Excommunication is not punishment, but to prompt conversion
So often I hear from friends and acquaintances, “so and so” — often Catholic politicians who vote for abortion rights — should be excommunicated, or we read in Today’s Catholic someone or a group has been excommunicated. Just what is excommunication? How is it applied? How is it taken away? Anonymous.
An excommunication is a penalty imposed by the church upon a person in order to bring about their conversion and submission to rightful church authority. If one is excommunicated, then several things are forbidden to them. First, they are forbidden to have any ministerial participation in celebrating the sacrifice of the Eucharist or any other ceremonies of worship whatsoever. This means that a priest, deacon or bishop who is excommunicated cannot celebrate any of the Catholic rites, and an excommunicated lay person cannot serve in any ministerial roles, such as lector, extraordinary minister of holy Communion or godparent.
Second, excommunicated persons are forbidden to celebrate the sacraments or sacramentals and to receive the sacraments. This part is self-explanatory. They cannot receive Communion, go to confession, receive a blessing, receive the anointing of the sick, etc.
Third, excommunicated persons are forbidden to exercise any ecclesiastical offices, ministries, or functions whatsoever or to place acts of governance. This applies mostly to clerics (deacons, priests and bishops) who could not exercise offices in the church they might hold if they are excommunicated. For example, if a pastor should become excommunicated, he is then forbidden to exercise his office as pastor.
Excommunications can happen in various ways. However, there are two basic kinds: “Latae sententiae” and “ferendae sententiae.” “Latae sententiae” excommunications happen automatically by the very act of doing something. For example, a person who in some way would abuse the holy Eucharist would incur a “latae sententiae” excommunication. It would happen by the very act of doing it. However, it must also be noted that in order to incur the excommunication, violation of a church law that has excommunication attached would have to be gravely imputable to the person by reason of malice or negligence. In other words, similar to the commission of a mortal sin, a person has to know that they are violating the law to which excommunication is attached and then choose to do it freely anyway.
So one can imagine, for example, a case of abortion committed by a 17-year-old Catholic girl who is virtually being forced to have the abortion by her family. Abortion has the penalty of excommunication attached to it, but chances are this 17-year-old girl did not actually incur it because she was probably not acting freely, and she may not have known that the penalty of excommunication was attached to this action.
The other kind of excommunication, “ferendae sententiae,” is an excommunication, which is imposed for various violations of church law by a church authority, for example, the bishop of a diocese, a church court or the Holy See. This kind of excommunication is only imposed after a process of investigation that an actual violation occurred and after warnings to the person to repent.
An example of a violation, which could involve the imposition of a “ferendae sententiae” excommunication, would be the active promotion of women’s ordination to the Catholic priesthood.
There are many different ways in which excommunications can be lifted, and it varies according to what law was violated, which incurred the excommunication, and who may have imposed it. Generally speaking, diocesan bishops are the ones who have the power to lift excommunications. However, some excommunications are specifically reserved to the Holy See, which means that only the offices of the pope can lift them.
For example, the excommunication for abortion can be lifted by the diocesan bishop (in our diocese, Bishop John M. D’Arcy has delegated this power to all the priests of the diocese), but the excommunication for abusing the holy Eucharist can only be lifted by the Holy See. It is also helpful to know that if a person is in danger of death, any priest can lift any excommunication.
For a list of those violations of church law which involve excommunication, one can look to canons 1364-1399 in the Code of Canon Law.
The church is very cautious in imposing an excommunication and does so only for the most serious of crimes. The purpose of excommunication is not the punishment of the individual but always to prompt their conversion. |
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