Excommunicated bishops ‘may have been pressured’

VATICAN officials cited Church law that called for automatic excommunication in condemning China for appointing bishops without papal consent, but yesterday legal experts said the appointees may be spared formal censure because they may have been pressured.

On Thursday, the Vatican said the consecration of two bishops this week in China carried automatic excommunication for the two men as well as the bishops who ordained them, because Pope Benedict XVI hadn’t approved the appointments.

On Thursday, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls cited Canon Law which says both the ordained bishop and the bishop who consecrates him without papal consent incur a “latae sententiae excommunication” — automatic excommunication.

However, Canon Law experts said that in order for the excommunication to have actual effect, it must be declared by the Pope.

Rev James Conn, a professor of Canon Law at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, said: “That doesn’t mean it isn’t binding in conscience on the person if he incurs it automatically ... (but) there needs to be a procedure before a penalty is declared.”

Attempts to reach Mr Navarro-Valls yesterday were unsuccessful.

However, a Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to interpret Church law, said on Thursday that while Church law provides for automatic excommunication, the fact the prelates may have been pressured was important.

“There are two levels: The objective level, which says the law is automatic, and a subjective level, which only God knows. That is a matter between them and God.”

Rev Conn noted that Canon Law sets out exceptions to when church penalties can be imposed, such as when someone “acted under the compulsion of grave fear, even if only relative, or by reason of necessity or grave inconvenience”.

“If the act was not a free act, then it’s less imputable, less punishable,” he said.

In his statement, Mr Navarro-Valls said Chinese bishops and priests had been subject to “strong pressures and to threats” to take part in the ordinations by “external entities to the church” — an apparent reference to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, a state-backed agency that oversees administration of the Catholic Church.

Mr Conn said only the bishops in question know if they acted out of fear.

“If the individual himself knows that he did not act out of grave fear, he is burdened in conscience to carry out the excommunication,” he said.

Official ties between the Holy See and Beijing were severed after communists took control of China in 1949. While Benedict has reached out to Beijing in hopes of restoring ties, the ordinations this week set back the efforts.

In China, a senior official in the state-backed Catholic church said yesterday that religious conflicts can only be addressed after the Vatican establishes diplomatic relations with Beijing.

Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, called on the Vatican to change its policies toward China.

“Once the relationship between the Chinese government and the Vatican improves, the church issues can be resolved.”

His comments were the first official response since the Vatican lashed out against the Chinese church’s ordination of the bishops.