My Catholics should be able to tell me -

[kyburg]

And I want the real deal, not an opinion - please do your research.

Did they excommunicate this guy?

His body of work is getting closer scrutiny right now, as you might expect.

The wiki don't say.

Comments

[bitpig.livejournal.com]

It depends upon what you mean by "excommunicated". If you mean "Did the pope or a bishop ever write him a GTFO letter", the answer is "no" -- at least as far as I know. That sort of excommunication (known as excommunication ferendae sententiae) is actually a sentence imposed the result of an ecclesiastical court. This is a fairly rare occurrence (usually only a few per century).

However, if by "excommunicated" you mean "separated from the communion of the Church", the answer is "yes". This is excommunication latae sententiae, which means "incurred at the moment of the offensive act". A person who is excommunicate is isolated from the Sacraments of the Church, by which we are saved. Thus in a real sense, a person becomes excommunicate (cut off from the Sacraments) every time he or she commits mortal sin. Since sin is a voluntary act of separation from God, such excommunications are entirely self-imposed. Excommunication latae sententiae is lifted when the sinner confesses his or her sins and is absolved via the Sacrament of Penance (aka Reconciliation). Once absolved, the pentitent is once again in communion with the Church and may licitly receive the Sacraments.

As for Boswell, I would never presume to judge his eternal destiny. While it is a mortal sin to teach heresy, as Boswell certainly did, as a fellow sinner I sincerely hope that he recanted his false teaching and embraced the orthodox doctrines of the Church regarding human sexuality before he died.

May God have mercy on all of us poor sinners.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Which is to say, no. He wasn't.

(Keep in mind I don't have the Catholic background - I have the other kind, which meant people tossed each other out of their churches for whatever sounded GREAT at the time. Then they got a couple of their friends - each - and created their own church and held services in their garages. It's as stupid - and baseless - as it sounds. At least in the formal sense, it would appear the court would behave in a less - Mm - impetuous manner? At least a consistent, verifiable manner.)

Frankly, I'm surprised. This guy - even dying as young as he did - left a body of work that questions a lot of the 'here and now' givens.

Then again, perhaps he just died before they got around to it.

[bitpig.livejournal.com]

As far as I know Boswell was never charged before an ecclesiastical court.

As for his work: his contentions created a brief stir of controversy, but they were fairly thoroughly refuted by most mainstream scholars. The Church's teaching on same-sex relationships is pretty straightforward; anyone teaching anything different excommunicates himself.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

You know - I had to think about this overnight.

Any organized faith - that has parameters for acceptable behavior?

Well - has reasonable authorities to be the final word on them, neh?

To say that all of this is internalized to the individual self is somewhat new in my experience, but not entirely surprising. I would expect Catholics to take such matters to their priest, however - Protestants take it to God themselves (*winks*), but there are ministers and other authorities to provide guidance - and of course, Muslims are held individually accountable as there is no hierarchy outside of the 'secular' ones that vary from culture to culture. (But you notice those systems crop up, right? And gain a lot of power and never remain secular?)

And of course, the Buddhists would wonder why I'm hanging onto this and insist I divest. As a group.

I think the whole Boswell question is pertinent because it truly challenges some assumptions. That this policy towards homosexuality might not be unchanged from the inception of the faith - that current assumptions may be more recent, possibly unfounded and emphases misplaced.

But because it was only historical 'observation' - it was never - what - taken seriously?

[bitpig.livejournal.com]

Obviously, in a free society a person is free to say or publish anything he or she wants, so long as it's not an incitement to riot or otherwise legally actionable. This includes Catholics. Let's say a person is really into something unnatural, like eating broken glass. He or she is perfectly free to write a book on "the history of Catholic glass-eating" and represent his/her findings as being authentically Catholic. The Church has no police power, nor does it hold any kind of copyright or trademark on the word "catholic"; therefore, outside of public protest by Church officials, the Roman Catholic Church as an Earthly entity can't do anything about the glass-eating book.

