Ed Peters: Canon 915’s moment has arrived (however excommunication is another matter)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s blatant promotion of New York’s horrid abortion law seems to have been a tipping point.

Demands, demands, that Catholic leaders do something serious to confront unbridled abortionism in the ranks of Catholic politicos are being published like I’ve never seen them urged in four decades of watching such things. To that authentic Catholic sense, right at so many levels, I give nothing but an Amen. Here’s my only concern: Catholics at various stations in the Church, most largely untrained in canon law (no shame in that, that’s what five decades of pervasive ecclesial antinomianism will get you), are making, whether they know it or not, demands for canonical actions in Cuomo’s regard, which actions might or (more likely) might not be possible under current canon law and, having missed their mark, will wrongly conclude that canon law offers no remedies in the face of Cuomo-like conduct. I refer specifically to calls for the formal excommunication of Andrew Cuomo, but the issues in this case are applicable to other cases on the near horizon.

So, first and foremost, and setting aside Richard Burton’s Abp. Becket stentoriously excommunicating enemies of the Church from the cathedral high altar, excommunication is today what it has always essentially been, a canonical penalty that can be meted out only in accord with canon law. As a canonical sanction, the application of excommunication requires, at a minimum, (1) a law in place that prohibits, under pain of excommunication, a given action, (2) accessibility to facts sufficient to demonstrate the guilt of an individual accused of doing such an act, and (3) an independent process to interpret the law and apply it correctly to the facts at hand. See Canons 18 and 221, and most of Books VI and VII of the 1983 Code.

Those who think that Andrew Cuomo should be excommunicated for signing New York’s appalling abortion law need no invitation to make their case for that canonical sanction in accord with the canon law. Thomas Becket could make his case for excommunication (the curious and Latin-literate can verify that claim by checking, say, Gasparri’s footnotes to 1917 CIC 2343 § 4, provisions that took a dim view of murdering priests). But, if moderns cannot make the case for Cuomo’s excommunication (and I, among many others trained in canon law, do not think they can), they should cease calling for the (presently) impossible and focus instead on what can (and I, along with some notable others, think should) be done in the face of a Cuomo-like affront to Church teaching and basic human dignity.

continue at In Light of the Law

The points made through this article are critical in understanding the current state of canonical penalties.  If folks want to throw around the "E" word they need to understand the context.

Also:  From Msgr Pope’s lips to the bishops’ ears

Dr. Edward Peters comments on excommunication for politicians backing Planned Parenthood

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Excommunication of Catholic politicians backing taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood can only happen if bishops institute a specific law or penalty to that effect, says a prominent American canon lawyer.

American Life League (ALL), the country’s largest Catholic pro-life organization, last week called for the excommunication of the 62 Catholic congressmen who voted in February against defunding America’s largest abortion provider. The group pointed out that the Catholic Church has a history of excommunicating those who support its greatest enemies, including supporters of Freemasonry, Nazism, and communism.

Commenting on the proposal, Dr. Edward Peters, who holds the Edmund Cardinal Szoka Chair at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, and serves as a consultant to the Vatican’s highest court, emphasized that a local bishop or the national bishops’ conference would probably have to lay down a specific law allowing for excommunication of those backing Planned Parenthood, because such conduct is not covered by the Church’s universal law.

ALL notes that the German bishops laid down such a law in the case of the Nazis and their supporters, for example.

“ALL identifies a serious pastoral problem, namely, Catholic legislative support for a thoroughly evil organization, Planned Parenthood, and they suggest a measure that the Church can take in response to such legislators, namely, excommunication,” Peters told LifeSiteNews. “ALL is quite within their rights to make that case.”

Such an action, however, “would almost certainly require the establishment of a new penal law and the specification of the penalty of excommunication with an eye toward enforcement against future actions,” he explained. “No canon currently penalizes any form of legislative activity per se by Catholics (even terrible actions as supporting Planned Parenthood).”

But even without a specific local law, Peters said that on a case-by-case basis bishops even now could consider invoking two canons that call for a “just penalty” – a penalty that can be tailored to the gravity of the offense - for a person who “gravely injures good morals” (c. 1369) or commits an external violation of a divine law where there’s a need to prevent scandal (c. 1399).

While these canons could eventually lead to excommunication, they “do not support invoking excommunication as their first resort,” he said. “These norms don’t have the ‘impact’ of excommunication, I grant, but some response might be better than the current no response to such conduct.”

The rest at LifeNews

I saw the ALL report but Peters has dealt with this in depth at his site, CanonLaw.info.  I'm still one arming it but I remember reading some other pieces he has done on the subject.  He has some additional thought at his blog, In Light of the Law.