OLD TESTAMENT . 1 It is the most serious penalty the Church can inflict, and is used only in the most severe cases. CATHOLIC CHURCH'S TEACHING ON ABORTION .
The Catholic Church’s current position on abortion is 144 years old. Since abortion is the purposeful murder of an innocent, unborn child, the Church indeed imposes the most severe penalty of excommunication for this heinous action. Francis Hoffman, J.C.D., is Executive Director of Relevant Radio. Here an accomplice is one who assists in such a way that the heinous act would not have been committed without his assistance. Any Catholic accomplice in the act of procuring an abortion, even though not specifically mentioned in Canon #1398, receives the same penalty of automatic excommunication. Any Catholic who obstinately denies that abortion is always gravely immoral … A person who successfully procures an abortion receives this penalty automatically (Code of Canon Law, no. Suspension is the censure that deprives an ecclesiastic of the exercise of his office, orders, or jurisdiction. Excommunication is the censure that excludes a person from the communion of the faithful and deprives him of all the spiritual blessings of living membership in the Mystical Body. We go to … Canon law examined in wake of push for excommunication over abortion.

It is not an "expiatory penalty" designed to make satisfaction for the wrong done, much less a "vindictive penalty" designed solely to punish: "excommunication, which is the gravest penalty of all and the most frequent, is always medicinal", and is "not at all vindictive". Excommunication is a sanction that deprives a Catholic of all participation in the common blessings of the society of the Church. The Psalms emphasized that man is made in God's image and likeness. By Jacob Comello, Catholic News Service | January 31, 2019. That’s not surprising, given the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion seems pretty clear cut: abortion is a murder. Since abortion is the purposeful murder of an innocent, unborn child, the Church indeed imposes the most severe penalty of excommunication for this heinous action. During the 2016 Jubilee Year of Mercy, Francis granted a provision that allows all priests to absolve the sin of abortion and lift the automatic excommunication incurred by abortion. Rev. Excommunicants remain Catholic because of baptism and still obligated to attend Mass, but they are deprived of all sacraments. A nun at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix has been excommunicated for allowing an abortion to be performed on a woman who doctors say would otherwise have died.