Religion
is a kind of united society.
Excommunication is putting a person out of their religion. The Catholic ceases to be a member of the
Church when he or she is excommunicated.
Who
are members of the Catholic Church?
Tradition
in the form of Church Father St Cyprian states: "If someone does not hold
fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If
he should desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he
still be confident that he is in the Church?" (The Unity of the Catholic
Church 4, 251 AD). This is the idea that
one must hold true to the faith of Peter and states that the Church was built
on the chair of Peter as teacher. It
does not however imply that the bishop of Rome is head of the Church and infallible
only that he safeguards the faith.
The
Church teaches that those people are
members of the Catholic Church who have been validly baptized, and who have not
been excluded from the Catholic Church by means of heresy, schism, or
excommunication. Pope Pius XII teaches in his encyclical Mystici Corporis:
"Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have
been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate
as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate
authority for grave faults committed. 'For in one spirit' says the Apostle,
'were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or
free.' As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one
Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And
therefore if a man refuse to hear the Church let him be considered - so the
Lord commands - as a heathen and a publican. It follows that those who are
divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body,
nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit." Therefore in the eyes of the Roman Catholic
Church, which is the one, true Church, there are only the following categories
of people:
(1) Catholics, i.e., those who
are members of the Roman Catholic Church;
(2) heretics, that is, validly
baptized people who have left the Church because they adhere publicly to false
teachings and/or non-Catholic sects;
(3) schismatics, that is, validly
baptized people who have left the Church because they refuse to recognize the
primacy of the Roman Pontiff, or belong to sects which profess the same;
(4) excommunicates, those who
have been ejected from the Church by declaratory sentence of excommunication;
(5) infidels, that is, the
unbaptized, who fall into two subcategories: (a) Jews, whose error of
resistance to the true Messias has a special name, that of perfidy, and (b)
heathens, that is, pagans, idolaters, and people who have no religion at all.
Excommunication is unbiblical. The Old Testament ordered certain sinners to be expelled from the community (Leviticus 17:10). But a person can be expelled from the Catholic community without being expelled from the Catholic Church. For example, if Catholics were forbidden to speak to A that would not mean that A was no longer a Catholic. Even in the New Testament texts that allegedly support excommunication there is no trace of the notion of putting a person out of the Church (1 Corinthians 5; Matthew 18; 2 Thessalonians 3:14,15). However, the Church says that when Peter called Jesus the ‘Christ the Son of the Living God Jesus told him that whatever he binds on earth will be bound in Heaven meaning that whoever he excommunicates on earth will be excommunicated in Heaven.
Jesus Christ gave instructions for the disfellowshipping of obstinate sinners in Matthew 18. Sinners who did not repent after a warning by the Church were to be treated like tax collectors or Gentiles - cast out and ignored. He then added that whatever the Church binds on earth is bound in Heaven. This has to mean that he and the saints and God and the angels will ignore and ostracise the sinner as well. Otherwise why not just say, "I will respect what you bind on earth but that does not mean I will necessarily approve".
2 John 7-11 states on apostolic authority that many deceivers have gone out to the world who do not believe Jesus came in the flesh. He warned that the people must not become so progressive that they are no longer rooted in the teaching of Jesus. So whoever does this loses God (verse 9). He said that if anybody comes who does not bring the teaching of Christ, that person must not be accepted into the house or greeted for whoever greets him shares in the evil he is teaching. The note on this command in the New American Bible page 276 states that the command is about the life and death struggle between Christianity and Docetism (the doctrine that Jesus was not a man but a phantom acting like a man). There was a danger Docetism would win so the Church found it necessary to have nothing at all to do with the Docetists. But the epistles of John are confident that the Holy Spirit is the best teacher and so powerful (1 John 2:20). The Church never indicates that the struggle was the reason for the command. Indeed, a plan would have been set up so that missionaries and ministers of the Church could counteract the Docetists and to inoculate believers against their claims. The New Testament expected all believers to be missionaries. So the Church went out of its way then to keep believers from listening to Docetists or having any contact with them. But if we read the letter we see that Docetists were condemned first and then it was anybody who was so progressive in Christianity that they started corrupting the teaching of Christ by adding to it or changing it who were condemned. Then the letter bans associating with such and even greeting such. It is the progressives more than the Docetists that the apostle is worried about. The letter then plainly indicates that you are not to welcome or associate with or greet any believer who wishes to add to or change the gospel of Christ.
