Intention
Intention "a deliberate notion of the will by which it is supposed to accomplish a certain act: first, taking in merely the act; secondly, taking in also the consequences of the act. An action may be done with a good intention, and may produce bad results; or it may be done with a good intention, and produce good results. It may also be done with an evil intention and yet good results may follow; or with an evil intention, producing evil results. As a question of morals, therefore, the intention with which anything is done really determines the quality of the action as regards the person who does it. It is not possible that it should always determine the course of social policy in the matter of rewards or punishments; but it may mostly determine the verdict of conscience respecting the good or evil of an act, and has doubtless a large place in the divine judgment of them. No intention can be good, however, which purposes the doing of an evil action, although with the object of securing good results; nor any which does a good action with the object of producing evil results." SEE ETHICS; SEE MORAL SENSE.
In the Roman Catholic Church the intention of the priest is held to be essential to the valid celebration of the sacraments. This the Council of Trent decreed in its 11th canon (Sess. 7): "If any one shall say that in ministers, while they effect and confer the sacraments, there is not required the intention at least of doing what the Church does, let him be anathema." The same principle, in the main, was advocated and set forth by popes Martin V and Eugenius IV in the early part of the last century. So abused has this principle generally become in the Roman Catholic Church, that by its consequences it must be declared to be greatly detrimental to the cause of the Christian religion. For inasmuch as the insincerity of the actor reduces the act to a mockery and a sinful trifling with sacred things, the Church of Rome, by this decision, "exposes the laity to doubt, hesitation, and insecurity whenever they receive a sacrament at the hand of a priest in whose piety and sincerity they have not full confidence. If a wicked priest, for instance, should baptize a child without an inward intention to baptize him, it would follow that the baptism was null and void for want of the intention." The Church of England, to repudiate this perverse doctrine, in its 26th Article of Religion, declares, therefore, that the unworthiness of ministers does not hinder the effect of sacraments, "forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and do minister by his commission, [and therefore] we may use their ministry both in hearing the word of God and in receiving the sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ's ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God's gifts diminished from such as by faith, and rightly, do receive the sacraments ministered unto them, which be effectual because of Christ's institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men." See Staunton, Eccles. Dict. p. 398; Blunt, Theol. Dict. 1, 351; and, for a moderate Roman account of Intention, Liebermann, Instit. Theol. (ed. 1861), 2, 386 sq.
