Given the situation of the former Poor Clare nuns of Belorado (Spain), excommunicated and expelled from consecrated life for the crime of schism, and given the Vatican trial against the Italian archbishop Carlo María Viganò, also for schism, we explain in this note What is excommunication and what is schism in the Catholic Church.
What is schism?
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The Catholic Encyclopedia (EC) explains that schism is “the rupture of ecclesiastical union and unity, that is, either the act by which one of the faithful severs, to the extent that they lie in him, the ties that unite him to the social organization of the Church and that make him a member of the mystical body of Christ, or the state of dissociation or separation that results from said act.
Canon 751 of the Code of Canon Law specifies that schism is “the rejection of subjection to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” The penalty for this canonical crime is excommunication.
Briefly, excommunication (exclusion from communion) can be defined as the most serious penalty for a baptized person, which consists of separating him from the communion of the faithful of the Catholic Church and from access to the sacraments.
At EC specifies that excommunication is “a medicinal and spiritual penalty that deprives the guilty Christian of all participation in the common blessings of ecclesiastical society.”
“Being a shame, it presupposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Church can inflict, it naturally involves a very serious offense. It is also a medicinal punishment rather than a vengeful one, as it is intended not so much to punish the guilty, but to correct him and bring him back to the path of righteousness,” the EC adds.
Why is he excommunicated?
Excommunication is not only a punishment and goes beyond the restriction of access to Holy Communion.
With excommunication, anyone who “causes scandal or serious disturbance of order with his or her conduct” is publicly reprimanded, as stated in canon 1339 of the Code of Canon Law.
Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, Major Penitentiary Emeritus of the Church, explained in 2015 that excommunication seeks to lead “the guilty to repentance and conversion.”
“With the penalty of excommunication the Church is not trying in some way to restrict the field of mercy. It simply highlights the seriousness of the crime,” he added.
Walter Sanchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.