The guy may be a layperson, but he seems to be making a fairly reasonable point.
1.) Heresy is punishable by *latae sententiae *excommunication.
2.) The Catholic Church (officially) teaches that “the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral.” Always. *No *exceptions for saving someone else’s life.
3.) You are firmly disagreeing with the RCC’s official position: a position that has been repeatedly clarified and reaffirmed by the Church.
4.) Therefore, you are a heretic. Therefore, you have excommunicated yourself.
Do you think your bishop would have had a different answer if you had asked if you thought you could conform to Catholic teachings while killing a homeless man once a week? Because based on the official beliefs of the RCC, any kind of direct abortion is just as much murder as that is.
ETA: I’d be interested to hear what level of heresy your bishop would decree would be in line with the RCC’s position on *latae sententiae *excommunication.
Please provide a cite for the claim that every single disagreement with an “official position” is heresy. It isn’t, and this is where your claim fails.
Moreover, Can. 391 ß1 provides that the diocesan bishop exercises legislative, executive and judicial power over his subjects, in accordance with the law. Unless the remittance of the offense is reserved to the Holy See, he may decide a particular case. So in effect, you’re urging me to adopt a view that the actual guy responsible for judging such matters (in my case, anyway) has already expressly rejected.
And even assuming that there was no such ruling, I have a defense of invincible ignorance on the matter. Under this theory, I would be objectively in heresy, but not formally in heresy. My pride doesn’t relish presenting this alternative defense, but it’s inarguably an applicable defense to the charge of heresy.
This is pretty basic canon law stuff, you know.
Therefore, I haven’t.
But there are other distinctions between the two cases.
I almost hate to say it, but: Cite? We’re relying on your word that you are so close to your diocesan bishop that you could call him up cold and have him make a pronouncement on canon law. (I mean, really: I don’t know about your bishop, but in my diocese Bishop Kmiec has rather more pressing matters than resolving messageboard disputes.) We’re also relying on your word about what he said.
I think it’s fair to say that that’s a burden of proof that you would not let fly.
Come to think of it, Bricker, I’m starting to get suspicious.
I posted the followup to Shot From Guns’s post at 1:19 PM. You responded, claiming that you had already spoken to your diocesan bishop AND that you had researched Ronald L. Conte Jr.'s background AND that the diocesan bishop had read the link you sent him AND that he had responded to you, at 1:28 PM. So, apparently, in nine minutes, you had time to read my post, call the bishop (who apparently had nothing better to do than resolve a canon law puzzler), get a response from him, and post back to this message board. And even if all those things really did happen, how much thought and study of the law could have possibly gone into the bishop’s response in nine minutes? It’s almost as if he was just waiting by the phone for somebody to call him to ask a very specific question about a complicated case about a specific abortion, heresy, and excommunication, doesn’t it?
I don’t know about you, but I sure am glad that your diocesan bishop is available on nine minutes’ notice to resolve a messageboard dispute. I’m sure that Shot For Guns will heartily accept your explanation that the bishop says that you are in the clear.
“Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.” I’d say the sacredness of all life is a pretty fucking central “truth which is to be believed” of the RCC. Other than the fact that it’s you who’s saying it, why do you believe that your rejection of this central and affirmed RCC truth doesn’t qualify as heresy?
So, how is your position here invincible ignorance rather than “deliberately fostered” or an “intentional refusal to understand or consider” the topic?
Deliberately rejecting a central tenet of Catholicism simply because it is inconvenient to you because of a clash between logical ethics and Catholic ethics doesn’t seem to be to be a case of invincible ignorance; or else any disagreement with the Church could be so.
Fine. What if you were insisting that if you and another person were in a car crash, and as a result of that crash you needed a heart transplant immediately, but the only option for the donor was the other guy, and he was brain dead, but he’d never signed an organ donation consent form, but you wanted them to give you his heart anyway?
Yes, I have his personal cell phone. He was in the middle of Daily Mass, but he dropped everything he was doing and took the call. I’m just that important.
Or… and this is just crazy, now… I asked the question by e-mail, well before the link was posted, after Shot With Guns first raised the spectre of automatic excommunication for holding this belief, yesterday afternoon.
And I got an answer this morning.
And there is nothing particularly complicated about the question.
There are several ecclesiastical trial results that confirm this point, but so far as I am aware, none of them are on-line, so a citation may not be of much value.
I have added the bolding to the quote above to illustrate which provision I wish you to focus your attention upon.
Let me be clearer about this, lest we get sidetracked into a mess. “The link” in my post above refers to the replacement post link, not the original Conte link. I had missed it at first, but found myself worrying more and more about what was meant by the statement, so I found the original post from Shot From Guns.
I’m sure she was having a merry time with this, but an excommunication, or even the hint of one, worries me greatly.
Wait a minute. You said yesterday that you “most certainly did not excommunicate (yourself)” (post #68). Then, when Shot From Guns asked for proof to the same, you cited an e-mail (which, again, we have not seen) from your diocesan bishop, which you received, according to post #86, this morning.
Now you’re saying that “even the hint of” excommunication worries you greatly. But apparently yesterday you were so unworried about excommunication that you were able to state without reservation that you “did not” excommunicate yourself, without even bothering to say to Shot From Guns, “Well, actually, this is an issue I’m not 100% sure about, but I’m waiting for clarification on the matter.”
