Written by Nathan Turowsky
I don’t think anyone finds this surprising at this point, least of all Viganò himself, who in recent weeks appears to have actively leaned into making it a foregone conclusion.
From Vatican News:
According to the Code of Canon Law (canon 1331, paragraph 1), an excommunicated person is prohibited from celebrating the Sacrifice of the Eucharist and the other sacraments; receiving the sacraments, administering sacramentals and celebrating the other ceremonies of liturgical worship, and from taking an active part in the celebrations listed above. Further, they are prohibited from exercising any ecclesiastical offices, duties, ministries, or functions; and from performing acts of governance.
The second paragraph of canon 1331 lists consequences that follow from the latae sententiae excommunication being formally declared.
Excommunication is considered a “medicinal” penalty that aims at inviting the offender to repentance. As such, there is always the hope that the subject of excommunication will return to communion.
I don’t think most of us at Where Peter Is consider the last part particularly likely, but where there’s life there’s hope, and none of us take pleasure in the idea that this might be the end of the road for someone who was once a loyal laborer in the Lord’s vineyard.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
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Nathan Turowsky is a native New Englander and now lives in Upstate New York. A lifelong fascination with religious ritual led him into first the Episcopal Church and then the Catholic Church. An alumnus of Boston University School of Theology and one of the relatively few Catholic alumni of that primarily Wesleyan institution, he is unmarried and works in the nonprofit sector. He writes at Silicate Siesta.