However, it DOES have the power to dogmatically and infallably define what beliefs are or are not authentically Catholic. This power (called the Magisterium) was given to St. Peter and his successors by Christ. There are several means by which this is done, but they all boil down to the authority of the Pope. Should glass-eating become a scandal to the faithful, an impediment to worship, a threat to peace, or in some other way an obstacle to the work of the Church (= saving the world), the Pope might issue a dogmatic statement to the faithful and the world that "the act of eating glass is intrinsically disordered, contrary to nature, and immoral". This is called a pronouncement ex cathedra ("from the chair [of St. Peter]"), and it issues from the Pontiff and from the bishops in union with him. These are fairly rare -- I think the last one was the one about the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The Pope may also commuincate the authentic teaching of the Church through a papal bull -- a sort of "position paper" -- via an Ecumenical Councils (e.g. Nicaea, Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II, etc.), and through various other means.

One of the best things about being Catholic is the settled nature of authority. Now, I know the ideas of absolute authority and obedience to same are abhorrent to most people today, but that's the way God operates: Jesus is the King of the Universe, not the President of the United States of Everything. Any individual within the Church can go around claiming to be Catholic, but unless an individual truly believes in and adheres to all of the Church's teachings -- whether they agree with them or not -- they are not truly Catholic. Likewise, any individual within the Church can go around claiming their own ideas to be authentically Catholic, but unless those ideas reflect the Church's teachings they are not truly Catholic.

As for the late Mr. Boswell's ideas: while they were taken seriously on an intellectual level, they were not (and are not) considered to be in accord with the history of, nor the authentic teaching of, the Church. In other words, they represent heresy.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

As expected - the Right People have to decide if something is within reason or not.

Not the individual, provided with some food for thought.

And also, as I have said - there is a belief for every person's comfort level. If you want to be Right - and be certain of it with your conformity to what your reasonable authority has set in front of you - be Catholic. You can peform penance after rite after reconciliation...to the nth degree...and there is an answer for every question, check your catechism. You DID memorize your catechisms?

People being the inherently fallible things they are - can also do a whole lotta damage with the 'you're not whatever enough to be the Real Thing.' (Not going there today. There are a bunch of Protestant groups that claim they've done their homework as well - and haven't - and then lie like bad rugs to cover it up when someone catches up with them. Mean people. And we all know mean people suck.)

I'm far more comfortable where I am - which is firmly in the "only thing I can be sure of is that I can be wrong" camp. No matter what stance I take, or conclusion I come to. I will always have incomplete information. I will always be fallible 12% of the time, minimum. Am I wrong about this today? Could be! I'll let God figure it out and let me know in time if it's really all that important. And I'm confident that it will be made clear to me if it is.

So you can imagine what I think of a whole group of people - all different - whose stock in trade is We Are Always Right. We have a lot in common, mind - particularly on the most important parts, in my opinion. But. They aren't comfortable unless they're surrounded by people who share the exact same education, repeat it verbatim on demand and are willing to condemn outright those who can't, won't or frankly don't find it that critical. Me? I know I might be wrong, regardless. I can repeat a number of teachings, point out where most of them dovetail (oh dead ghad, you should hear the hue and cry when that happens - you should have seen the room of Pure Land Buddhists and Downtown LA Catholics that lovely afternoon), and just about every time, repeat that I won't define my faith by exclusion. Because I have room for them - even if they don't have room for me. I think that's better - pretty clear, neh?

I'm being handed some historical evidence from a pretty reasonable source that contradicts some of that unchanging Rightness. As in - maybe it's not been so unchanging, regardless of the rest it implies. Do I have to be one of those Right People for it to be considered? Guess so.

*shrugs* Guess God needs a heretic. That's why I'm here. ^^

[bitpig.livejournal.com]

One thing we can be sure of is that God will judge us all justly. May He have mercy on our souls.

"Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25).