And you accuse us of imprecision and thinking we know things that we don’t.
What’s so worrisome about excommunication, anyway? What would you really lose, if anything, and how do you know? Mightn’t you be better off outside that organization anyway?
I was certain that I had done or said nothing that would invoke an excommunication. The very idea was absurd.
But… yes, 'long about midnight, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, so I sent the e-mail. Not because I was worried. But because you don’t screw around with something like that.
And because I wanted an opinion from a friend who is, happily, also a bishop. Also MY bishop.
And because I couldn’t sleep until I did it.
Yes, I do. But c’mon – if I insist that I turned the oven off, and then I check one more time, it doesn’t mean I “thought I knew something I didn’t.” Or that I was imprecise.
It means that making sure the oven is off, even when you’re sure, is not a bad thing.
You gotta admit, though, the whole thing seems a little suspicious. “Yeah, I talked to the bishop, and he agreed with me.” I mean, that’s still swimming dangerously close to “my post is my cite.” We have no way of knowing whether you’re telling us the truth–not that I’m accusing you of lying, just that it’s a lot to take on faith alone (so to speak). I mean, we’ve been burned on this board by claims like that before.
And, to be honest, the word of a diocesan bishop isn’t absolute proof of your position. I believe the Archbishop of Washington may have taken a somewhat harder line, given his past statements. So if he disagreed, whose word would take precedence?
If I were a subject of the Archbishop of Washington, your question might have merit. But I’m not.
You may be picturing that the Diocese of Arlington is a suffragan see within the Archdiocese of Washington. It’s not. Our Metropolitan Archbishop is the Archbishop of Baltimore.
But even then… no. Each diocese is more or less a law unto itself; the Metropolitan Archbishop has very little extra authority in his suffragan diocese. He can celebrate Mass everywhere in the province as a bishop; he may hear confessions of the faithful everywhere in the province, and if the suffragan see is vacant and a diocesan administrator not elected by the council, he may appoint one.
But that’s about it. My Bishop is the one that would sit in an ecclesiastical court (or he would appoint an Judicial Vicar; his authority would be the authority in play) and his decisions could be appealed only to the Roman Rota.
Your point about whether you should trust my report of events is a valid one, I suppose… but, really, what do you care? If I were subject to an excommunication, wouldn’t that simply affect me and me alone?
Now that said… another bishop could conceivably take a harder line with HIS subjects, I suppose. So my “proof” is limited to my own circumstance, and does not establish a truth for the universal Church, if that’s what you mean.
Sadly, the Pope, who could establish such a truth, is not nearly as responsive to my e-mails.
I’m not yet free to post private e-mails on a public messageboard, and even if I did, how could you then be sure I had not simply fabricated the email text?
So to recap: Shot From Guns claim is that by holding the belief that the nine-year-old girl’s situation was handled appropriately, I incurred a latae sententiae excommunication. In support of that claim, she posts reasoning from a layman, someone with an obvious interest in the subject but no academic qualifications in canon law.
So it seems to me I don’t need to resort to my bishop’s opinion. It was personally comforting to me, but of little persuasive value here. All I need to do is point out that no clerical authority has so much as suggested that Shot’s reasoning is valid. In short, I deny the existence of any such penalty.
And that’s where it is. If any reader finds her opinion on this matter more persuasive than mine, they are welcome to proceed under the assumption that it is valid.
Surely, though, you can see the validity of my argument that, if you insist on precision from others, those same standards ought to apply to you as well. It seemed to me fairly disingenuous to shoot someone down by claiming that you received a personal e-mail upholding your position. It’s a standard that I think you–and all of us–would be right to rally against. Imagine a Great Debates where anonymous posters claimed authority from anonymous e-mails that just happened to support their position!
As a Devil’s Advocate stance: if your friend is a bishop, wouldn’t he would be the last person to tell you, “Yes, Bricker, I’m afraid you’re excommunicated. I guess I won’t be seeing you at Mass on Sunday!”? Not that anyone would argue that he was lying to you, but…
Lastly (well, this is the Pit, after all): If Conte is just a layman in canon law, and you are an expert, well…get off your duff and prove him wrong, yah?
Yes, absolutely. Which is why I acknowledge and withdraw the offer of proof…
And a further good point. Agreed.
Well, the problem is that this provision in canon law involves a penalty that is automatically applied. “Do X, and you have caused yourself to be excommunicated.”
As I said in the original thread (and, as an aside, I find it amazing that this discussin has migrated to this thread somehow) the nun who labored under a latae sententiae excommunication had only to receive the sacrament of penance to resolve her status.
So this Saturday, I’ll go to confession, as I almost always do. But there we have the same problem – why would the results of that encounter be any more convincing than my conversation with my bishop?
So far as I can tell, there is no published Church material that explicitly resolves this factual issue.
How convenient that you left out the next line: “However, such ignorance must be proven, not presumed.” I question whether you were “raised to strongly believe in a system that denies the point of natural law” that a fetus may be directly aborted to save the life of the mother. You have *asserted *that a fetus is a person just as I am a person or you are a person. So if you believe that, it should follow that it would be sinful to kill the fetus to save the mother, just as it would be sinful for me to kill you to harvest your organs.
