The Catholic account is that a sacrament effects what it signifies, and a technical vocabulary exists to make that precise.
Each rite has matter and form: the physical element or action, and the words that accompany it. Baptism is water with the trinitarian formula; the Eucharist is bread and wine with the words of institution; confirmation is chrism with the words of sealing. Get either wrong and the rite may not have occurred, which is not a hypothetical concern. Rulings from Rome in 2020 and 2022 held that baptisms performed with the words we baptise you, rather than I baptise you, were invalid, and thousands of people in the United States and Australia were baptised again, along with everything that had been built on it, confirmations, marriages, in a few cases ordinations.
The rites are held to work by the working of the work, meaning that their effect does not depend on the holiness of the minister. That was settled in the fourth and fifth centuries against the Donatists, who held that sacraments administered by clergy who had lapsed under persecution were void. The settlement has been load-bearing ever since, because it means a corrupt or unbelieving priest still baptises validly, and the alternative would make every sacrament permanently uncertain.
Three rites, baptism, confirmation and holy orders, are held to impress a permanent character and cannot be repeated. A priest who is laicised remains a priest, and can still absolve a dying person. Marriage is the one in which the ministers are the couple themselves and the priest is a witness, which is a detail with considerable canonical consequences.