Letters to the Editor
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Not so rare
In Canada at least Charlie Angus has been recently denied communion. Of course, the fact that he is a New Democratic Party member (think European social democrat) may well have influenced that decision. This was over the same sex marriage bill. In Canada we have no legislation concerning abortion. The previous legislation got smacked down in the courts and never replaced.
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What about divorce?
My mother was raised catholic and when she was very young her father was nearly excommunicated for getting a divorce! The local arch-bishop had to write a letter to the vatican to get them to make an exception. When it was discovered that it was his wife that had initiated the divorce, he was reinstated. My mother walked away from the faith back in college largely due to these arbitrary rules and has since never regretted it. She believes we were given a conscience to make our own moral decisions, not to have someone else make them for us.
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@fighttheocracy
You don't get excommunicated for a civil divorce. You get excommunicated for getting remarried while your first marriage is still considered religiously valid, i.e. it has not been annulled.
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Education
Such pronouncements make good headlines, but they do not intimidate well-educated Catholics. Increasingly, we know canon law as well as we know civil law.
Perhaps the Catholic Church's greatest contribution to civilization has been their promotion of education, originally for the clergy then for the wealthy and today for nearly everyone. This has turned around and bit them on the ass many times, most notably with a monk named Martin Luther.
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Re: What does a girl have to do to get excommunicated?
The bishops are being pretty wise, I think, by not excommunicating a lot of people these days. Makes for poor press. Frances says it is hard to excommunicate yourself. Actually, Frances, it is quite easy. Just admit how far out the Catholic mainstream you are and join some other church that doesn't gag over the thought of abortion violence. Hombre
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Why not join one of those other Christian based faiths?
They're all pretty much the same.
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You need to be a nobody.
I would have to think that in today's world, the last thing the Catholic church needs is a famous person to be excommunicated and then generally seen to be OK afterwards, due to the global mass media we have now.
Excommunication has been wielded like a club by the church throughout the ages, and just as surely the weight and heft of that club has been greatly, if not completely diminished. It would not be in the church's best interest to advertise that fact.
Not to mention with their declining numbers, they can't afford to be kicking people out. HA!
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fightthetheocracy, something interesting I heard at a talk yesterday
She believes we were given a conscience to make our own moral decisions, not to have someone else make them for us.
It's interesting that you should put it this way. I attended a lecture yesterday on social decision making. It looks like the majority of human beings could be born to look toward their peer group when making decisions. Only a minority of people seem to orient toward making their choices independently of their peers.
I first heard about this idea during Abu Ghraib. An article in the New York Times quoted some experts on the whistle blowing pehnomenon as saying that only a minority of human beings really derive their moral sense of direction internally.
One can think of evolutionary reasons for this. A society that contained only devout nonconformists would probably turn out to be unstable, whereas a society that contained only dedicated conformists would probably become too rigidly stable to adapt to unforeseen threats.
In that picture, the equilibrium between conformists and nonconformists would be adjusted by evolution to some more or less optimal ratio. Since, as we saw with Abu Ghraib, a little nonconformism can go a long way, we end up with a minority of nonconformists. Just enough to keep society from becoming too hard wired.
Maybe that's why people invented religion and also why you can't stand it.
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Does the Church matter any more?
I just dug up a copy of Kavenaugh's A Modern Priest Looks At His Outdated Church and was reminded about how powerful the Catholic Church was back then. Kavenaugh's leaving the priesthood and his personal struggles afterwards were a reminder of that ominous business of excommunication.
Now? The last person who cared about Mass in my family was my late mother. We had a Catholic funeral for my father, but for Mom, we four children decided it wasn't necessary or desireable. We only went to Mass to take her for her own pleasure. By then, Alzheimer's prevented her from learning or believing anything about the pedophile scandals or the Church "taking care" of women impregnated by priests, so we decided to let her keep her Catholic fantasies while she still lived.
By the way, to the person who said "all Christian churches are the same," remember that the Catholic Church is like the Mafia or being a comic book collector; you never really leave. But, while we may retain much of the Catholic philosophy and its metaphysics, we can't support the abuses, corruption and hypocracy of the Church itself.
The Catholic Church hasn't made a difference in movie ratings, education or national politics for decades now. Why should being excommunicated, or not, make much of a difference to Ms. Kissling?
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How can I get off the official rolls?
I'd have to disagree that no catholic wants to be ex-communicated.
According to the vatican there are 1.1 billion catholics in the world; including, I assume, me. Here's the problem: I'm not a catholic. Though I was baptised and received holy communion (and even named after the Virgin Mary!), I have zero connection to the church and find its policies regarding abortion, queers, women, and contraception both laughable and reprehensible on many levels. Please count me out. But, yet, I'm still counted in the 1.1 billion (plus one). How do I officially get off the rolls? Anyone want to join me? Build a movement?
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We all know who the Church should excommunicate
I'm saying the following as a practicing Catholic btw - how can the Church dare to excommunicate anyone after the way the whole pedophile priest scandal was handled?
I'm sure most Catholics would be willing to look the other way if the Swiss Guard rounded up every molester in vestments and smuggled them CIA style to Vatican City in unmarked black jets. There they would get the full medieval excommunication treatment - extreme torture to get them to confess their sins, followed by mass burnings at the stake in Saint Peter's Square to purge their souls.