Catholic doctrine holds that any bishop can validly ordain any baptised man to the priesthood or to the episcopacy, provided that he has the correct intention and uses a doctrinally acceptable rite of ordination, whether or not he has official permission of any sort to perform the ordination. Absent specified conditions, canon law forbids ordination to the episcopate without a mandate from the pope, and both those who confer such ordination without the papal mandate and those who receive it are subject to latae sententiae excommunication (excommunication by the act itself).