And once a priest, always a priest.
And he can perform a valid mass and valid sacraments no matter what heinous sin he’s involved in as long as his *intent* is pure.
Seems to me that it’s belief in the ritual being done correctly more than anything else. The priest can be the worst cretin in the world but he’s got the magic in him, so do the incantations in the right circumstance in the right attire on the right occasions and they’re good as gold no matter what. That’s why I’ve become to some extent suspicious of most strongly liturgical varieties of Christianity. Run down a list, they’re inevitably the ones gone off the rails the worst.