Calling Oneself Catholic While Rejecting Church Teaching

[Maggyie]

What do phatmassers make of this post from Fr Z?

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/03/quaeritur-defection-from-the-catholic-church/

"Since Omnium in mentem took effect on 9 April 2010, defection from the faith no longer has any canonical effect. “Defection” does not release one from ecclesiastical law, including the observance of canonical form in marriage.

Once a Catholic, always a Catholic is not just cultural, or emotional… it is juridical. Baptism to death, friends."

I had always heard that formally leaving the Church was possible with the procedure he mentions in the post... But canonically, apparently this no longer exists. Fr Z states that attending a Protestant church or even sending a resignation letter to your pastor makes you a lapsed Catholic, not an ex-Catholic.

[Nihil Obstat]

What do phatmassers make of this post from Fr Z?

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/03/quaeritur-defection-from-the-catholic-church/

"Since Omnium in mentem took effect on 9 April 2010, defection from the faith no longer has any canonical effect. “Defection” does not release one from ecclesiastical law, including the observance of canonical form in marriage.

Once a Catholic, always a Catholic is not just cultural, or emotional… it is juridical. Baptism to death, friends."

I had always heard that formally leaving the Church was possible with the procedure he mentions in the post... But canonically, apparently this no longer exists. Fr Z states that attending a Protestant church or even sending a resignation letter to your pastor makes you a lapsed Catholic, not an ex-Catholic.

Nothing controversial there imo. There was a canonical process in place, and now there is not. But we are speaking primarily in a theological sense.

[Anastasia13]

Nothing controversial there imo. There was a canonical process in place, and now there is not. But we are speaking primarily in a theological sense.

There are several senses in which one could call themselves Catholic. I thought those were open for discussion here.

Edited June 28, 2014 by Light and Truth

[Perigrina]

There are several senses in which one could call themselves Catholic. I thought those were open for discussion here.

 

Yes, as we've been discussing it, I've been seeing that there are some senses of it in which a person would remain Catholic even if rejecting Church teaching.

[Benedictus]

That is kind of lame. He should let you 'itemize' your sins if you want to, unless he has a feeling that it is actually due to scrupulosity.

 

Well I've never had that suggested. I tend to follow a routine - I go at least once a month, which Is what I've done since college. I was taught to note down all of my daily sins from prayer refection/examen. I then summarise these into core groups that I tell the priest, plus the frequency. I then take the notes to my SD and we talk about the themes and challenges, usually venial issues flag up here. It tends to work out OK - I think it just comes down to different priest styles, shortness of time and their varying ideas about getting down to the core issues. Maybe experiences with confession (the sacrament in general) would be a good thread at some point
 

[Dr_Asik]

There is a logical disconnect, though. How can you believe that the Church has the authority to define tenants of faith but then deny she used this authority properly when it comes to the Assumption? It defeats the reasoning behind why the Church has the authority in the first place?

That's exactly the "slippery slope" argument I described and that I answered in the next 4 paragraphs. I can make this distinction because I understand why the authority of the Church exists and what it covers, and I can understand that some things are core articles of Christian beliefs and some aren't, and that it's not as clear-cut as the Church was attempting to paint it around the time of Vatican 1.

Edited June 28, 2014 by Dr_Asik

[Maggyie]

But isn't excommunication a canonical process? Even the type you do to yourself? From what I read even excommunication doesn't render you "non Catholic" just a Catholic whose relationship with God and the Church is badly damaged.

[Fidei Defensor]

That's exactly the "slippery slope" argument I described and that I answered in the next 4 paragraphs. I can make this distinction because I understand why the authority of the Church exists and what it covers, and I can understand that some things are core articles of Christian beliefs and some aren't, and that it's not as clear-cut as the Church was attempting to paint it around the time of Vatican 1.

You should wander your way to the Assumption of Mary thread so we can discuss the issue further, or to the teaching authority thread. Or both.

[Perigrina]

But isn't excommunication a canonical process? Even the type you do to yourself? From what I read even excommunication doesn't render you "non Catholic" just a Catholic whose relationship with God and the Church is badly damaged.

