True linage does not matter according to scripture:
and
I’m not arguing you, but I’ve never been able to decipher bible metaphors… I read the second quote as “If you brach off the root, fear, for God will break you”.
And the first quote- that “we stem from Abraham” which Christianity does stem form… but we all knew that, please enlighten me how you read that to support true lineage. (AND please remember, I’m not arguing your point, I just wan’t it explained to me like I’m a 5yr old :P)
It appears to be in conjunction to Jesus:
God will attach anyone to the vine if they are willing to let the love of God flow through them. But if they don’t allow that power and love to flow God will take them off the vine, and they will wither away.
It is the will of God for us to do the work that God set for us, but the only way we can do that is to let Jesus live through us, and not ourselves running our own life.
It is the fear of the Lord, that if attached and allowing the vine to produce good fruit in you, the Lord will continue to have you there, but if you take another path you will be cut off from the power of God and also from the life that comes from it.
A part of a song, ‘the only thing they fear is the fear of the Lord’ sort of sums it up, God wants you so willing to do His will that you fear nothing that man can do to you, but your will is not to step outside of the will of God.
As I read that, by Jesus saying that God can raise children of Abraham from stones, I believe the message is don’t think your lineage means you are special, as God can easily and fully replace you even using stones.
tomndebb -
Has there been a change in the way excommunication “happens” since 1054-ish?
Because, well, you know, saying they “excommunicated each other” in an active voice kind of contradicts another thread I was accused of not understanding in which I understood that one more or less places themselves in a state of excommunication, not that some mid-to upper level church official does it to you. …
This one. Salvation awaits you, with slavering jaws open wide!
I get that statement… but in the one beforehand, it still says… you break (veer off) from the branch (of true lineage), God will break you off (disown you)… am I missing something??
Just FUI, kanicbird’s religious views are…shall we say…idiosyncratic, to say the least. This is a rabbit hole you may not want to go down.
Where would the Mormons, Adventists and JWs fall on that chart?
Formally declared excommunications are comparatively rare but they do happen, and they happened in 1054.
Catholic canon law prescribes a (limited) number of actions which, if you do them, result in automatic canonical excommunication, without any need for any declaration by anybody.
But we need to distinguish between excommunciation, the canonical penalty, which is what happens when you get a formal declatation or do one of the prescribed acts, and simply ceasing to be in communion, when there is no longer a relationshiop of shared faith and shared worship between you, your local church and the universal (Catholic) church - the situation of somebody who, for example, joins another church, or simply gives up any religious faith or practice. This is sometimes also called “excommunication”, but that’s not technically correct - it’s ceasing to be in communion.
A Catholic who is excommunicated is an excommunicated Catholic. But a Catholic who completly and irrevocably ceases to be in communion is no longer a Catholic. The same breakdown in relationships can lead to both of these things happening (or first one and then the other). This is what happened in 1054.
Not really, if we disown Jesus, He will disown us. So if we go our own way God will allow it, and we can’t expect to remain on the vine, as the vine is Him, so if that happens He will break us off.
But another part of it, that (2 Timothy 2:13)
if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself., which I take that even after we disowned Him and no longer considered Him our ‘god’, but worshiped other gods (like money), he will continue to wait for us and be ready to take us back again.
My understanding from the other thread followed you until here (although the specific history of 1054 was not addressed there)
What also wasn’t addressed there, as I understood it is that three is a difference between no being in a state of communion and being excommunicated in that one is irrevocable and results in being tossed from the Church (is there/must three be a pronouncement? by whom?) and the other is a temporary transgression, shall we say.
This seems like a new twist to me. And I am sure my understanding is incomplete and am open to learning because this seems to be important to Catholics, and is visible to the outside worlds in how Catholics communicate with it.
Without going into the debate, the issue in the other thread was when Benedict revisited the excommunication of the Holocaust-denying Bishop, in case that helps.
It was a highly political pissing contest, with the participants each believing , (or claiming), that their opponents had, indeed, removed themselves from communion with the church while those declaring the excommunications were “simply” trying to get the other side to recognize the errors of their ways, confess, repent, and be readmitted to the church.
so yes or no, is this the way it works or could work if you have sufficient rank today (even if it is over and above as explained in the other thread?)
I’m not sure of your question. Is it possible that two high-ranking members of the hierarchy could get into a pissing contest over some bit of theological arcana and decide that their opponent had left the church? I suppose so. The same sort of thing happened within the western Church in the fourteenth century with the Avignon Papacy and a couple of anti-popes.
