Rooted in this fundamental attitude the Church has always resisted the domination of leading personalities, of schools or movements. When any school of thought seemed to be obscuring or menacing the traditional faith, she has not hesitated to override even her greatest sons, an Origen, an Augustine, yes, in some points even a Thomas Aquinas. And whenever men have sought to interpret Christ’s message, not by tradition, by firm adherence to history, to the original faith and to the uninterrupted fellowship, but by means of private speculation, from out of the limited experience of their little individual selves, then the Church has proclaimed her emphatic anathema. And she would utter this same anathema, even if an angel came down from heaven teaching aught else than what she has received from the apostles. The doctrinal history of the Church is simply an obstinate adherence to Christ, a constant carrying out of the command of Jesus: “One only shall be your teacher, Christ.”[6]

Just as Christ stands behind the teaching office of the Church, so also He stands, more immediately still, as “Lord” of the community, behind her sacramental activity. Only one who overlooks this decisive fact can allege that “the scholastic conception of the efficacy of the sacraments reveals the primitive idea of the automatic effect, of the ‘manna’ of the sacred action.”[7] According to Catholic theology the sacraments work “ex opere operato,” and not “ex opere operantis;” that is to say that the sacramental grace (which, as distinguished from transient actual grace, effects a permanent union with God) is not produced and effected through the personal ethico-religious efforts of the recipient, but rather through the objective accomplishment of the sacramental sign itself; In every sacrament there is something objectively given (opus operatum), namely, the special conjunction according to the institution of Christ of a material element (the “matter”) and certain words (the “form”). When this conjunction is effected in the recipient according to the intentions of the Church, then the sacrament is a “work of Christ” (opus Christi), which independently of the subjective share of the recipient (opus operantis) by force of its valid accomplishment causes the sacramental grace. Thus, in the case of baptism, when the water is poured upon the head of a child in the name of the Trinity, the child by the very performance of this act is admitted into the family of God. The heavens at once open and the Father’s voice proclaims: “Thou art my beloved child.”