Prepare thyself for the stupidest thing you will read today!
Ron Modras, professor of theological studies at St. Louis University and author of Ignatian Humanism, writes at the National Catholic Reporter about the rash of excommunications. It is so singularly stupid that I don’t know if I should be outraged or sorry. A sampling…
…But then last year a former canon law professor at the University of Freiburg, Hartmut Zapp, decided to challenge the church tax. He declared that he was leaving the Catholic church as a legal institution but remaining in it as a community of faith. Fearing a precedent and the potential loss of millions of euros, the Freiburg archdiocese rejected the distinction: One either left the church or did not, all or nothing at all. In May this year, a German court agreed that it was up to church authorities to decide. Zapp is now declared by church and state as having left the Catholic church. That makes him a schismatic and an excommunicate.
I first began thinking about excommunication when friends of mine attended the ordination of two women in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement in February in Sarasota, Fla. I pointed out to them, after the fact, that the Florida papers quoted the local bishop as saying that Catholics who participated in the event were excommunicated. The response of my friends, both of whom are weekly communicants, was a dismissive wave of the hand. Oh, just like that abortion case in Brazil, where everyone was excommunicated except the rapist.
…
if a girl becomes the victim of a date rape and takes the morning-after pill, is she excommunicated? And if so, why is she excommunicated and not the rapist? Or is she excommunicated? Is Zapp now excommunicated for leaving the church as an institution but not as a community of faith? Does opting out of paying his church taxes endanger his immortal soul? Was McBride excommunicated, if she made her difficult gut-wrenching decision with prayer and a good conscience? According to Catholic tradition, the answer is no.When bishops declare Catholics excommunicated, they make the presumption that the alleged offenders were deliberately violating their consciences, acting in bad faith and therefore committing a grievous sin. But no one, no bishop, can presume to judge another person’s conscience. The Second Vatican Council described conscience as the “sanctuary” where the individual “is alone with God” (Gaudium et spes). In the opinion of Thomas Aquinas, we are bound to follow our consciences, even when in error, even if it means excommunication.
It goes on and on like this.
A commenter responded:
This article is riddled with flaws. The virtue of excommunication does not have anything to do with its practical effects. In other words, excommunications are not levied to bring about some practical end. An excommunication simply signals that a rupture has occurred in the Body of Christ, either through a member’s grave sin or through a violation of the Church’s disciplinary norms. As numerous theologians have pointed out, then, it’s not really precise to talk about a Bishop excommunicating someone, as if the Bishop had arbitrarily made the decision on his own. More precisely, members of the Church automatically excommunicate themselves through actions that violate existing norms. Building on this point, the validity of said norms does not depend on whether or not a certain number of Catholics honor them. In all ages of the Church, there have been and will be a large number of the baptized who live in unrepentant sin or who willfully live in discord with Church teaching. The Church’s task is to faithfully transmit and teach the totality of revelation. She cannot guarantee that a certain percentage of her children will follow this teaching, any more than a parent can guarantee that her children will never rebel after they reach an age of maturity.
And yet another commenter warned that even reading NC Reporter that a Catholic may incur latae sententiae excommunication.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I haven’t the time right now to point out all the flaws in the piece, but feel free to do so…
July 13, 2010 at 3:58 pm
If I recall the causa Zapp correct, the declaration of leaving the church was judged illicit by the court, because Zapp added the declaration that he only leaves the legal institution and not the community of faith.
Zapp's point of argument was the practise of the german bishops to treat everybody who declared the leave of the church to the appropriate state(!) authority as apostatic and therefore excommunicated, without listening to the objection of the papal council of interpretation of law texts (? dunno if my translation is correct) that only a declaration of leave given to the church authority can result in a real apostasy and therefore result in an excommunication.
Yours sincerely,
Marcus, der mit dem C
P.S.: Please be gracefully upon any spelling errors, I am german and thus not a native english speaker 😉
July 13, 2010 at 4:14 pm
bah humbug. I wrote a nice comment about the development of doctrine and exommunication and when I went to submit it the site passed through to google.com, now I can't even go to the site. 😕
ANYWAY, I'm going to post a piece here. Excommunication is the way the church says "This act you think is OK is not really OK. Despite what everyone else thinks, it's harming your relationship with God and with God's people and in order to heal that relationship you must repent." Since society doesn't think murder or rape is OK (yet) excommunication isn't needed in those cases.
July 13, 2010 at 4:22 pm
I can’t say that I disagree with Professor Zapp wanting to no longer be a ‘legal’ Catholic but remaining a Catholic in practice. I have always had an issue with the idea of the state collecting taxes on behalf of the Church… it seems to me like the state reaching WAY beyond its purpose. It also opens the door to the state controlling the Church…
As for the rest of the authors comments … He completely missed the point on both the purpose of excommunication and the necessity of a properly formed conscience. Excommunication is like chemotherapy, it’s purpose is to remove error and so healthy growth can take its place. It’s a last resort option yes, but a necessary one in some cases. And does he think people like the 9/11 high jackers or Hitler were not following their consciences? The problem is that they did not properly form their consciences… I’m pretty sure St Thomas made that distinction.
July 13, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Was it not Jesus himself who said at Pentecost, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven, and whose sins you listened-to-and-agreed-to-disagree are listened-to-and-agreed-to-disagree"?
July 13, 2010 at 8:11 pm
I first began thinking about excommunication
Well, there's the problem! Rather than first thinking about it, maybe he should first learn about it.
July 13, 2010 at 9:48 pm
For stupidity, only if it is vincible. But that has not been codified; it should though.
Excommunication deals with the actions only and not the intent nor the circumstance. The author is mixing spiritual judgment (internal forum) i.e. the soul before God who know everything and pastoral discipline (external forum) that focuses on objective deeds – or lack thereof.
Internal forum is a term used in moral theology referring to the private realm of one's personal conscience or an act of judgement applying the universal truth to a particular situation, such as the sacrament of reconciliation. The term is frequently used in association with dealing with decisions that cannot be adequately handled in the public external forum regulated by canon law, such as in cases involving the reception of the Eucharist by those who have civilly divorced and remarried without an annulment.