 

There are two kinds of excommunication - automatic and imposed.  If you deliberately, with malice and full understanding (and maybe some other things I'm forgetting) commit one of the seven offences that causes automatic excommunication, you are no longer a member of the Church until it is revoked.  You are still Catholic in this sense that the mark of baptism remains on the soul.

 

 

Edited June 28, 2014 by Perigrina

[AccountDeleted]

But isn't excommunication a canonical process? Even the type you do to yourself? From what I read even excommunication doesn't render you "non Catholic" just a Catholic whose relationship with God and the Church is badly damaged.

 
It doesn't render you non-Catholic, you are correct, and it is designed to be medicinal, with the hope that the person will come back into full communion with the Church.
 
 

Roman Catholic Church


In Roman Catholic canon law, excommunication is a censure and thus a "medicinal penalty" intended to invite the person to change behavior or attitude, repent, and return to full communion.^%5B1%5D It is not an "expiatory penalty" designed to make satisfaction for the wrong done, much less a "vindictive penalty" designed solely to punish.
Excommunication can be either latae sententiae (automatic, incurred at the moment of committing the offense for which canon law imposes that penalty) or ferendae sententiae(incurred only when imposed by a legitimate superior or declared as the sentence of an ecclesiastical court).^%5B2%5D
Excommunication was once considered to sever someone from the Catholic Church. The Code of Canon Law of 1917 maintained that disposition, declaring that excommunication excluded a person from the communion of the faithful.^%5B3%5D The 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law removed this statement from the account of the effects of excommunication in the Catholic Church.^%5B4%5D Thus in current Catholic canon law, excommunicated Catholics - unless they cease for some other reason to belong to the Church - are still Catholics and remain bound by obligations such as attending Mass, even though they are barred from receiving the Eucharist and from taking an active part in the liturgy (reading, bringing the offerings, etc.).^%5B5%5D They are urged to retain a relationship with the Church, as the goal is to encourage them to repent and return to active participation in its life.
All excommunicated persons are barred from participating in the liturgy in a ministerial capacity (e.g., as a reader if a layperson or as a deacon or priest if a clergyman) and from receiving the Eucharist or other sacraments, but they are not barred from attending these (e.g., an excommunicated person may not receive the Eucharist but is not barred from attending Mass). They are also forbidden to exercise any ecclesiastical office or the like.^%5B6%5D
These are the only effects for those who have incurred a latae sententiae excommunication. For instance, a priest may not refuse Communion publicly to those who are under an automatic excommunication, as long as it has not been officially declared to have been incurred by them, even if the priest knows that they have incurred it.^%5B7%5D On the other hand, if the priest knows that excommunication has been imposed on someone or that an automatic excommunication has been declared (and is no longer merely an undeclared automatic excommunication), he is forbidden to administer Holy Communion to that person.^%5B8%5D (see canon 915).
Other effects of an excommunication that has been imposed or declared are:

•  
• an obligation on others to prevent the excommunicated person from acting in a ministerial capacity in the liturgy or, if this proves impossible, to suspend the liturgical service;
• invalidity of acts of ecclesiastical governance by the excommunicated person.^%5B9%5D

In the Catholic Church, excommunication is normally resolved by a declaration of repentance, profession of the Creed (if the offense involved heresy), or renewal of obedience (if that was a relevant part of the offending act) by the excommunicated person and the lifting of the censure (absolution) by a priest or bishop empowered to do this. "The absolution can be in the internal (private) forum only, or also in the external (public) forum, depending on whether scandal would be given if a person were privately absolved and yet publicly considered unrepentant."^%5B10%5D Since excommunication excludes from reception of the sacraments, absolution from excommunication is required before absolution can be given from the sin that led to the censure. In many cases, the whole process takes place on a single occasion in the privacy of the confessional. For some more serious wrongdoings, absolution from excommunication is reserved to a bishop, another ordinary, or even the Pope. These can delegate a priest to act on their behalf.

