER, CLERICAL OR LAY Í. Do what the church intends is the overriding principle. Sacraments are 1) not merely efficient causes (as well as being formal and final causes") 2) but also, and primarily, signs of faith. A frame of reference for treating of sacramental issues is given when faith is stated to play a role in the sacraments preliminary to causality.12 In the sacraments it is primarily faith that is operative for through it the sacraments are in certain fashion connected with their principal cause and also with the recipient. It is the faith of the Church that establishes the connection between sacrament and divine cause by relating the instrument to the principal cause and the sign to the thing signified. Since sacraments are practical signs and causes of signification they can be set up only by God. Thus the original imposition of signification on certain ceremonies was effected by the mind of Christ. The signs that he instituted can 10 J. Finnis, "Object and Intention in Moral Judgments according to Aquinas, in The Thomist 55 (1991) 1—27; J. Pilsner, The Specification of Human Actions In St. Thomas Aquinas, Oxford 2006. 11 See L. Walsh, The Divine and The Human in St. Thomas’s Theology of Sacraments, in Ordo Sapientiae et Amoris, Fribourg 1993, 321-352; Ibid., Sacraments, in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, R. VAN Nieuwenhove-J. Wawrykow (eds.), Notre Dame (Ind.) 1994. 12 IV Sent., dist. 4, q. 3, a. 2, sol. ad. 2
