Vitandus
A vitandus (Latin for "one to be avoided") was someone affected by a rare and grave form of excommunication, in which the Catholic Church ordered, as a remedial measure, that the faithful were not to associate with an excommunicated individual in any way "except in the case of husband and wife, parents, children, servants, subjects", and in general unless there was some reasonable excusing cause.[1]
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It thus imposed a form of shunning, somewhat similar to Jewish practise of cherem.
Recent history
The most notable case in the 20th century of excommunication with the effect of making the person a vitandus was that of the priest Alfred Loisy due to his writings that opposed Church dogma on Scripture.[2] In 1930, there were only five living who received the interdiction,[3] including Loisy, who never recanted until his death.
In 1950, antipope Michel Collin of the conclavist group Apostles of Infinite Love, announced that he had taken the regnal name "Clement XV".[4] Pope Pius XII laicized him in 1951,[5] and publicly named a vitandus excommunicate.
Since the promulgation of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, this form of excommunication is no longer envisaged in the canon law of the Church. The previous 1917 Code still included it, imposing it automatically (as a latae sententiae excommunication) on anyone who committed physical violence on the Pope himself,[6] and declaring that with that exception, "nobody is a vitandus excommunicate unless the Apostolic See has excommunicated him by name and has proclaimed the excommunication publicly and in the decree has stated expressly that he must be avoided".[7]
The distinction between a vitandus and a toleratus ("tolerated") excommunicate was introduced by Pope Martin V in 1418.[8] It is no longer made in the 1983 Code.
References
- A Modern Catholic Dictionary (1980)
- "Heresy in History". www.space.net.au. Archived from the original on 2008-07-02.
- 'Heretical Priest Placed Under Ban', New Britain Herald, December 12, 1930.
- Michael W. Cuneo: The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (JHU Press, 1999 ISBN 0-8018-6265-5, ISBN 978-0-8018-6265-6), pp. 121–134
- Time magazine, Pope Clement XV (15 March 1971)
- Canon 2343 §1 1 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law
- Canon 2258 §2 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law
- Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.