The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. 1314] and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law. Many associate excommunication with the medieval Church, with the Inquisition and witch-hunts, and think it has no place in our more enlightened, tolerant times. Right of the Church to Excommunicate . The Church fervently hopes that the former Catholic changes their ways, and is in “communion” with the rest of the Church. Latae sententiae excommunications, those that automatically affect classes of people (members of certain associations … 1398] "by the very commission of the offense," [CIC, can. Under the Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church, canons 751 and 1364, all such Catholics are automatically excommunicated for the sin of heresy. This sentence of latae sententiae excommunication applies to any Catholic who denies that abortion is gravely immoral, regardless of whether they keep this denial … This … Once deprived of Church membership, it is interesting to note how vitally important rebaptism becomes. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae," [CIC, can. From this perspective, excommunication is best viewed as the "tough … Some look at excommunication as a thorny punishment from the Catholic Church. Properly understood in this way as a medicinal penalty, excommunication certainly does not expel the person from the Catholic Church, but simply forbids the excommunicated person from engaging in certain activities (listed in canon 1331) in the life of the Church until the offender reforms and … Does the Catholic Church still excommunicate? This discussion oddly juxtaposes God and legalism. All Christian churches and denominations have some method of exclusion. The truly repentant excommunicated person will strive diligently to regain the waters of baptism. Thus, excommunication is an organizational penalty of the earthly Church. The right to excommunicate is an immediate and necessary consequence of the fact that the Church is a society. However unpleasant a reality excommunication may be, it has in the Church's eyes a medicinal quality, and by design it is not intended to be permanent. It actually is a medicinal penalty that is compulsory to help the sinner repent and turn back to God. In Roman Catholic canon law, excommunication is a censure and thus a “medicinal penalty” intended to invite the person to change behavior or attitude that incurred the penalty, repent, and return to full communion. Every society has the right to exclude and deprive of their rights and social advantages its unworthy or grievously culpable members, either temporarily or permanently. If an excommunicated Catholic is in danger of death, any confessor is authorized to remit any and all penalties. To our modern ears, the very word evokes something dark and foreboding, something out-of-place in contemporary society. Excommunication not only External.—In first Christian centuries it is not always easy to distinguish between excommunication and penitential exclusion; to differentiate them satisfactorily we must await the decline of the institution of public penance and the well-defined separation between those things appertaining to the forum … Even excommunication, serious as it is, can have the effect of restoring the proper perspective of the offender. Excommunication, form of ecclesiastical censure by which a person is excluded from the communion of believers, the rites or sacraments of a church, and the rights of church membership but not necessarily from membership in the church as such. Excommunication. 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