Annotation CCLXVII

”If any love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.” — 1 Corinthians 16:22

Whether it is lawful to strike either the living or the dead with anathema.

Chrysostom, in the homily which is inscribed On the Anathema, on the occasion of this sentence, seems to assert, and by a long discourse to demonstrate, that neither the living nor the dead are to be struck with anathema, even if they have been heretics. His words are these: “THE APOSTLES were exceedingly diligent in refuting and casting out heresies, but in applying this penalty of anathema to none of the heretics. Moreover, the Apostle brings forth this word in two places only, as [it were] compelled, nor even does he aim it at a certain and determinate person. For to the Corinthians he writes, ‘If any love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.’¹ And, ‘If anyone shall have evangelized to you beside that which you received, let him be anathema.’ Why, therefore, dost thou dare to do [that] which none of those who received the power dared either to do or to declare — [thou], plainly an adversary of the Lord’s death, and forestalling the judgment of the King?” And below: “‘HE has been made a heretic,’ they say, ‘he has an indwelling devil,² he speaks injustice against God, he leads away many into the deep of perdition by the efficacious persuasion and deception of his eloquence.’ Surely Paul, refuting these [men], says, ‘Teach in mildness, instructing those who resist; if perhaps God may give them repentance to acknowledge the truth, that they may recover [themselves] from the snares of the devil, [by whom they are] held captive at his will.’ Extend the net of charity, that the halting [one] be not subverted, but rather be healed.” And below: “HE whom thou hast decreed to anathematize either lives, and still survives in this mortal life, or is dead. But if he still survives, thou actest impiously, who cruelly cuttest off him who can turn himself from evil to good; if he is dead, thou art much more cruel. Why so? Because he stands or falls to his own Lord, being no longer under human right.” And after a few [words]: “FOR this cause I beseech you, lest these words fall away

—from your mind. For it behooves [us] to refute and anathematize the dogmas — [those] which have proceeded from heretics: but men are to be spared, and prayer [is to be made] for their salvation.”

THESE sayings of Chrysostom seem to fight against the power of the apostolic Church, which by the authority of Christ inflicts the penalty of excommunication not only on the living, but sometimes even on the deceased — especially heretics: concerning whose excommunication after death there is extant a determination of the fifth Synod of Constantinople, in the pontifical decrees, causa 24, question 2, the last chapter. Moreover, since in so many places Chrysostom defends the authority of ecclesiastical excommunication, it is not probable that, [his] sentence being changed, he willed to condemn it in this place. But this is rather to be believed: that he brought forth this homily against certain rash and unlearned [men], who — although they were neither pastors of the Church, nor had any power of excommunicating — yet, led by hatred and contention, rashly damned dogmas not understood by them, together with their authors, and marked [them] with anathema. This the very words of Chrysostom sufficiently openly indicate,³ being in this manner: “BEHOLD, I watch men who hold no genuine sense from the sacred letters — nay, nothing at all of the sacred letters; and, to pass over most [things], I do not blush to call [them] furious, trifling, contentious, who neither know [the things] which they say, nor [the things] concerning which they affirm — bold in this one [thing] only, that they set up dogmas, and declare anathema on those [things] which they most ignore. Hence it is that we are a mockery to outsiders, and to the enemies of our faith.” And below: “HO! who [art] thou of such authority, who usurpest to thyself so great a power of anathematizing? Why dost thou assume so great a dignity, which was communicated to the Apostles only, and to those who are fit successors of them?” etc.

BUT there still remains that dilemma of Chrysostom, which the heretics of our times object against the ecclesiastical discipline of anathema: namely, Either he whom thou anathematizest lives, or has died: if he lives, thou actest impiously, who cuttest off from the body of the Church him who can be converted: but if he has died, thou art much more cruel, who strivest to inflict a penalty upon him who is not under human right. To the former part of the dilemma, therefore, it must be answered that Chrysostom, by that saying, condemns not the penalty of anathema, by which the Church coerces the living, but the impious mind of those who perverted the pious and ecclesiastical end of anathema. For since the Church uses excommunication with a certain pious affection, as [with] a salutary medicine — that he who is marked with that ignominy may acknowledge his fault, and, [as] a suppliant, return to the Church whence he had been cast out — those cruel men anathematized the living to this end: that they might cast them out of the Church irrevocably, [as] not to be received unto repentance any further. Rightly, therefore, Chrysostom, refuting cruelty of this kind, says, “Thou actest impiously, who cruelly cuttest off him who can turn himself from evil to good.”

TO the other part of the dilemma it is answered similarly: that Chrysostom refutes those same impious and unlearned [men], because they anathematized the dead, with a sense and intention plainly diverse from the ecclesiastical

—[from the ecclesiastical] tradition. Since indeed the pastors of the Church, when they pronounce anathemas upon those who have departed from this life in heresy, do not act [as] if they then for the first time willed to excommunicate, and to exclude the souls of heretics from the communion of the faithful souls resting in Christ. For those [souls], already before — both when they lived in [their] bodies, and when they migrated from [their] bodies — had been bound by the same bond of anathema by which the Church of God has bound all heretics; and immediately, when they went out from the body, they were delivered into the kingdom and power of the devil. When, therefore, the pastors of the Church anathematize heretics after death, they do not then for the first time excommunicate their souls, but — because they migrated in the pertinacity of error — pronounce them already excommunicated, and excluded from the assembly of the faithful souls; and their corpses and ashes, for the more evident demonstration of that matter, they keep far from ecclesiastical burial — not that they may harm those who have died, but that, by that aspect of demonstration, they may deter the living from heresies. This ecclesiastical rite of anathematizing the dead, therefore, Chrysostom does not disapprove; but he accuses those unskilled and raging [men], who — as [if] they had a right even over the dead — thought that by their anathemas they dislodged the souls of the deceased from the place of rest and the state of salvation, and cast [them] down into the place of eternal damnation. Restraining the insane fury of these, Chrysostom says that they are the crudest of all, because they desired to exercise savagery even upon those who were not under human right.