Dr. Ed Peters lights a canon law candle in the darkness...

... found within and spread without by a recent National "Catholic" Reporter article by Ronald Modras titled, "Does excommunication do any good?":

Modras asks: “If a girl becomes the victim of a date rape and takes the morning-after pill, is she excommunicated? And if so, why is she excommunicated and not the rapist? Or is she excommunicated? Is Zapp now excommunicated for leaving the church as an institution but not as a community of faith? Does opting out of paying his church taxes endanger his immortal soul? Was McBride excommunicated, if she made her difficult gut-wrenching decision with prayer and a good conscience?”

I will reply to each of Modras' questions below, but first, I must remind readers that “excommunication” is a penalty, while “latae sententiae” is a procedure. As soon as one says, then, “excommunication latae sententiae” one is mixing penal issues with procedural ones, and sorting out the consequent substantive and adjectival legal questions is no easy matter. I have long held that “automatic sanctions” inevitably confuse discussions of ecclesiastical discipline and, for this and other reasons, I hold that canonical penalties should no longer be incurred latae sententiae. But that is not my decision to make.

Below, I will answer the harder question posed (wittingly or otherwise) by Modras, that is, not whether such-and-such action results in automatic excommunication (against which consequence more defenses could be raised), but instead, whether such action could result in ferendae sententiae (formal) excommunication.

1. If a girl becomes the victim of a date rape and takes the morning-after pill, is she excommunicated?

No, but not because very early abortion is not the taking of a human life and therefore an excommunicable offense (because it certainly is), but because of insurmountable forensic doubts about whether an abortion took place on these facts and, even if one did, whether it was the result of the woman’s actions. (As it happens, I am addressing this topic as part of a formal advisory opinion to be submitted for peer-review later this year. Watch for it down the road.)

Read the entire post on Dr. Peters' blog, "In the Light of the Law."

Also see my 2006 interview with Dr. Peters about his book on excommunication.