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Introduction
Earlier this week, I released a video titled “A Thorough DEBUNKING of Redeemed Zoomer.” In this video, I discuss a number of different problems with Richard’s understanding of schism, his arguments against the papacy, and certain statements he has made on Mariology.
Many found the schism section especially helpful, even certain Protestants (although for the opposite reason). One of Richard’s common themes is his opposition to other Protestant groups on the grounds that they are schismatic. He argues that the traditional Protestant view of schism did not allow for the division of the Church on grounds of corruption in doctrine and morals. Along with this, he views schism as an inherited sin that affects not only the progenitors of the schism but also those who remain in the body they formed. Therefore, in the Presbyterian world, members of groups like the OPC, PCA, EPC, and others would be required to join the mainline denomination of which Richard is a member, the PCUSA. In the Anglican world, members of groups like the ACNA or the Continuing Anglican churches would need to join the Episcopal Church. You get the point.
The response to this from Catholics and Protestants alike is obvious: if this is really the case, then the Protestant Reformation itself is unjustified. Therefore, the only consistent way of holding to what Richard teaches is to join the Roman Catholic Church (since this would be the proper ecclesiastical body in the West). Therefore, the Protestants reject the premises in order to reject the conclusion, while Catholics positively draw out the conclusion from Richard’s premises.
Richard’s Distinction
Yet Richard has a response to this objection. To resolve it, he distinguishes between two situations: that of those who have not been unjustly excommunicated and that of those who have. He likens the latter to the Apostles, who remained joined to the Old Testament Church until they were unjustly excommunicated by the Sanhedrin (there are plenty of exegetical and theological problems with this analogy, but I will let it pass for the sake of argument). Someone who is unjustly excommunicated may leave the body that excommunicated him and start a new group; but unless this happens, it is a grave sin to split the Church, even where there is severe moral and doctrinal decay.
Now, there are two ways of responding to Richard’s distinction. First, we can deny that the unjustly excommunicated are licensed to set up a new hierarchy and form a new ecclesiastical body. (In my video, I quoted St. Augustine to this effect, since Richard frequently uses him as an authority on this matter, although other arguments could be cited as well.) Second, we can deny that this was an instance of unjust excommunication. This can be done in two ways. First, we can argue that the excommunications that did happen were just, on the grounds of the truth of Catholic doctrine on the individual matters for which the Reformers were excommunicated. While this is true, it is not an effective way of arguing the point against those who deny Catholic doctrine. Second, we can argue historically, establishing that the schismatic acts took place before the excommunication. From this, we can draw the same conclusion from his own principles. Those who set up a rival ecclesiastical structure without having been unjustly excommunicated are schismatics; now, most of the Reformers set up rival ecclesiastical structures without being personally excommunicated; therefore, most of the Reformers (on Richard’s principles) are schismatics. Now, as he has stated elsewhere, those adhering to these structures in whatever generation are likewise schismatics; therefore, the Protestant communities are schismatic.
Who Was Actually Excommunicated?
The assumption that each of the Reformers was personally excommunicated comes from a misunderstanding of how ecclesiastical censures actually function. Such censures are not declared simply because someone holds an error or does something gravely wrong, but only in particular circumstances, as determined by the ecclesiastical judge. Therefore, oddly enough, only a handful of Reformers were declared excommunicate (e.g., Luther, Bucer, Henry VIII). Moreover, in Bucer’s case, the excommunication was declared because of his refusal to submit to the ecclesiastical process (which established formal contumacy, quite apart from his doctrinal errors).
In a word, his argument is corrosive to the Protestant Reformation. Nearly every group that came from the many Reformers who were not personally excommunicated would fall under his definition of “schism.” Maybe the Lutherans are left standing? Yet even this runs into insoluble difficulties.
As canonists and theologians commonly teach (which I will explain in more detail later), an excommunication cannot be personally declared against a social body. It would be unjust, for example, for the pope to attempt to place all of England under major excommunication. There are certain lesser penalties where this might be just with a proportionately grave cause (e.g., interdict, although it seems this has been abused more often than it has been justly imposed), but major excommunication is not one of these censures.
