Readings:
• Ez 33:7-9
• Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9
• Rom 13:8-10
• Mt 18:15-20
Here’s a simple truth that I’ve learned over the years: A poor understanding of the meaning of “church” inevitably leads to a skewed understanding of many important issues.
Take, for example, the matter of “excommunication.”
Many people, including quite a few Catholics, think excommunication is simply a way for the Church to control, coerce, and otherwise bully people. It is, they believe, an exercise of power meant to further increase that power, which is possessed by a privileged few. Some insist excommunication is contrary to the teaching and spirit of Jesus; after all, wasn’t He all about love, mercy, and forgiveness? Today’s Gospel reading helps set the record straight, even though the term “excommunication” doesn’t appear.
We cannot rightly appreciate the purpose and nature of Church authority unless we understand that the Church is not a club, a political party, or a merely human institution. The Church was founded by Christ, states the Catechism, for one ultimate purpose: “for the sake of communion with [God’s] divine life.” The Church “is the goal of all things” (CCC 760). As the Body of Christ, the Church exists to redeem man, to guide him into holiness, and to transform him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, into a child of God.
This reading from Matthew 18 contains the second of only two uses of the word ecclesia, or “church”, found in the Gospels. The other occurrence is in Matthew 16:18, in the Gospel reading proclaimed two weeks ago. In both cases, the word “church” is uttered in the context of apostolic authority. In Matthew 16:16-20, Peter—the Rock—was given unique authority as the King’s prime minister or vicar. In today’s reading, the context is that of resolving conflicts within the Church. Jesus provides some practical directives about how Christians should approach someone who has sinned against him. The offender is not just anyone, but a brother in Christ, and the response is to take place within the family and household of God, the Church.
This section, it should be noted, follows after Jesus’ declaration that we must be like children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven (18:3), that it would better to lose an eye or limb than to be thrown into eternal fire (18:8-9), and that the heavenly Father rejoices in the return of the one stray sheep (18:12-14). The stakes are eternal and the struggle against sin can be fierce. Being a child of God and a member of His household is not easy; on the contrary, it can be trying. It might even involve rebuke and discipline.
The steps described by Jesus are not aimed at revenge or retribution, but at reconciliation. When we sin against a brother in Christ, we harm the unity of the Body of Christ. Our sin poisons our souls and our familial bond with others. Which is why it needs to be addressed, first by one-on-one communication, then by a small group. This is rooted in the Law, which declares that “a judicial fact shall be established only on the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Deut 19:15).
If those attempts fail the matter should come before the Church. The possibility of losing communion with the Church is meant to awaken the sinner to the serious straits he is navigating in spiritual blindness. Christ “threatens the one punishment,” observed St. John Chrysostom, “to prevent the other from happening.”
Better to suffer temporal punishment than eternal separation from God. “Thus, by fearing both the rejection from the church and the threat of being bound in heaven, he may become better behaved.”
The Catechism sums it up: “Reconciliation with the Church is inseparable from reconciliation with God” (CCC 1445).
If we believe the Church was founded by Christ and has been granted His authority, we should appreciate that she works to keep us in right relationship with Him. Yes, excommunication is a severe penalty, but it is a medicinal penalty, meant to cure us from what might destroy our souls.
(This “Opening the Word” column originally appeared in the September 7, 2008, issue of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
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Remedial is not what most us picture with excommunication. A good comparison with today’s Gospel. I addressed it during my sermon as well as Christ’s counsel to directly confront an abusive person. My experience is it works. Respect is frequently regained and the abusive person perceives courage and honesty in us. Though the Church has excommunicated in recent years including Hierarchy during the two previous pontificates it generally is reluctant and does what it can to reconcile. An example was Hans Kung who taught at a Pontifical U and was removed by prefect CDF Ratzinger and went elsewhere.
I did a quick search of excommunications in the Catholic church, and my preliminary search seemed to indicate that excommunications have always been rare. It seemed as if every pope in the last thousand years excommunicated very few people. Maybe four per pontificate, is my rough guess. Maybe individual bishops used to excommunicate more frequently. But at least my initial results seemed to indicate excommunication has never been used all that often. I wonder if anyone has any good statistics on this. I do think we need more of what Bishop Bruskewitz did a few years ago – he excommunicated all the far left progressive catholic groups that refused to abide by Catholic teaching, and he excommunicated the ones on the right like the SSPX as well. We do these dissenting groups no good by simply ignoring them.
The Pope Excommunicates the Mafia, Finally
By Alexander Stille
June 24, 2014
Excerpt:
The hundreds of murders committed in Sicily and elsewhere during the early eighties, including the assassinations of prominent public officials, began to turn the public and Church officials away from a see-no-evil attitude toward the Mafia. Several Southern Italian priests made it part of their pastoral mission to steer young people away from a life of crime, and inveighed against Mafia culture. John Paul II was the first Pope to speak out forthrightly against the Mafia: in a speech he gave in Agrigento, Sicily, in 1993, he called on the men of the Mafia to repent. During the nineties, at least three anti-Mafia priests were murdered because of their work.
My question in this context is who is the “Church” during those periods in history when the leaders of the institutional church couldn’t be trusted due to their moral corruption and even in our own time (think McCarrick, Bransfield, the Vatican’s endorsement of Pachamana idolatry, its betrayal of faithful Chinese Catholics, the financial settlement with Bransfield it imposed on the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese which has so upset the laity of that Diocese, etc.).
