One of the commentors on Armstrong’s blog (referenced in the previous blog post) linked to this article by Jimmy Akin wherein the current definition of anathema is “explained.”
After reading the article, the only conclusion I can come to is that words have no actual meaning in an ecumenical council. They have no actual meaning because in the future the meaning of the words will be changed to whatever suits the current generation.
Thus, Akin writes:
Originally, the Church did not differentiate between excommunication and anathema, which is why ecumenical councils have traditionally constructed their dogmatic canons using the formula “If anyone says . . . let him be anathema,” meaning that anyone teaching the condemned proposition is to be anathematized or cut off from Christian society.
(In other words, the infallible, unchanging, apostolic Church that has always meant what it means today did not originally mean what it means today in regards to anathema. But who’s keeping score?)
Akin continues:
Over time, a distinction came to be made between excommunication and anathema. The precise nature of the distinction varied but eventually became fixed. By the time of Gregory IX (1370–1378), the term anathema was used to describe a major excommunication that was performed with a solemn pontifical ceremony. This customarily involved the ringing of a bell, the closing of a book, and the snuffing out of candles, collectively signifying that the highest ecclesiastical court had spoken and would not reconsider the matter until the individual gave evidence of repentance.
Here we see how “anathema” changed from being synonymous with excommunication to become a more formal form of excommunication. Thus, the anathemas contained in the Council of Nicea, for instance, did not mean the same as the anathemas in the Council of Trent. Likewise, the anethemas in the Council of Trent do not mean the same as they would if used in a Council today.
This isn’t a problem on the face of it. Words do change over time. They evolve different meanings, because words are defined by their common use. The problem is when the Catholic anachronistically reads today’s meaning of the term back into the original Church fathers and pretends that what is meant today is what was meant back then. This is obviously not the case, if (as Akin has admitted) the meaning of the words has changed.
Thus, Akin concludes:
Yet the penalty was used so seldom that it was removed from the 1983 Code of Canon Law. This means that today the penalty of anathema does not exist in Church law. The new Code provided that, “When this Code goes into effect, the following are abrogated: 1º the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1917 . . . 3º any universal or particular penal laws whatsoever issued by the Apostolic See, unless they are contained in this Code” (CIC [1983] 6 §1). The penalty of anathema was not renewed in the new Code, and thus it was abrogated when the Code went into effect on January 1, 1983.
He is now saying that there are no anathemas in the Catholic Church. This is, of course, true since January 1, 1983 (assuming Akin’s sources are correct; and I have no reason to doubt them right now). But before January 1, 1983, anathemas were in effect. So how does Akin deal with that?
By denying anathemas meant something different in the past. He writes:
Because the penalty has been abolished, a word should be said about the status of the conciliar canons that employed this penalty. In addition to prescribing the imposition of a juridical penalty, the phrase anathema sit (”let him be anathema”) also came to be one of the phrases that the Church traditionally has used to issue doctrinal definitions.
Catholic scholars have long recognized that when an ecumenical council applies this phrase to a doctrinal matter, then the matter is settled infallibly. (If a council applied the phrase to a disciplinary matter, then the matter would not be settled infallibly, since only matters of doctrine, not discipline, are subject to doctrinal definition.)
Thus, when Trent and other ecumenical councils employed anathema sit in regard to doctrinal matters, not only was a judicial penalty prescribed but a doctrinal definition was also made. Today, the judicial penalty may be gone, but the doctrinal definition remains. Everything that was infallibly decided by these councils is still infallibly settled.
In other words, Akin ignores the use of the term as Trent used it and instead says, “All Trent meant was that it was speaking infallibly.”
But those at the Council of Trent certainly didn’t think that way. When they anathematized Protestants, they meant it. They did not have Akin’s view of the term in mind because that view was completely alien to them. It would not come about until after 1983!
In short, we see that Akin gets around the use of the term “anathema” only by redefining it in today’s language and anachronistically infusing that meaning back into the original Councils. This demonstrates A) that the Church in Rome is far from unchanging, B) that words don’t have any actual meaning (after all, in 100 years someone could change the meaning of the words of Vatican II and Akin would have no idea what the “true” Catholic doctrine is), and C) that the only way to remain a consistent Catholic is to deny exegetical and hermenutical sciences.
If one’s ”infallible” authority can only solve the “anathema” problem by making the definition of it Jello, I, for one, see no reason to submit myself to that authority.