Some insist that the ban on greeting reflects the social custom of the times that greeting took a long time. They think that to greet the heretics was a bad idea for since greetings were long and personal it meant the heretic would have to try and inspire you with their heresies. This is rubbish. The Christians and pagans would have greeted each other all the time. Also the letters were written to people in Ephesus. They didn't use the long greeting custom. Christians were missionaries so greetings being long would be a reason to greet! The apostle banned Christians speaking to heretics. Wishing a heretic well on a mission to a Christian would mean, "I hope you see the light and come back safe". It would not imply disloyalty to Christianity. Christians and probably Christian heretics used the custom of greeting with a "holy kiss".
WHEN CRITICS ASK, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor Books, Illinois ,1992 page 544, 545 tells us that the epistle is banning believers from giving food and shelter to heretical preachers for that helps them to do their job of drawing people from the faith. Others say the epistle means a church greeting by greeting. None of that is even hinted at in the letter. They have nothing to do with interpreting it. Besides the heretics who were Docetists and libertines would have been very welcome among the pagans anyway so the Christians giving them food and shelter would hardly have registered on the Christian issues scale. Most heresy back then was about Christians trying to mix their religion with pagan ideas.
The apostle is forbidding one to speak to any heretics at all - friendliness towards them is forbidden. He simply says greeting is banned and the one who greets shares in the evil of the heretic. He means people feel good when people are friendly to them so greeting the heretics is helping to make the heretics more devoted and happier in what they do. This is the simplest and therefore the correct interpretation.
Christian scholars are puzzled how the apostle could ban greeting and say that being nice to the heretic is encouraging their evil when the apostle writes so much about love. He writes only about loving your brethren in the Church - he never mentions loving outsiders. He says as well that if people truly belong to the Church they will never leave it meaning those who adopt forbidden beliefs do so in bad faith (1 John 2:19). One cannot lose or change one's authentic Christian faith without sin. Such an attitude does not bode well for those who wish the apostle to teach that we must love everybody! Anyway, it is possible that the apostle sees the not speaking to heretics as tough love. But we must remember 1 John chapter 5:16. It says that you should pray for sinners but not for sinners who you see committing a deadly sin - meaning there is no point in praying for them. The letter wants them abandoned to the Devil. It is thought to mean suicide, dying without turning to God or apostasy - leaving the faith or any number of these sins. The context is about praying and winning sinners back so it probably means apostasy.
The
Church says that whether or not a person is a member depends on whether or not
they intend to be members. If Catholic
Johnny considers himself to be no longer a Catholic then he is out of the
Church, he has left it. So it seems to
us that if a person does something that expels from the Church in good faith
that person cannot incur excommunication.
For example, if a Catholic bishop thinks Masons are running the Church
and decides to make new bishops without papal mandate to protect the faith, the
pope will excommunicate him but it will not be a true or binding
excommunication. If the excommunicated
are in the wrong and think they are in the right, the excommunication cannot
work validly for they are not separating from the true Church for they don’t
intend to.
The
Church preaches that she can’t throw anybody out – people do that
themselves. She only decrees that a
person has quit. But this contradicts
her new doctrine that she cannot judge anybody for what is in the mind and
heart of another cannot be known. A
religion that claims the right to declare somebody excommunicated must also
claim to be infallible in everything when it is able to know who has heartily
divorced themselves from it. Thus, the
Church must accept heretics and other offenders to be on the safe side for she
is not allowed to judge in case she is wrong.
The Catholic Church cannot say that the true Church is a society united
in professing the one creed and in government for it makes no sense. It contradicts her concept of the Church as
invisible.
The
Church excommunicates people for heresy.
Heresy is believing something that contradicts your religion or philosophy,
it is what you are not allowed to believe.
An
insincere heresy is no heresy at all so heretics have to be sincere. The Church is throwing people out for being
sincere! This is not fair so her
excommunications are invalid.
You
can reject one principle of your religion or school of philosophy and accept
the rest. But suppose a religion claims
to be revealed by the Lord and that you believe that the reliability of the
whole thing depends on everything being true.
To hold that even one doctrine it has is untrue is to say that it is not
revealed by the Lord and accordingly, it is abandoning faith in the whole
lot. To deny or doubt one doctrine is to
deny or cast doubt on the rest.
Both the Catholic Church and the
Protestants agree that unity of intention to belong to God’s Church is what
makes the Church one not visible unity.
