DAY 80
CHALLENGE
“The Catholic Church says Protestants are damned. The Council of Trent contains many canons saying that if someone endorses a particular Protestant belief, ‘Let him be anathema’ (damned by God).”
DEFENSE
This fundamentally misunderstands what an anathema was. It reads a non-Catholic understanding of the term into Catholic documents.
In Church documents, the term “anathema” does not mean “damned by God.” It refers to a form of excommunication that used to be practiced. When a person was excommunicated by anathema, a series of procedures had to be followed, including the local bishop warning the person he was committing a grave ecclesiastical crime and imperiling his soul. If he failed to repent, an ecclesiastical court would try and convict him, then the bishop would hold a public ceremony where he was excommunicated (cf. 1 Cor. 5:1–5, 1 Tim. 1:20). If he later repented, the bishop would perform another public ceremony, lift the
excommunication, and welcome him back (cf. 2 Cor. 2:6–8).
When Trent used the formula “Let him be anathema,” it indicated bishops could apply this form of excommunication to Catholics in
their flocks who committed certain offenses.
The penalty did not take effect automatically. Thus, it never applied globally to Protestants. Not only were Protestants not subjects of Catholic bishops, the bishops had better things to do than conduct endless court procedures and ceremonies concerning people who were not part of the Catholic community.
In practice, the penalty of anathema was imposed rarely and only on those who continued to assert their Catholic identity. Eventually, it became so infrequent that it was abolished and does not exist today. The current Code of Canon Law (1983) does not contain the penalty of anathema, and it abrogates all penalties it does not contain (cf. canon 6).
Excommunication still exists and is still applied if a Catholic embraces a heresy (canons 751, 1364; cf. canons 11, 1321–23, 1330). How- ever, the form of excommunication known as anathema no longer exists. But even when it did, anathema did not judge the state of a per- son’s soul—something only God knows. It was a disciplinary measure intended to protect the Catholic community and to wake a Catholic up to the spiritual danger he was in.