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Originally posted by Michelle:
But they'll excommunicate people for falling in love with someone of the same sex.

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Nobody has every been excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church for falling in love with someone of the same sex.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
What DO they excommunicate for, then?

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Well ..... this is total thread drift .....

Wikipedia has a pretty good [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication#Roman_Catholic_Church]article on excommunication[/url].
"Excommunication is intended ... to seriously motivate the offender to repent, and therefore is a penalty with a goal of returning the person to full communion after the offensive action has stopped." As noted earlier, there are two kinds of excommunication: excommunications ordered by canonical declaration and automatic excommunications for certain offences. Wikipedia has an interesting list of people excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church, presumably by canonical declaration. This list is surely incomplete. Since the year 2000, people have been excommunicated for the following offences: schism, preaching that a living person was the reincarnation of Pope John Paul II, claiming to be an ordained priest though married and female, practicing witchcraft, being ordained against Canon Law, marrying while being a bishop and then ordaining married men as bishops. Some interesting characters appear on the list: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, ultratraditionalist, who consecrated four bishops against the express prohibition of the Pope; Fidel Castro; Joe DiMaggio; François Duvalier; Sinéad O'Connor (for being a schismatic); Juan Peron; Irish republicans in December 1920; Cervantes (later rescinded); Henry VIII; Martin Luther; Elizabeth I; Jan Hus; William of Ockham; the Patriarch of Constantinople (this led to the Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy).

The following earn a person an automatic excommunication:

1 Apostasy (canon 1364),
2 Heresy (canon 1364),
3 Schism (canon 1364),
4 Desecration of the Eucharist (canon 1367),
5 Physical violence against the Pope (canon 1370),
6 Attempted sacramental absolution of a partner in a sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue (canon 1378),
7 Ordination of a bishop without papal mandate (canon 1382),
8 Direct violation of the sacramental seal of confession by a confessor (canon 1388),
9 Procurement of a completed abortion (canon 1398), or
10 Being a conspiring or necessary accomplice in any of the above (canon 1329).

- Unless the local ordinary or an ecclesiastical court finds that the offense in question occurred, the obligation to observe an automatic excommunication lies solely on the excommunicated (Can. 1331 §1).
- From 1884 to 1977 in the United States, an automatic excommunication applied to divorced Catholics who remarried outside the Church without obtaining an annulment.
- since 1996 in the diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, an automatic interdict (and, under certain conditions, automatic excommunication) applies to members of certain organizations, including Call to Action, the Society of St. Pius X, and DeMolay International.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I don't see a single thing on that list that is worse than killing lots and lots of people.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
Good thing I'm not Catholic, or I'd be in big trouble!

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I don't see a single thing on that list that is worse than killing lots and lots of people.

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To be a real Catholic, one must believe that guys like Pinochet, Pizarro, Columbus are all lounging around heaven while the millions upon millions of their victims burn in eternal hell for the crime of not being baptized.

Obviously, there is no way for clergy to know whether someone is truly contrite, so they default to accepting the word of the penitent when granting absolution. But those who are religious Christians know that no matter what the outside world thinks, it's only if they truly repent their sins in their heart that God will grant forgiveness.

I've actually always kind of liked that about the Christian religion. I believe in justice tempered by mercy otherwise, so why would I have a problem with it when it comes to religion?

[ 05 December 2006: Message edited by: mayakovsky ]