The Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco Salvatore Cordileone announced last week the excommunication of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Archbishop has cited Pelosi’s refusal to back down from her public advocacy of abortion, which conflicts with the moral positions of the Church, Christian tradition, and the Holy Scripture.
Many news outlets have strangely described the event as the “denial of communion” (Washington Post) or a “communion ban” (Fox News) rather than excommunication. One criticism of the excommunication comes from Whoopi Goldberg – who once pretended to be a nun in a movie and now pretends to speak with even greater erudition than the Archbishop. Goldberg claims, “This is not your job, dude! You can’t — that is not up to you to make that decision.”
The term excommunication itself literally means “out of/from communion” and is from very simple Latin: “ex” and “communicatio.” I believe the modern American sees phrases like excommunication as harsh and as with a sense of permanence, yet this is not the historic understanding of the term. The process of removing a Christian from communion is not related to any particular sin, but rather the obstinate refusal to repent. While various sins certainly place individuals in a grave position at odds with Christian teaching in faith and morals, it is impenitence alone that leads to formal excommunication.
The historic understanding of excommunication is lost on many who would rather paint the church’s role in excommunication as harsh, judgmental, and unloving – yet the act of excommunication is by the witness of Christ and his Apostles an act of love toward the wayward. God’s grace is fully present and offered in the pronouncement of excommunication as a final call away from sin and into the free gift of forgiveness – over even the most notorious of sins.
Did Jesus Teach Excommunication?
Just a few lines down from, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1) our Lord Jesus also says, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (v. 19) and “‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'” Jesus clearly expected that there would be situations that demand separation and even destruction from those who departed from his “narrow gate” (v. 13-14) and the, “will of My Father in heaven.” (v. 21). Jesus also passes down the authority to enact this separation through his Apostles with his own words, “And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19).
St. Paul explicitly continued the practice of excommunication and explains that the act might be for the benefit of those engrossed in sin, “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (1 Corinthians 5:5) St. Paul saw excommunication as having the power to save, not as a malicious act to permanently destroy. The Geneva Bible includes these helpful notes, “The goal of excommunication is not to cast away the excommunicate that he should utterly perish, but that he may be saved, that is, that by this means his flesh may be tamed, that he may learn to live to the Spirit.”
Does the Church Excommunicate for Politics?
Goldberg contends that, “The archbishop of San Francisco is calling for speaker Nancy Pelosi to be denied receiving Communion because of her pro-choice stance…” While this statement is partly true, Archbishop Cordileone claims that the decision is “purely pastoral, not political.” The idea that an activist Bishop might wield the keys of the kingdom for political reasons is rightly to be feared, yet the issue of abortion is not simply political. There is a plainly spoken and unbroken witness in the Christian tradition from the first-century Didache (“you shall not abort a child or commit infanticide.”) through today in defense of the unborn. There is no doubt that ancient Christians consistently held that life in the womb was to be protected and the taking of this life was a sinful breech of the commandment to “do no murder.” Again, it should be reiterated that Cordileone has not excommunicated Pelosi for a belief about abortion or even “the grave evil she is perpetrating”, but rather for obstinately refusing to repent of her advocacy of abortion.
The Archbishop’s position to excommunicate a powerful governmental figure for their support of a grave evil is not new and has precedence in church history. In 390, Bishop Ambrose of Milan excommunicated Emperor Theodosius, claiming that the “The Emperor is in the Church, not above it.” The same could be argued today, in that Speaker Pelosi is in the Church, not above it. Emperor Theodosius’s excommunication was directly related to his role in the massacre of 7,000 men, women, and children in Thessalonica. After eight months outside the church, Theodosius kneeled his heart in penitence and was restored to communion. Through excommunication, the same grace and hope for restoration is offered to Pelosi.
The emperor himself had not driven a sword into a single individual, just as Speaker Pelosi does not herself scrape out a baby using a metal curette, yet the policies supported and advocated by Speaker Pelosi have contributed to the deaths of millions of unborn children through legal abortion in the United States. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, estimates the number of annual abortions to be over 800,000. (from 2017 figures)
In response to the Archbishop, Pelosi has openly criticized the church’s positions, accused the hierarchy of hypocrisy, and went on to receive communion at a church outside of the Archdiocese. Perhaps this speaks to Pelosi’s character or perhaps to the weakness of discipline in the Roman Church, but it certainly is not representative of a spirit of humility or of respect for her claimed ecclesiastical tradition.
The Practical Prayers of Excommunication
During the formative years of my Christian walk I sat under a church that prayed each week for those who had strayed from the Christian faith. We would pray for those who are not saved, but also for those described as “under discipline” (or “excommunicated”). Each week we would recite the names of those under discipline and ask, “that our Lord would bring them to a place of repentance and restore them to the fellowship of Christ’s church.” Seeing them actually return to answer these prayers was always a powerful testimony. My own tradition speaks to excommunication in the Articles of Religion, “XXXIII. Of excommunicate Persons, how they are to be avoided.” Here again, excommunication is affirmed but with the goal that such treatment, “as a heathen and publican” (see Matthew 18:17) would result in reconciliation, penance, and received back into the full fellowship of the church.
Sen. Pelosi has been denied communion in the SF diocese; she is not cut off from the church as a whole. The more I read from self-professed “good Catholics” the less easily I confess my religion.