Catholic Apologetics Online

Choose a topic from Vol 1:

God

Man

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The Religion of the Bible

The Christian Faith

A Definite Christian Faith

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The Catholic Church and the Bible

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The Church in Her Moral Teachings

The Church in Her Worship

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Ecclesiastical censures

1037. But your Church scatters curses, interdicts, and excommunications! Where is "Love your enemies" in this?

The Church condemns evil doctrine, and says that her condemnation falls upon such as knowingly and deliberately identify themselves with the condemned doctrine. The gentle Christ said, "If a man will not hear the Church, let him be as the heathen." St. Paul says, "If any man preach any other doctrine, let him be accursed." Gal. L, 8. St. Paul meant that in the Catholic sense I have explained. Love your enemies, by all means. But if you do, you will hate the evil which is to their harm. Hatred of that evil proves your love for them. If you did not love them, you would be utterly indifferent, and it would not matter to you what they believed or did. Or you might even rejoice to see them with the wrong doctrine, and deliberately refrain from uttering any warning. An interdict is but a suspension of public services in a given place when the people no longer deserve them, and then only in the hope that this grave penalty will bring them to a better frame of mind. Excommunication is but an official declaration that persons have behaved so badly that they have already cut themselves off from the grace of God, and therefore from the soul of the Church by their sin. And this official sentence, too, is but an effort to bring them to a better frame of mind. The intention is really to help such people in the end.

1038. Popes think it is right to excommunicate all who do not agree with them.

That is not true. Non-Catholics, who are unaware of their errors and who are not subjects of the Church, do not incur the penalty of excommunication. I wonder what you would say of St. Paul's words, "I have already judged . . . with the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ ... to deliver him that hath so done ... to Satan." 1 Cor. V., 3-5. No Pope has ever spoken more severely than St Paul in this passage.

1039. Can the Pope send people to hell by excommunication?

No. Excommunication cuts a man off from the visible Church on earth. But no man can be excommunicated save for mortally sinful conduct which supposes that he has already cut himself off from God's grace and from the soul of the Church. If he dies excommunicated and without repenting, his own unrepented sin takes him to hell, not the sentence of excommunication.

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MORE FROM VOLUME 1

• About the Author
• Introduction
  - Rev. C M Carty
• Preface
  - Msgr Fulton J Sheen
• Author's Forward
  - Dr Rumble, MSC

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