“But of course there is
also the good of the Church to be considered. The sin may be such that it is
impossible for authority to take no action without at the same time encouraging
others to commit it. To excommunicate the sinner, in however good faith he is,
may be the only way of declaring effectively that what he persists in doing is
in fact a sin. If he is not excommunicated, but continues to live publicly as a
member of the Church, his example may come to be widely followed. Others may
say to themselves that this thing is apparently permitted, that therefore it is
presumably not wrong, that therefore they may do it too. Thus the good of the
Church as a whole and the purity of her ethical teaching may require the
excommunication of one who is himself not consciously--as he sees it--doing
anything wrong at all.”
Robert Mortimer, Western Canon Law (1953), ch. 5
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