Later, when Calvin and Luther broke ranks with the church, they did not bother trying to “excommunicate” the pope or the local bishops, they just declared the Catholic Church to be unbearably wrong and left.
OTOH, we’re talking about events that have happened exactly twice in 1900 years, so it is unlikely to be a phenomenon of ongoing worry. In addition, part of the situation in 1054 was that the two sides did not recognize the papacy in the same way, so there was more latitude for each side to declare the other side “outside” the church. Similarly, in the 14th century, the emperor still had a strong voice in picking the pope, so who got to pick the “real” pope was an issue over which they could fight. Various reforms to the process of electing the pope have reduced, (probably eliminated), a repeat of the Avignon nonsense while the very act of splitting the church in 1054 eliminated a repeat of that possibility for the foreseeable future. (There is no one left from whom to split.)
As it happens, there is a group of disaffected (former?) Catholics who got pissed off at the decisions of the Second Vatican Council who have gone on to declare that the rest of the church has fallen away from “the church.” They are called sedevacantists, (empty seat), because they claim that there is no valid current pope and that the chair of St. Peter is currently vacant. The church just ignores them and they have rather little power to enforce any excommunication that they might wish to declare.
I understand it is rare, but I am confused about the verb “to excommunicate” - is it active voice, passive both, or both? Who can be a subject, who can be an object (if any)?
Because what was unexpected to me was your use of the active voice, with an object (transitive) - IOW someone excommunicated someone else.
I came away feeling on that thread that was not a proper construction, except a Pope could do it to someone under exigent circumstances. Otherwise, one did it to oneself, or more likely simply performed some other act that placed oneself in a state of excommunication.
So since you said someone other than the Pope excommunicated someone else directly, I was left to wonder which is true:
1 - I completely misunderstood before
2 - rules have changed since the event you described
3 - other thread was not 100% clear as it would apply to this case
4 - your description here was kind of colloquial or somehow somethiing Catholics would get, but me not being a Catholic, am missing something
5 - other, TBD
In addition, part of the situation in 1054 was that the two sides did not recognize the papacy in the same way, so there was more latitude for each side to declare the other side “outside” the church. Similarly, in the 14th century, the emperor still had a strong voice in picking the pope, so who got to pick the “real” pope was an issue over which they could fight. Various reforms to the process of electing the pope have reduced, (probably eliminated), a repeat of the Avignon nonsense while the very act of splitting the church in 1054 eliminated a repeat of that possibility for the foreseeable future. (There is no one left from whom to split.)
As it happens, there is a group of disaffected (former?) Catholics who got pissed off at the decisions of the Second Vatican Council who have gone on to declare that the rest of the church has fallen away from “the church.” They are called sedevacantists, (empty seat), because they claim that there is no valid current pope and that the chair of St. Peter is currently vacant. The church just ignores them and they have rather little power to enforce any excommunication that they might wish to declare.
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When someone commits an act that is considered to put them outside the church, they are perceived as automatically excommunicated latae sententiae, (meaning the sentence/punishment is laid down by the offense, itself).
When a person (or group) of celebrity or power transgresses in a way to give scandal to the church, then the authorities of the church step in to make a formal declaration of excommunication so that the whole world knows that they are outside the church.
In many cases, a latae sententiae excommunication can be removed by simply confessing the sin and promising to avoid the offense in the future. Once a formal declaration of excommunication has been uttered, it can only be removed by the person who declared it or their superior.
(There are also a few other varieties of excommunication that arise in canon law, but as with any codified law, they are generally complex situations that require lawyers to get into and out of.)
That is pretty much what i took away last time.
What is new in this thread I guess, is the question of who decides who the “church authorities with power to excommunicate others” are, and also I am not sure how this ties in with what was said upthread about excommunication not being the same as “being in communion” which I think is different from what I took away last time, but I am not sure because I am not clear on what was said in this thread about that.
I don’t really recall whether priests and auxillary bishops have the authority to excommunicate. Any suffragan bishop, (a bishop with leadership authority over a diocese), has the authority to excommunicate–he’s the boss. Auxiliary bishops in a diocese are also suffragan bishops of symbolic locations. They may have authority to excommunicate, but since they are not operating in the diocese of which they have been named suffragan, I am not sure whether they have that authority where they are exercising their auxiliary duties.