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ConstantineTG
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Sweet! I don’t have to believe in Papal Infallability and Supremacy anymore because I won’t get anathemized as per Pastor Aeternus because no one is anathemized anymore 
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Bookcat
Guest
I already noted that there are current penalties. Excommunication is one of them.
It is not empty semantics but distinguishing what is what. Anathema was a kind of excommunication but not one that exists any longer.
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Bookcat
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Bookcat
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"The claim that anathemas apply to those who contradict the canons of an ecumenical council, whether Vatican I or one of the other councils, is a common and understandable misunderstanding. We haven’t done a very good job about educating people on what the term “anathema” means in this context, and an awful lot of people are under an innocent misimpression.
To put the matter concisely: The term “anathema,” as used in conciliar and canon law documents, refers to a type of excommunication. In particular (as in the 1917 Code of Canon Law), it referred to a type of excommunication that the bishop performed using a special ceremony. This ceremony involved (among other things) the ringing of a bell, the closing of a book, and the snuffing of a candle. Hence the phrase “bell, book, and candle” (that’s where it comes from; it has nothing to do with witchcraft). These collectively symbolized that the ecclesiastical court had made its ruling against the offender and would not reconsider until he repents. There was then another special ritual of reconciliation for the lifting of the anathema.
Like other excommunications, anathemas didn’t do anything to a person’s soul. It didn’t make him “damned by God” or anything like that. The only man who can make a man damned by God is the man himself. The Church has no such power. An anathema was a formal way of signaling him that he had done something gravely wrong, that he had endangered his own soul, and that he needed to repent. Anathemas, like other excommunications, were thus medicinal penalties, designed to promote healing and reconciliation.
Also like (many) excommunications, anathemas were not automatic. Just because someone, somewhere, uttered a heresy, this did not cause the relevant bishop to drop whatever he was doing and automatically perform the ceremony like a puppet on strings. Instead, if someone committed an ecclesiastical crime that was potentially subject to an anathema the matter had to be reported, investigated, judged, and only after that would the ceremony happen—if it did.
Also also like other excommunications, they applied to people who were (or had been) in communion with the Catholic Church. There is no point excommunicating somebody from the Catholic Church who had never been part of the Catholic Church, and so people who had never been Catholics were not anathematized, no matter what they said or did. (This comes as quite a surprise to many in the Protestant community, where it is often—unfortunately—claimed that the Catholic Church anathematizes them for their beliefs. Not so. It may disagree with some of their beliefs; it may hope and pray that they adopt the fullness of the faith as found in the Catholic Church; but it does not anathematize them.)
Over time the penalty of anathema became administered only rarely, and eventually it was judged that the extra ceremony was no longer needed. As a result, the 1983 Code of Canon Law abolished the penalty of anathema, and so it no longer exists under Church law.
This means that nobody today is anathema in the sense that the term is used by councils and canon law documents. Excommunication still exists as a penalty, and some excommunications are even automatic, but the special, ceremonial form of excommunication known as anathema does not.
This does not mean that the canons of the ecumenical councils have lost doctrinal force. They haven’t. Whatever doctrinal force they had prior to the 1983 Code, they still have, and so if a particular canon defined something as a heresy then it still is.
Furthermore, heresy still carries a penalty of excommunication, but a number of conditions have to be fulfilled for the penalty to apply (especially if it is to apply automatically—but that’s a subject for another post)."
–Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers- from (from Jimmyakin.com)
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Inego_de_Loyola
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The term has referred excommunication generally since St. Paul used it to mean such; though it also in the past referred to a particular and related ceremony. Words can have more than one meaning.
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Inego_de_Loyola
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Please spare us the Copy pasta; everyone on this thread has read the article and in my case several times. If you read the post you responded to with this you would know that the council I referred to antedated the ceremony in question by better than four centuries.
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ConstantineTG
Guest
Anathema and excommunication are two different things. Anathema means “cursed” or “acursed”, which is to impose a curse on someone, basically relegating them to the authority of Satan by kicking them out of the Church. It is a spiritual penalty. Excommunication is a canonical penalty. When a bishop severs communion with another, that is already excommunication. It just removes the communion between the Church and an individual or even between two Churches through the bishops. It doesn’t curse you or anything and the idea here is to work out the problem and make sure everything is okay between the two parties (they agree to the same beliefs) before they resume communion.
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Bookcat
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that is a different article than what I posted before.
Please read the article fresh even if you have read it before. He addresses the use of the “anathema” at in the canons of councils therein.
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PJM
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Granddaddy used to say: if you don’t ask; ya can’t know
- REPENT sincerly from the heart
- God to the sacrament of Confession
- As Archbishop Chaput said while in Denver: "If you find yourself holding a position that differs from what the Catholic Church teaches: CHANGE YOYR VIEW:thumbsup:
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Inego_de_Loyola
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Anathema means set apart in sacrifice to god as something unclean and not to be used by man. This was later used by St. Paul to refer to excommunication. What you are referring to is an eastern take on the matter where anathema has come to be (very roughly) equivalent to a western vitandus excommunication.
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Inego_de_Loyola
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Okay, having looked at it I see that this is from a different article that was linked to in the first and which also I had read ages ago, but my point still stands that this cannot be true of councils before 741 and almost certainly is not true of councils thereafter who seem to be using it in the same sense as prior Ecumenical councils.
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Bookcat
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this is a different one than the one I first posted (and worth a new reading if already read before for he does a good job there in setting out the various points)…
Anyhow not wanting to get back and forth much more on this…I wish you great joy, a splendid eventide …and may all be joyfully in full communion with Peter
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ConstantineTG
Guest
Not that in Acts, the 40 assassins swore in anathema to not eat or drink until they have killed St. Paul. So they swore “under curse”. And these were Jewish men, not Christians. So Anathema has existed even before the Church did (or in this instance of Acts, during the very early years of the Church).
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