Thread: Vatican Excommunicates Zambian Archbishop

ROME, Sept. 26 — The singular clerical career of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo — faith healer and exorcist, who returned to the church after marrying an acupuncturist in 2001 in a group wedding presided over by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon — appears to be over. The Vatican announced today that it had excommunicated Archbishop Milingo, 76, for an offense that the Catholic church, short of priests and under some pressure to loosen celibacy rules, takes seriously: Two days earlier, he installed four married men as bishops in Washington, in a breakaway Catholic sect.

Associated Press
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo and Maria Sung during a group marriage ceremony in 2001 presided over by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.


Alberto Pizzoli/Agence France-Presse
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo celebrating mass in 2002.




Noting that the church has watched over Archbishop Milingo’s case with “vigilant patience,” a somewhat pained Vatican statement said that he had conducted himself with “irregularity and a progressively open rupture with the communion of the Church.”
The statement also said that church had waited with hope for his “reconsideration and his return to the full communion with the pope.
“Unfortunately these latest developments have cast away any such hopes,” it said.
Efforts to reach Archbishop Milingo were not immediately successful. Telephone messages left at the contact number on his Web site, www.archbishopmilingo.org, were not returned.
After his marriage to a Korean acupuncturist, Archbishop Milingo, who is from Zambia and who was once considered a rising star of the church in Africa, had lived for most of the last five years in a convent in Italy, returning to Zambia briefly after complaining of kidnapping threats.
But this summer, in the United States, he reunited with his wife, Maria Sung, then appeared at a news conference in Washington in July for the formation of a new group, Married Priests Now. In an interview then with National Catholic Reporter, he complained about what he called “intolerable restrictions” the Vatican had placed on him and its “lack of appreciation” for his gifts as an exorcist.
While the church recognizes exorcism, Archbishop Milingo had been accused, while the first native-born Zambian to head the church there, of promoting indigenous African beliefs and practice into the Mass and his ceremonies of mass exorcism.
Though Archbishop Milingo has attracted sensational headlines over the years, his case underscores larger and important issues for the church. Both of the issues he has espoused — marriage for priests and incorporating local ritual into church practice — are deep dilemmas for the church, especially in Africa, where the church is growing rapidly.
Some in the Vatican have reportedly been fearful that Archbishop Milingo could form a breakaway sect in Africa that could threaten the church there. But he told National Catholic Reporter in the interview that he had so such intentions.
“We have no ambition at all, in any way, to anything of that kind,” he said.
He said, however, that he intended eventually to return to Zambia with his wife and resume his preaching, healing and exorcisms.
The Vatican said today that Archbishop Milingo was excommunicated “Latae sententie,” which means that it is automatic, as opposed to an excommunication by judicial decision. Under canon 1382, pontifical mandate or an appointment is needed for an ordination, according to the executive coordinator of the Canon Law Society of America, Father Arthur Espelage.
“In the Catholic church, excommunications are medicinal,” he said in a telephone interview. “The excommunication is to tell the person ‘you are separating yourself by your actions from the institutional church.’ It is probably the most severe thing that can be done. Hopefully the person would repent.”
There is no formal mechanism for appealing the decision.
The Vatican has taken similar action in the past. In 1988, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, against Pope John Paul II’s orders, consecrated four bishops to help him carry on his battle to return the church to the Latin Mass and to preserve other practices rejected in the wake of Vatican II. Archbishop Lefebvre and his bishops were then excommunicated; he died in 1991.
Archbishop Milingo was born in a poor farm village in Zambia in 1930, according to a statement on his Web site. He was ordained in 1958, and served as parish priest in Chipata, Zambia, from 1963 to 1966. In 1969 Pope Paul VI consecrated him head of the Archdiocese of Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, as one of Africa’s youngest bishops.
Archbishop Milingo said in July, in a statement still posted on his Web site, that the Roman Catholic Church has a “great need” of priests and issued what he described as an “open call,” saying that bishops who have been sent to the monasteries were “condemned forever, never to appear any more to their faithful.”
“Let them come out of their Catholic prisons and be reinstated, taking once more their pastoral responsibility among the married priests,” he said.
“To those priests who may feel that by marrying they have stepped down or fallen short, unleash your burden of humiliation, isolation, and shame,” he said.

Vatican Excommunicates Zambian Archbishop - New York Times

Isn't excommunication kind of... harsh?

Considering he's failed to live up to his vows and broke them, no.

But, doesn't excommunication mean you're going to Hell? Or was that just way back when?

Excommunication (Lat. ex, out of, and communio or communicatio, communion -- exclusion from the communion), the principal and severest censure, is a medicinal, spiritual penalty that deprives the guilty Christian of all participation in the common blessings of ecclesiastical society. Being a penalty, it supposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Church can inflict, it naturally supposes a very grave offence. It is also a medicinal rather than a vindictive penalty, being intended, not so much to punish the culprit, as to correct him and bring him back to the path of righteousness. It necessarily, therefore, contemplates the future, either to prevent the recurrence of certain culpable acts that have grievous external consequences, or, more especially, to induce the delinquent to satisfy the obligations incurred by his offence. Its object and its effect are loss of communion, i.e. of the spiritual benefits shared by all the members of Christian society; hence, it can affect only those who by baptism have been admitted to that society. Undoubtedly there can and do exist other penal measures which entail the loss of certain fixed rights; among them are other censures, e.g. suspension for clerics, interdict for clerics and laymen, irregularity ex delicto, etc. Excommunication, however, is clearly distinguished from these penalties in that it is the privation of all rights resulting from the social status of the Christian as such. The excommunicated person, it is true, does not cease to be a Christian, since his baptism can never be effaced; he can, however, be considered as an exile from Christian society and as non-existent, for a time at least, in the sight of ecclesiastical authority. But such exile can have an end (and the Church desires it), as soon as the offender has given suitable satisfaction. Meanwhile, his status before the Church is that of a stranger. He may not participate in public worship nor receive the Body of Christ or any of the sacraments. Moreover, if he be a cleric, he is forbidden to administer a sacred rite or to exercise an act of spiritual authority.

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Excommunication

Oh, ok. Back in the Middle Ages, the Pope held entire nations hostage with the power of excommunication. Back then it meant you were going to Hell.

Funny - in the Bible, the apostle Paul says that a bishop must be husband to one wife.

Yeh, Catholocism (sorry IlikeGW) kind of butchered that ideal...

No need to apologize, lol. Catholics are a bunch of wackos, I can agree with you!!!

Everybody shall enjoy his life since nobody knows when his life is gonna end.
GOD blessed marriage, GOD bless Milingo.