What would Richard’s distinction prove if we granted both the doctrinal error that the unjustly excommunicated can form rival ecclesiastical structures and the error of fact that the Reformers were unjustly excommunicated? It would prove that the men who were personally excommunicated could form rival ecclesiastical structures, but that nobody could join them, since those who would join them had not been personally excommunicated. If at this point you are eager to mention latae sententiae excommunications, be patient; I will explain later why they do not help Richard’s case.
The Hussite Objection
Yet to all of this, Richard has a response. At the Council of Constance, he says, the Hussites were excommunicated for the Utraquist heresy (i.e., teaching that lay communion in both kinds is necessary by divine law). Now, in the condemnations, both Hus and his followers were excommunicated. Further, the Reformers held the Utraquist heresy. Therefore, they were excommunicated the moment they began to preach it.
There are two responses to this, one historical and the other canonical.
The Historical Response: The Church of England
First, the history of the Church of England seems to have slipped Richard’s mind. While the continental Reformers preached the Utraquist heresy from the beginning, the same cannot be said of the Anglicans. Under Henry VIII, the Church of England was not only not Utraquist; it specifically rejected the Utraquist heresy as one of the grounds for its refusal to have communion with the continental Reformers. The most famous example of this is the Six Articles of 1539, which punished Utraquists with death or imprisonment.
From what Richard concedes, we can construct an argument. The Church of England established a rival ecclesiastical structure before any personal excommunication was declared (e.g., by the 1531 acknowledgment of Henry as Supreme Head, the 1532 Submission of the Clergy, and the 1533 Act in Restraint of Appeals); further, schismatic acts are inherited by anyone who adheres to the rival ecclesiastical structure in perpetuity; therefore, anyone who adheres to Anglicanism, in any generation, is a schismatic.
The Canonical Response: Ipso Facto Excommunication
Second, we can also treat this as a canonical matter. Here, Richard and his followers confuse two things: a declared personal excommunication and an ipso facto excommunication. This is quite significant for his argument. The very foundation of his justification of the Protestant Reformation is that the Reformers were “kicked out” by an unjust excommunication and that, therefore, their formation of rival ecclesiastical structures was justified. When we keep in mind the nature of ecclesiastical censures, we see that his appeal to Constance and to ipso facto excommunications is nonsensical.
An ipso facto excommunication is incurred by one who pertinaciously commits a certain offense. It supposes culpability and is established in the internal forum before any declaration by the Church. There are two important corollaries of this that allow us to see why even mentioning such excommunications is nonsensical. First, there is no “social” effect in the external forum until it is declared. The individual who incurs an ipso facto excommunication is said (in the old canonical terminology) to be toleratus (i.e., tolerated), rather than vitandus (i.e., to be avoided), until a judicial process has judged him guilty of the crime and declared the excommunication.
Pope Martin V (who approved the condemnation of the Hussites at Constance) declares the following in Ad evitanda scandala:
Henceforth no one will be obliged, under the pretext of any sentence or ecclesiastical censure generally promulgated by law or by man, to avoid the communion of any person, in the administration or reception of the Sacraments, or in any other matters sacred or profane, or to eschew the person, or to observe any ecclesiastical interdict, unless a sentence or censure of this kind shall have been published by a judge, and denounced specially and expressly…
The entire foundation of Richard’s position that an unjustly excommunicated person may start a rival ecclesiastical structure is the effect that excommunication has in foro externo (i.e., the excommunicated are, in his words, “kicked out”). Yet in the case of an ipso facto excommunication, we see that those who violate generally promulgated censures (as holding to Utraquism would) are not “kicked out”; they are to be tolerated until sentence is specifically declared against them.
Note. There are certain effects in the external forum vis-à-vis one’s own obligations when conscious of the censure, and in the authority of a judge when the offense is notorious. Yet neither of these two is relevant to the question at hand, which concerns the social relations of the excommunicated.