So two people in different denominations can belong to the one true
Church.
A
person who is sincere but wrong belongs to the true Church implicitly. If she or he wants to be in the religion that
is right then she or he is in it because of this desire because that is the
best she or he can do. Schism – in canon
law, this is breaking with the pope and the true Church – is impossible when
you think you are right. Canon law in
Canon 1323 actually states that anyone who does something that carries a
sentence of excommunication while thinking that he is right does not incur the
sentence. If you do it mistakenly
thinking that the pope is wrong or a fraud then you are not breaking away from
the pope but from your false perception of the pope. If you know he is right but won’t admit it
and break away then you have left the Roman Church. And if there is no schism without conscious
unjust defiance then the unity proof – that the true Church is a visible and
real unity - is meaningless for all Churches are really one Church in which
there are differences. They are no more
schismatic than two Roman priests who fall out are.
If
the Church excommunicates anybody who is not in the wrong and should not be
excommunicated then she is breaking away from him and not him from her. He becomes the true Church while she becomes
a false one and ceases to be the true Church.
Incidentally,
the Church says that God wants Christians to be all in one Church and would
never sanction schism for he said he wouldn’t (John 17:20,21). Jesus wanted no one to leave or divide the
Church of the truth though if that Church departed from the faith he would have
approved of the loyal sheep coming out of it to continue the right
religion. That is not schism on the part
of the sheep because they are the right religion. Those responsible for the apostasy are the
breakaways. The fact that one tiny
divine intervention would have averted or forestalled the Great Schism between
the Western and Eastern Church and that it didn’t come proves that Christianity
is untrue. This massive schism arose
over a simple misunderstanding.
It is unfair for a Church that rejects its own through the evil of excommunication to create ecumenical relations with other religions. The result can only be the appearance of unity but not real unity. Unity cannot thrive where discrimination does.
It was reported in The Universe, Sunday 12 October 2008, that there was a bishops conference in Poland that laid down guidelines for Catholics who wished to renounce their baptism and depart from the Church. The conference stated in a 22 page document, "The duty to stay in communion with the Church is violated in the most radical way by a Catholic who carries out an act of separation from it, either as an apostate who totally rejects the Christian faith, or as a schismatic who refuses to recognise the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. This is why persons in peril of committing such a deed should be instructed and encouraged in love to give up their intention of leaving the Church. But their natural right to decide their path in life should be upheld". The Church said that it was "pained by every sin" of leaving the Church. The document spelled out procedures that were deemed necessary. The person had to put their decision to leave the Church down in writing in front of the parish priest and and two witnesses. Poland at the time had a third of all Catholics attending Mass. 95% deemed themselves Catholics. Clearly the Church thinks that to become a non-Catholic of any kind is to defy duty and to commit sin. The Church speaks of a natural right to decide their path. The Church speaks of a right! Rights are based on justice and nobody has the right to knowingly leave a true religion! The Church should speak of a natural freedom that must be granted but not of a right.
The Church believes in using the vitandus excommunication. This form requires that the excommunicated person be treated as invisible and non-existent except when in serious danger of death. It requires that the family cut the person off. The vitandus excommunication is not bothered with today. The reason is not that the Church has repudiated it - the Bible and Jesus themselves decreed that it must be used. The reason is that in today's society it is not workable. In other words, the Church does not bother with it for attempts to enforce it will only be met with defiance and howls of laughter. Its a splendid example of disobedience being rewarded. Why not allow contraception when hardly anybody believes the Church teaching that it is wrong? Nobody has the right to call themselves a Catholic if they don't believe in God and the Church's authority to issue a vitandus excommunication. The Church should have the honesty to tell them they are Protestants not Catholics.
The Roman Catholic Church says its laws of excommunication and Church rules only apply to Catholics. But Protestants are treated even worse than excommunicated Catholics. Protestants are barred from the Catholic sacraments except marriage and the anointing of the sick under strict conditions. The Protestants might not have got a decree putting them outside the Church but they are essentially excommunicated nevertheless. They are treated as if they are excommunicate. The Church works harder to get excommunicated Catholics back to the fold and encourages them than it does Protestants. Protestants are subject to prejudice as well.
Excommunication is as much nonsense as Church membership. It depends so much on labelling. For example, some silly old men who are irrelevant to normal life decide what makes a Christian and exclude anybody that doesn't fit the bill.
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Is Christianity a Cult?