I don’t think it’s being immature to want to be excommunicated. Some people may not want to have an affiliation with this or that. If there is something you are really against, you would want it to be known, and you sure wouldn’t want to be associated with something you were totally against. Maybe to some they may see it as making a dfference in some way…
My husband was baptized Catholic, and I know he wanted to be excommunicated. He just doesn’t want to be associated with the RCC in any way, shape, or form.
Well, can’t he just not go to church, and tell all his buddies and relatives that he doesn’t go to church? He could even take out a full-page ad in the New York Times expressing his break with the church. That should make his disassociation pretty clear. Why does the RCC have to participate by going through a meaning excommunication ritual?
Ultimately, doesn’t this hinge on being concerned about what other people think of you?
All of this discussion seems to point to something very important. It’s an individual choice to be part of a group, from glee club to organized religion. To remove oneself from said group is also a personal choice. In this case, it could be argued, a choice between the person and God.
What does it matter if a person is “officially” excommunicated from an organization they say they want nothing to do with? “Excuse me, I want to break away from you, you know, do my own thing, but I wanna make damn sure you know I don’t care about you anymore.” Also, if one is worried about becoming excommunicated, it would indicate a reluctance to leave entirely. After all, if one did not want to be a member of the catholic Church anymore, what would it matter if they wanted you or not? If you want out, you want out. So excommunication wouldn’t be a punishment or anything else.
Err, a meaningless excommunication ritual, of course.
In Seinfeldian terms, that means you have “hand”.
If your husband was baptized Catholic, and now he’s another religion, then he is excommunicated, isn’t he? Isn’t that sort of an automatic thing?
Precisely. I don’t really think that it would help the situation at all. In fact, I’d rather avoid it, for reasons below.
That was why I became concerned with the excommunication in the first place. Thank you for bringing that up.
Yes, but in my case, it could effect other things as well. Since the rest of my family is Catholic, it would be complicated, and they would see it as a dishonor to the family. It really doesn’t bother me as much that I have to stay with the church until I’m eighteen, but if others would get involved, and by some small chance I would be excommunicated, it could cause problems for me. It’s not really the excommunication I’m worried about, but the effects of it.
I’d have to agree with this. Making a show of leaving does strike me as immature. I could see someone doing this to get attention, or perhaps some newly converted fundie evangelical who wanted to embrace his newly-adopted hatred for the Catholic Church in an official manner.
BTW, it seems like some people in this thread are commenting as if they think that the OP wants to be excommunicated. The article linked to near the top of the thread took that sort of view, not the OP who actually didn’t want to be excommunicated and was asking the question from that viewpoint.
I do not think you have anything to worry about. Even when Bishop Bruskewitz made his big show of declaring people excommunicated, he made it clear that, in his mind,* they were excommunicating themselves. There was no effort to make a formal exercise of the act. For a formal declaration of excommunication, there actually has to be an official review of the situation, similar to a trial. The church simply has no interest in going through that much work simply to embarrass someone. Believe me, if the RCC never took the trouble to formally excommunicate Lefebvre, who was calling the pope and the cardinals nasty names, accusing them of heresy and apostasy, and violating a number of canon laws in the process, they are not going to expend a lot of energy to make your life more miserable.
I do hope that you and your family can come to some sort of rapprochement on this issue.
- And pretty much only in his mind, as the rest of the church did not go along with him.
Nah, arms get tired after a while.
And some Catholics don’t wear identifiable insignia (and too many people wear a cross), so you don’t even KNOW you’ve been talking to them for a while, and at that point you might as well just give up.
literatelady, were some of your fellow teen church members to actually go to a priest about this, I suspect it would go under the “gossip from church members” heading, and even if the priest did follow up on it, he would have to be some sort of corrupted person to take significant or negative action against you (probably would tell you to pray about it or read your Bible or something like that, unless he actually discussed it with you at length). My parents required me to go to mass as well. Having not been to confession for any number of years, I didnt’t have to worry about receiving the gifts of any particular spirit. It also gave me the occasional half hour of free time.
Regardless, perhaps you should go and commit a mortal sin* and not repent of it just so communion won’t affect your soul.
*Some of them are really quite unspectacular, in case anyone thought I was advocating that literatelady go shoot a cafeteria full of people. Grave matter, serious reflection, full consent of the will is all that’s required to make a sin mortal.
Personal request, Jersey, – elsewhere, where he can speak for himself, I’d very much like to hear his reasoning and feelings behind what you say in this last paragraph. Not in an effort to provoke argument but to understand his perspective.
Hmmm. I have to quibble a “bit” with this. There was no “formal excommunication” procedure initiated by Bruskewitz, but I think he went farther then saying “If you belong to group X, it’s my opinion that you have excommunicated yourself”.
From here
Maybe we’re quibbling over details, but the business about “you are forbidden to receive communion” seems to put a more umm “forceful” emphasis behind his “opinion”. I of course, don’t know to what extent the bishop could enforce such an edict.
For the intersted, there is a good summary of the bishop’s actions here.
Specifically, Canon 1318
Or perhaps some newly faithless atheist who wanted to express his hatred for all things religious and draw attention to himself. 
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t believe the Chuch could excommunicate him, since he wasn’t to my knowledge a Catholic.
Guy Who Isn’t Catholic: Grah! Me do Bad Stuff!
RCC: Oh Yeah!? Well, you can’t take part in the sacraments anymore!
Its very questionable as to whether hitler was even close to being Christian anymore, and for my money he wasn’t, nor were most of the Nazi leadership. The ordinary folks, Nazi or not, remained so. Except for the ones Hitler didn’t like and killed.
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No exactly true. Supposedly, Mussolini suggested that he be excommunicated (even though, as you suggested, it’s hard to imagine that Hitler thought of himself as a Catholic, by that point in his life)
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Hitler was raised Catholic, but I do not believe he ever practiced the religion as an adult. (He did make a few political statements asserting his membership, but he made as many or more statements indicating that he considered religion, in General, and the Catholic Church in particular, to be an obstacle to Germany’s "destiny.) I think that it is telling, in regards to the Mussolini story, that Mussolini’s suggestion would have been delivered to Pope Pius XI who was rather firecely anti-Fascist and anti-racist.
Excommunication is used by the church to tell someone who thinks they are Catholic, but who is acting outside the norms of the Churchg that they must shape up or they cannot be a member. There is no point in excommunicating someone who has no intention of remaining Catholic.
LOL, quite true, quite true. Some atheists do really make a show of it and harp incessantly about their atheism as much as a born-again’er does about his/her fundie-ism. I like to think I avoided that for the most part, but then my parents were American Baptists, a pretty liberal church, so it wasn’t all that big a deal.
tomndebb: have they excommunicated the sedevacantists then? Seems like they would meet the criteria.
Only by announcing that people who hold that position have put themselves outside the church. I have never seen a reference to a formal excommunication of any among that group. (Even when Lefevbre ordained some bishops, in clear violation of his authority, the Vatican merely issued a statement that they were saddened by his decision to step outside the church.)
So pretty much, according to Cecil, “once a Catholic, always a Catholic?”
I passed your request on to him.