Second, he draws a specific distinction between unjust and just excommunication. He does not seem to realize that this distinction has no place when discussing ipso facto excommunications. How could it? For such a censure to take effect, one would need to hold an error pertinaciously or to commit some act with pertinacity. Therefore, there is no such thing as an unjust ipso facto excommunication, since all those who fall under such a censure firmly adhere to error. Further, in his mind, these ipso facto excommunications did not even take effect, since he denies that any of the Reformers were pertinacious.
The Dilemma
We can construct the following dilemma: either the Reformers were justly excommunicated ipso facto, or they were not excommunicated at all. There is no third option, since ipso facto excommunications touch only the pertinacious and no personal excommunication was declared in this case. If the former, then, by Richard’s standards, the formation of rival ecclesiastical structures was schismatic, since they were justly excommunicated. If the latter, then, by Richard’s standards, the formation of rival structures was schismatic, since there was no excommunication at all.
Note. Since the original censures were general and undeclared, under Martin V’s Ad evitanda they left the Reformers tolerati, and no one was obliged to avoid them. For Richard to state that such a general censure left them “kicked out” is an abuse of language.
No Excommunication of Social Bodies
Lastly, as I mentioned above, corporate excommunications of social bodies have long been recognized as unjust, well before the Council of Constance and as far back as the early Church, as St. Augustine declared against Bishop Auxilius in a letter that was included in Gratian. The same is taught commonly by canonists and theologians. In fact, Innocent IV (who wrote on the same topic in his canonical commentaries) established this as law in the decretal Romana ecclesia, in the section beginning Ceterum:
We altogether forbid a sentence of excommunication to be pronounced against a corporation or college, wishing to avoid the peril to souls that could follow, since it would sometimes happen that the innocent were entangled in such a sentence; but let it be promulgated only against those of the college or corporation who are established to be culpable.
In his canonical commentaries, he gives two reasons for this. First, the frequency with which the innocent mix with the guilty in such groups (e.g., if you condemned “the Hussites” personally, many who are not pertinacious would be included). Second, the fact that the group is perpetual, extending beyond the members who originally sinned.
General Sentences Are Not Personal Sentences
Unfortunately, Richard understands a general sentence in canonical form as equivalent to a certain “social excommunication” in which each person who falls under the general sentence receives a declared personal excommunication. Therefore, with this supposed, the conclusion he draws would obviously follow in his framework. Yet this is not at all how such a general sentence works.
Even if a specific condition is given (e.g., “those holding,” “followers,” etc.), the sentence remains general and non-personal until it is declared (and so falls back under what was said above about ipso facto excommunication). St. Alphonsus gives the example of an excommunication declared for arson against “Peter and his accomplices.” In such a case, even if the involvement of the accomplices was notorious, one would not be bound to avoid them as vitandi; they would remain tolerati, since “accomplices” is a universal or general condition: “only Peter is to be avoided, not the others, even if they are notorious, because as to them the sentence is only general” (Theologia moralis, lib. VII, cap. II, dub. I, n. 134). Therefore, Busenbaum concludes (quoted by St. Alphonsus) that “in Germany Catholics safely communicate with those who are notoriously heretics, and consequently excommunicated, because they are not excommunicated by name and publicly denounced” (ibid.; cf. Suárez, De censuris, disp. 9, sect. 2, nn. 4–5).
The following statement from Lateran IV has been interpreted in the same way: “We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy raising itself up against this holy, orthodox and catholic faith which we have expounded above. We condemn all heretics, whatever names they may go under.”
It is also important to recall that Innocent IV, who issued a decree on the injustice of corporate excommunication (and explained it in more detail in his canonical commentaries), became pope around 30 years after Lateran IV, and that the same principle had been included in Gratian a century before. Therefore, any other interpretation that could be given is completely unfounded.
The same holds for the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem of 1521, which declared Martin Luther “and others who follow him in the obstinacy of his depraved and damnable purpose” to fall under “the sentences of excommunication, of anathema, of our perpetual condemnation and interdict… and the other sentences, censures and punishments which are inflicted by canon law on heretics.”
It is incredible to me that Richard chooses this strange argument about Utraquism rather than quoting the clear sentences in the excommunication of Luther. Yet, for the aforementioned reason, even this does not prove his case.