I wonder these days who we can trust as well. It seems as though almost everyone has an agenda that is foreign to Catholicism. At least until Pope Benedict XVI we could trust Rome but even that seems dicey these days. The far right’s answer is that we are answerable to no one but ourselves or a mythical perfect Pope, which doesn’t really solve the problem either. I feel like a lone sheep wandering in the middle of a busy street, or an interloper between the Hatfields and the McCoys where both sides are shooting at me.
Excerpt from the book with ISBN 9780813229713 (bold style added):
“The goal of the physical creation from the beginning, then, was the creation of the human person. The goal of the creation of the human person was to establish an ecclesial community with God effected by grace. The goal of the life of grace was to permit human beings to live in stable friendship with God in view of the grace of the beatific vision, the deifying vision of the blessed Trinity. This beatifying vision given to the human soul of the human person would in turn affect the human body, and indirectly the whole physical cosmos.”
The term “cut off” is used 70 times by God in the bible to mean put someone to, spiritually or physically, death. When Jesus uses the term “cut off” in Matthew 18, He means to put someone to spiritual death using Catholic Anathema, for the protection of the Body of His Church. Jesus explains that it is better for the Body of His Church to enter heaven missing some members/limbs of the Body of His Church, who were cast into hell by Catholic Anathema, than for evildoers to pull the whole Body of His Church into hell.
Leviticus 20:1
The LORD said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites: Anyone, whether an Israelite or an alien residing in Israel, who gives any of his offspring to Molech shall be put to death. Let his fellow citizens stone him. I myself will turn against such a man and cut him off from the body of his people;
Matthew 18:5
“Whoever welcomes one such child for my sake welcomes me. On the other hand, it would be better for anyone who leads astray one of these little ones who believes in me, to be drown by a millstone around his neck, in the depths of the sea. What terrible things will come on the world through scandal! It is inevitable that scandal should occur. Nonetheless, woe to that man through whom scandal comes! If your hand or foot is your undoing, cut it off and throw it from you! Better to enter life maimed or crippled than be thrown with two hands or feet into endless fire. If your eye is your downfall, gouge it out and cast it from you! Better to enter life with one eye than be thrown with both into fiery Gehenna.
ANATHEMA
the formula of anathema which ends with these words: Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N– himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.” Whereupon all the assistants respond: “Fiat, fiat, fiat.” The pontiff and the twelve priests then cast to the ground the lighted candles they have been carrying, and notice is sent in writing to the priests and neighboring bishops of the name of the one who has been excommunicated and the cause of his excommunication, in order that they may have no communication with him. Although he is delivered to Satan and his angels, he can still, and is even bound to repent. The Pontifical gives the form for absolving him and reconciling him with the Church. The promulgation of the anathema with such solemnity is well calculated to strike terror to the criminal and bring him to a state of repentance, especially if the Church adds to it the ceremony of the Maranatha…
…He who dares to despise our decision, let him be stricken with anathema maranatha, i.e. may he be damned at the coming of the Lord, may he have his place with Judas Iscariot, he and his companions.
Quoted from: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01455e.htm
So, we have to ask ourselves, are we confident that all our two billion Christians of the world today are safely going to go to heaven and we no longer need the, couple of times in a century, use of Catholic Anathema? Or, is the whole Body of Christ’s Church presently leaning over the Abyss of Hell, and we need to be praying frantically for St. Michael the Archangel and his Angels of the Apocalypse to come to earth and draw the Sword of Christ’s Mouth, Catholic Anathema, and “by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls”, to pull the Body of Christ’s Church back from the edge of the abyss?
Jesus defines “Satan” as the human will in conflict with the Divine Will. The reason Jesus calls our first Pope, St. Peter, ‘Satan’, is because Peter is talking and thinking like the secular world talks and thinks. Matthew 16:23 He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
Excommunication Scene from “Beckett”
In the Return To Tradition channel in YT, Father Altman makes the case, through the very clear teachings of the Council of Trent, that Pope Francis very serious, willful and agressive deviations in Catholic Doctrine, Discipline and Belief, equal self-excommunication. None of the previous 8 bad Popes went as far as Francis and it will get worst once he stamps with his approval the Synod of Synodality’s schismatic ideas begun in Germany.
We can try to soften what excommunication means and, yes, it’s a call back to reconciliation and brotherhood, but none of that is, ironically a way to manipulate the willfully unrepentant or call something “repentance” what is not at all, just to look “charitable”. Jesus used the highest charity with Judas Iscariot even all the way to the Last Supper with both loving gestures and also warnings. He rejected all of them and very effectively and legitimately excommunicated himself away from Jesus. Permanently and eternally. We need to study the Dogmatic Council of Trent as it shows the maximum respect for our Lord and Savior Jesus-God, with some forgetting that excomunication is just the offcial acknowledgment of a person’s schismatic, heretical or treasonous actions against the Faith. Failing to do this is ultimate betrayal of Jesus-God and a catastrophic sin against charity, enabling the traitor to spread his poison among the faithful Catholics.
Judas Iscariot willfully self-excommunicated, as excommunication is willfuln self-inititated rejection and willful self-initiated betrayal of the call of Christ to all the faithful. Are we going to deny that Pope Frncis has self-excommunicated? Doesn’t that denial empower the spread of the anti-Faith poison and is a most grave sin against charity?