 

 

edited to add source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication#Roman_Catholic_Church

Edited June 28, 2014 by nunsense

[Perigrina]

 
edited to add source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication#Roman_Catholic_Church

 

One can't really expect Wikipedia to get the fine points right.  I noticed that this bit was unclear:

 

The Code of Canon Law of 1917 maintained that disposition, declaring that excommunication excluded a person from the communion of the faithful. The 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law removed this statement from the account of the effects of excommunication in the Catholic Church. Thus in current Catholic canon law, excommunicated Catholics - unless they cease for some other reason to belong to the Church - are still Catholics and remain bound by obligations such as attending Mass, even though they are barred from receiving 

 

Canon Law speaks only in juridical terms.  So yes, excommunicated people belong to the Church in terms of what laws pertain to them.  This does not overrule the encyclical I quoted earlier which stated that the excommunicated are not members of the Church. That is the theological reality.

[AccountDeleted]

Wikipedia usually gets it's Catholic information straight from the Catholic Encylopedia, so I had no problems understanding it, but it does often get things wrong, so perhaps this article explains it even better since it is about a book written by a canon lawyer. I am only putting an extract of it the interview here because it is a long one, but there is a link to the article of the interview, and one can always buy his book I suppose as well. Disclaimer: I have highlighted certain parts of the interview, but I have not read the book yet.

 

The topic of excommunication is obviously so complex and so misunderstood that Ed Peters had to write a whole book about it! :)

 

Ed Peters is pretty much an expert on canon law and I love his blog  http://canonlawblog.wordpress.com/

 

 

as well as another one about canon law by Cathy Caridi  http://canonlawmadeeasy.com/

 

I am not a Church Scholar or canon lawyer, so this information is basic enough for me, and there is also a whole section on the Catholic Encyclopedia about excommunication. 

 

EDITOR'S NOTE (May 16, 2007): This interview was originally published on IgnatiusInsight.com on November 6, 2006. In light of recent statements by Pope Benedict XVI about pro-abortion politicians and excommunication (in the context of a trip to Mexico and South America), as well as remarks by other Church leaders and by certain American politicians, I'm posting it again for readers of this site. 
 

IgnatiusInsight.com: What would you say are the most common misconceptions about excommunication? Why are they so prevalent, even among Catholics?

Peters: Let's start with your second question. There are two factors behind the prevalence of the misconceptions about excommunication: first is the complexity of the subject matter itself, of course, and the second is the lower average level of catechesis that today's Catholics bring to the dicussion. It is harder for people to understand the notion of excommunication if they have insufficient appreciation of the underlying concept of sin, or of what membership in the Church implies, or what kind of authority the Church has from Christ, and so on. Again, all factors leading me to write the book.

IgnatiusInsight.com: And the most common misperceptions?

Peters: I'd say there are two, maybe three.

First, there is the idea that excommunication kicks one out of the Church. That is not right. There are ways to cancel one's Church membership, but excommunication isn't one of them. The analogy I use to explain it is that of a felon serving a long prison term; he's in prison, but he remains a citizen bound by the laws of his country. If he, say, owns property upon which he incurs taxes while in prison, he still owns the property and is still liable for the tax from prison; if he commits a crime in prison, he can be prosecuted for it, and so on. A felon loses certain important rights, obviously, like freedom of movement and the right to vote, but he is still a citizen. Similarly, an excommunicated person is still a member of the Church, but he or she has lost certain key rights attached to Church membership and is cut off from many of the activities and benefits of the Church.

The second misconception is that people who die excommunicated go to hell. Maybe they do, and maybe they don't, but we don't know with certainty either way. In any case, the Church does not claim to exercise jurisdiction over the dead, and one's final fate is determined by God based on the life one leads. Of course, appearing before God for judgment in the state of excommunication from His Church on earth is not a good thing.

The third misconception is sort of complicated. Still want it?

IgnatiusInsight.com: I am going to post this interview on InsightInsight.com, and as you know, our readers are among the brightest people on earth. So...

Peters: Okay, let's go. Basically, the third misconception is this: many people think that, because a given Catholic committed an action for which automatic excommunication is the penalty (for example, heresy, schism, abortion), the penalty was actually incurred in that case. That's not necessarily true, but the reasons behind my claim require us getting into Canons 18, 1323, and 1324, among others, canons that contain a startling list of factors that mitigate or even remove liability for canonical crimes. Now taken individually, these exceptions to penal liability make sense, but when read as a whole, as we have to do, they make it much more difficult to determine whether an automatic excommunication was actually incurred in a specific case.

