Heresy and Excommunication

[Veronica97]

I was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church as an adult 15 years ago. But many of my Protestant ideas lingered for some time. Eventually I stopped going to confession, obstinately declaring that God could forgive my sins directly and declaring I didn’t have any mortal sins. But if I had formed my conscience properly I would have realized that I had many. Also, I didn’t accept the authority of the pope and disagreed with him on several issues including birth control. I also questioned whether Mary was a virgin her whole life. A year and a half ago, I had a reversion experience and went to Confession for the first time in about 7 years. I started to read voraciously about my Faith and began to understand the reasoning behind Church teachings. I just learned yesterday that heresy is grounds for automatic excommunication. But I’ve also read that if you didn’t KNOW what you were doing is grounds for excommunication, then you weren’t excommunicated. I have been absolved of all my sins, but am I still excommunicated? Or was I not excommunicated because I didn’t realize my offenses were excommunicable?

 

[WaitingForJesus]

I would talk to the priest regarding your worries over excommunication. I will tell you that I was raised as a Baptist and gave a confession covering 36 years prior to my reception into the church. I specifically confessed to heresy as I knew I had previously held heretical beliefs. He did not seem concerned.

Also, in order for a sin to be mortal, a person must have sufficient understanding. From what you describe, I am not sure you did.

 

[George_Stegmeir]

If you went to confession and told the priest any of this and he gave you absolution and you performed the penance he assigned to you, then don’t worry about it. You are absolved of all the sins you committed while you were away from the Church…even if you did not remember all of your sins or how often you did them. This may sound trite, but the absolution for your sins is comprehensive as well as absolute.
I would, however suggest that you go to your parish rectory and make an appointment with either the Pastor, or the priest who heard your confession. I would express your concerns to him just as you have done here, and discuss them with him. I guarentee that you will feel much better about your situation after your meeting.
I will also suggest that you go to confession on a regular basis. If not every week, every two weeks. Look up “examination of conscience” on any search engine. Any of the resultant sites will help you…and while I’m at it, a decade of the Rosary nightly, if not the whole Rosary wouldn’t hurt.l
Welcome home and G*d Bless!

 

[Veronica97]

If you went to confession and told the priest any of this and he gave you absolution and you performed the penance he assigned to you, then don’t worry about it. You are absolved of all the sins you committed while you were away from the Church…even if you did not remember all of your sins or how often you did them. This may sound trite, but the absolution for your sins is comprehensive as well as absolute.
I would, however suggest that you go to your parish rectory and make an appointment with either the Pastor, or the priest who heard your confession. I would express your concerns to him just as you have done here, and discuss them with him. I guarentee that you will feel much better about your situation after your meeting.
I will also suggest that you go to confession on a regular basis. If not every week, every two weeks. Look up “examination of conscience” on any search engine. Any of the resultant sites will help you…and while I’m at it, a decade of the Rosary nightly, if not the whole Rosary wouldn’t hurt.l
Welcome home and G*d Bless!

Thank you–I’m going to try to talk to my pastor this week. He isn’t the priest who originally absolved me when I went to confession last year for the first time in 7 years. That priest was in a different diocese about 30 minutes away. And I didn’t even know at the time that not accepting the Pope’s authority on matters of Faith and morals was a sin, so I didn’t confess it. Not until I had been going regularly for several months and had been reading voraciously about the Catholic Faith. The priest had told me not to confess any more sins from the past b/c he felt I was becoming scrupulous, but several months later I told him I felt I needed to b/c I felt my ignorance was vincible–that I had failed to learn my faith properly and that I had disagreed with the Church and not accepted the authority of the Pope and he said, “Okay” and let me confess more sins. But he didn’t say anything about me being excommunicated. I just learned about that possibility a couple of days ago by reading another post on CAF. I had no idea you could be automatically excommunicated for anything but abortion. I’ve read that most bishops have given their priests authority to lift automatic excommunications for abortion, heresy, schism, and apostasy, which makes sense because those things must be ramapant these days, but I don’t know if that’s true for the diocese I confessed in. I’ve read you can’t be excommunicated if you didn’t know that what you were about to do was an excommunicable offense; however, Canon Law does say that’s the case for INVINCIBLE ignorance. I feel like I may have vincible ignorance–failure to learn about my faith. I had gone part-way through RCIA about 20 years ago but quit when I learned I couldn’t be baptized due to my marriage situation. I still went to Mass though and had my child baptized Catholic. Then 10 years later my husband got an anullment and the priest said I needed to be back in RCIA for a few months until he could set a wedding date. So I did, but I don’t remember much about it except leaving Mass half-way through to talk about the Gospel reading. After we got married in the Church, I was then baptized and confirmed a few months later. I arrogantly thought I knew enough about being Catholic–but obviously I didn’t. I was then a Cafeteria Catholic for many years until I had a reversion experience a year and a half ago. But I thought all you needed to do was go to Confession.

 

[Chantal25]

Remember that Jesus is Mercy before being a Judge. What is wonderful, is that you came back to your sense. I feel this is normal what you went through but you need to learn from your mistake and not letting yourself down again.

I made terrible mistake and poor judgement myself but the priest that i see, he is so helpful. Please seek to be guided by a priest too.

Blessings and love