ACI Prensa Staff, Jun 25, 2024 / 16:15 pm
Recently a community of Poor Clare nuns in Spain announced their decision to leave the Catholic Church, thus committing the canonical crime of schism and incurring excommunication. Italian Archbishop Carlo María Viganò is also undergoing a Vatican extrajudicial process for schism.
Just what are schism and excommunication in the Catholic Church? An explanation follows.
Schism
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, schism is “the rupture of ecclesiastical union and unity, i.e. either the act by which one of the faithful severs as far as in him lies the ties which bind him to the social organization of the Church and make him a member of the mystical body of Christ, or the state of dissociation or separation which is the result of that act.”