Excommunication

Father H, with some pouted observations on the penalty of excommunication.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment

Some people have been wondering about the existence of Excommunication as a remedy available under Canon Law.

I can see why these anxieties have arisen. During a period of ecclesial tyranny like the present, such a penalty has the potential to be very dangerous. Perhaps it is less likely that PF would impose such a penalty ... after all, it might damage his carefully crafted PR image ... than that the theologically illiterate sycophants and careerists who are cheerfully riding along with this regime might do so in order to demonstrate the degree of their pathetic submission (I am employing, from "theologically" down to "submission", Cardinal Mueller's admirably frank and useful recent terminology).

But I do not agree with suggestions that excommunication should therefore be abolished. It is an essential (and biblical) concept. And, with regard to a particular priest who, according to media reports, has been excommunicated in the archdiocese of Palermo, I would rather not express opinions. That is because I know nothing about the case. I would remind traddies that it is dangerous to lionise anybody ... and that there are nutters in Traddidom just as there are (in such generous abundance!!) in Trendidom.

And, even in such unusual times as these when the evidence of Diabolic involvement grows daily more obvious, I think our fall-back position should be to trust the pastors in the Church until and unless we have good and clear evidence to justify doing otherwise.

                                        BUT

But there is one reform which I do regard as highly and most urgently necessary, both in issuing a sentence of excommunication and in asserting that a particular person has incurred such a penalty latae sententiae.

A very precise explanation should be publicly issued, both in canonical and theological terms, of why such a penalty is being imposed or discerned. Such an explanation should be prepared to run the risk of being too lengthy and too detailed and, if necessary, too technical. It should be utterly clear and should avoid woffly managerial episcobabble and convenient ambivalence, as well as the condescendingly 'clericalist' manner which seems to come so often with the Grace of Episcopacy.

As far as I am aware, Palermo has not done this.

Both the person concerned, and the Holy People of God, have a right to such facts. And if penalties also have the purpose of deterrence, it is proper that other people should know clearly what they should avoid in order not to suffer the same penalty. And academic communities, theological and canonical, should have the materials upon which to base an informed judgement about the validity and prudence of the proceedings. (There is no space for the fuehrerprinzip in a Christian community.)


This is what we of the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition sometimes call ACCOUNTABILITY.

I hope it is not 'cultural imperialism' to commend it to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies!