Whose Church Is It Anyway?

Recently TimJ wrote about the evil Take Back Our Church folks.

Now canonist Ed Peters weighs in with the canonical consequences that could ensue from their actions. Here’s a taste–which just to be coy I’ll keep just to him quoting a single canon:

1983 CIC 1374 states: "A person who joins an association which plots against the Church is to be punished with a just penalty; however, a person who promotes or directs an association of this kind is to be punished with an interdict."

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Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

10 thoughts on “Whose Church Is It Anyway?”

  1. It seems the fitting punishment for Mr. Kaiser would be, besides the interdict is to imprison him in a Diamond cage while tied by Alloy rings to an Iron chair while being forced to watch The Documents of VII and the Cathecism on Infinite repeat. We’ll put him on a metal straitjacket before tying him to the chair. Just joking, But i do hope that dissidents would study the Church more so they wouldn’t make baseless claims and charges against the Catholic Church.

  2. Thanks for the Canon Law reference, Jimmy. Unfortunately, the dissenting folks would only regard the interdict as an action taken by an “unloving” “authoritative” “hierarchial” church, and since it doesn’t match with what their personal view of how the Catholic Church ought to act, they’ll ignore it. How very sad for them. In trying to act like Christ in issues of Social Justice and compassion, they forget to act like Him in humility and obedience.

  5. Yes, interdict requires you one to reconcile with the Church before receiving sacrements. Their are cases in which whole parishes have been placed under interdict for a specific period of time.

  7. “Interdict differs from excommunication, in that it does not cut one off from the communion of the faithful or from Christian society, though the acts of religion forbidden in both cases are almost identical. It differs from suspension also in this respect: the latter affects the powers of clerics, inasmuch as they are clerics, while the interdict affects the rights of the faithful as such, and does not directly affect clerics as such but only as members of the Church. Of course, it follows that the clergy cannot exercise their functions towards those under interdict, or in interdicted places or buildings, but their powers are not directly affected, as happens in case of suspension; their jurisdiction remains unimpaired, which allows of a guilty individual being punished, without imperilling the validity of his acts of jurisdiction. This shows that an interdict is more akin to excommunication than to suspension.
    “Whereas excommunication is exclusively a censure, intended to lead a guilty person back to repentance, an interdict, like suspension, may be imposed either as a censure or as a vindictive punishment. In both cases there must have been a grave crime; if the penalty has been inflicted for an indefinite period and with a view to making the guilty one amend his evil ways it is imposed as a censure; if, however, it is imposed for a definite time, and no reparation is demanded of the individuals at fault, it IS inflicted as a punishment.”
    SOURCE: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08073a.htm (more information there)

  8. It is interesting to note that the same kind of terminology is used by this group as is used by the hard political left in America. “Take back our Church! …. Take back our country!”
    In both cases, an historical perspective beyond the life-time of those making the proclamation would show that spiritually, in the one case, and ideologically in the other, it never was theirs. So how can they take it back?

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