So what happens in cases where canon law seems to impose automatic excommunication? Invariably, the discussion in such cases turns to the technicalities of canon law, instead of staying focused on the offensive behavior that gave rise to the discussion. Many canonists believe that the automatic aspect of excommunicable offenses is actually hindering the effectiveness of the law today, and they would prefer to see the automatic aspect of the penalty shelved. They note that no modern legal system has what amounts to an "automatic conviction" upon the commission of a crime, that the long list of exceptions to automatic penalties substantially lessens the chances that such penalties are really incurred in most cases, and that the Eastern Code of Canon Law (which came out a few years after the 1983 Code for the Roman Church) has dropped automatic penalties entirely.

For all that, though, the 1983 Code says what it says. Our task is to apply the law as it is written as faithfully as we can. I treat all these issues in the book.

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2006/edpeters_excommun_nov06.asp

Edited June 28, 2014 by nunsense

[Maggyie]

One can't really expect Wikipedia to get the fine points right. I noticed that this bit was unclear:

[font='Open Sans']The Code of Canon Law of 1917 maintained that disposition, declaring that excommunication excluded a person from the communion of the faithful.[/font][font='Open Sans'] [/font]The 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law removed this statement from the account of the effects of excommunication in the Catholic Church. Thus in current Catholic canon law, excommunicated Catholics - unless they cease for some other reason to belong to the Church - are still Catholics and remain bound by obligations such as attending Mass, even though they are barred from receiving

Canon Law speaks only in juridical terms. So yes, excommunicated people belong to the Church in terms of what laws pertain to them. This does not overrule the encyclical I quoted earlier which stated that the excommunicated are not members of the Church. That is the theological reality.

That's where my confusion sets in. There is no such thing as "theological excommunication." It's a juridical term that exists in canon law only. Excommunication is a canonical thing, it can't be talked about or applied outside a juridical context. The juridical implications are the ones that matter, since dying in excommunication doesn't even for sure mean you are dying in a state of mortal sin (although in most cases they go together. But still).

I don't know how to make the encyclical you quoted fit with the current understanding of canon law/belonging to the body of Christ. It's one of those times where to have to strain and squint to make the Church's teaching all hang together apparently. Nihil quoted the Catholic Encyclopedia as to how the excommunicated are forbidden from public worship and that's the complete opposite of what's encouraged today. So confusing.

[AccountDeleted]

That's where my confusion sets in. There is no such thing as "theological excommunication." It's a juridical term that exists in canon law only. Excommunication is a canonical thing, it can't be talked about or applied outside a juridical context. The juridical implications are the ones that matter, since dying in excommunication doesn't even for sure mean you are dying in a state of mortal sin (although in most cases they go together. But still).

I don't know how to make the encyclical you quoted fit with the current understanding of canon law/belonging to the body of Christ. It's one of those times where to have to strain and squint to make the Church's teaching all hang together apparently. Nihil quoted the Catholic Encyclopedia as to how the excommunicated are forbidden from public worship and that's the complete opposite of what's encouraged today. So confusing.

 

 

Maggie - Ed Peters mentioned that point. I like his final comment too but he clearly states that God has the final say.

 

The second misconception is that people who die excommunicated go to hell. Maybe they do, and maybe they don't, but we don't know with certainty either way. In any case, the Church does not claim to exercise jurisdiction over the dead, and one's final fate is determined by God based on the life one leads. Of course, appearing before God for judgment in the state of excommunication from His Church on earth is not a good thing.

[Perigrina]

That's where my confusion sets in. There is no such thing as "theological excommunication." It's a juridical term that exists in canon law only. Excommunication is a canonical thing, it can't be talked about or applied outside a juridical context. The juridical implications are the ones that matter, since dying in excommunication doesn't even for sure mean you are dying in a state of mortal sin (although in most cases they go together. But still).

I don't know how to make the encyclical you quoted fit with the current understanding of canon law/belonging to the body of Christ. It's one of those times where to have to strain and squint to make the Church's teaching all hang together apparently. Nihil quoted the Catholic Encyclopedia as to how the excommunicated are forbidden from public worship and that's the complete opposite of what's encouraged today. So confusing.

 

But there are theological statements about excommunication.  The branch of theology that considers the Church is called ecclesiology and this is what we are doing when we discuss membership in the Church. This is a subject where ecclesiology and Canon Law intersect  and so we can get apparent discrepancies because they look at things from different perspectives.  The exact wording in Mystici Corporis says that people are no longer members of the Church when they have "been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed".  This means that the Church does have the authority to say that a person is no longer a member of the Church. Historically this was a consequence of excommunication, but it has been changed.

 

The theological statement remains true.  The Church still has the authority to exclude people from membership.  Now, however, she does not exercise her authority in this way.  In the current situation she uses another approach. Doctrinal truths do not change, but Canon Law does.

 

Canon Law is relatively straight-forward when compared to ecclesiology (I said relatively. :) )  And the complexity of ecclesiology is not a new development caused by Vatican II.  Pretty much everyone agrees that those who are baptized, profess the Faith and are in communion with the Pope are members of the Church.  But then we need to explain how the people who have only one or two of the requirements are related to the Church.  There is also the question of how those who are in a state of mortal sin are related to the Church.  Etc.

 

Theologians have been disagreeing on these sorts of topics for centuries.  Sometimes one view wins out over the others and is made into doctrine. Even then, sometimes the explanatory models change. Sometimes the terminology changes. Sometimes the points of emphasis change. And the changes are not done on a whim but to deal with specific situations facing the Church.  There is a continuity of doctrine at the core, but it can be difficult to see.

 

Here is an interesting article about St. Robert Bellarmine, the most influential ecclesiologist at the time of the First Vatican Council; http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/jhardon_bellarmine_sept07.asp  Compare this description of his views on membership in the Church with the discussion that we have been having.

 

In general, however, when Bellarmine speaks of the Mystical Body, he has in mind only the first of its three branches, the Church Militant—or, in other words, the visible organization of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, in treating the delicate question of occult infidels, he refutes the doctrine of Calvin who held that, if a baptized person has lost the virtue of faith, in spite of his external profession of belief and conformity with Christian practice he is no longer a member of the organic Body of Christ. "It is certainly true," he admits, "that a sincere faith and not its mere external profession is required if we are to be internally united to the Body of Christ, which is the Church . . . . But even the man who makes only an outward profession along with the rest of the faithful is a true member, albeit a dry and dead member, of the Body of the Church." [5]

It follows, therefore, that the Mystical Body of Christ is the Roman Catholic Church, whose members are all those who have been baptized and who at least externally practice and profess the true faith. Commentators on theMystici Corporis make special note of the fact that, after centuries of controversy on the subject, the Pope has authoritatively approved Bellarmine's doctrine on the minimum essentials for membership in the Mystical Body—which reads like a paraphrase from the third book of St. Robert's De Conciliis. In the words of Pope Pius XII, "only those are really to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith and have not unhappily withdrawn from Body-unity, or for grave faults been excluded by legitimate authority. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one Body." [6]

 

John Wyclif, and after him the Protestants in general, allowed that all the justified in the state of grace, and only they, are members of the Mystical Body. Even Catholic theologians like de Soto and Cano, when they came to explain how sinners are members of the Body of Christ, gave them analogous membership and nothing more. They admitted that baptized persons in the state of sin may be called "the faithful" and "Christians," but only in the sense that they are somehow externally attached to the Body of the Church. "Not only the organs and limbs," they argued, "but also bodily secretions, the teeth, the hair, and such like, all belong to the body." Bellarmine refused to accept this view. "If what they say is true, the consequences are impossible. A wicked Pope then is not the Head of the Church, and other bishops, if they are in sin, are also not heads of their respective churches. For the head is not a bodily secretion or the hair, but a member of the body—indeed, its most important member."

"To solve the difficulty, therefore, we have to distinguish two senses in which a member of the body may be understood. It may be taken in the strict sense to designate the member in itself, in its essence and substance as a member. Or it may mean a member of the body in its capacity as a medium of activity through which the body operates. Thus, for example, the eye of a man and the eye of a horse are specifically different as substances or entities because they are radicated specially different souls. But as kinetic instruments they are specifically the same because both have the same end and object of their operation—both being directed to the sensible perception of color.

 

Note how he needs to use "member of the body" with two different meanings to get his point across.  That is typical of how nuanced the subject is.