Anyone who works in publishing for any length of time necessarily becomes well-acquainted with the concept of intellectual property. If you come up with a new idea that solves a problem in a unique way, you own that idea. Fair use allows wiggle room for third parties to make transformative use of the idea for education, criticism, and the like, but they can’t claim it as their own. If they try to steal your IP, you can take steps to make them stop.
A similar rationale informs the canonical penalty of excommunication in the moral sphere. It’s aroused controversy in an an age when personal preference is seen as absolute, but every religious tradition–every organization, for that matter–has rules for determining who is a member in good standing and ways to expel troublemakers. The Woke Cultists who whine about “weaponizing the Eucharist” if a bishop considers applying canon law to heretic pols delight in banishing those who transgress their Byzantine code.
The Church needs to take a lesson from its own heretical offshoot. Let obvious rivals coopt your morality with impunity, and you’ll eventually lose control of it. The penalties found in IP law were written to address the same kind of public confusion in the business world.
Mock icons of government functionaries who promote human sacrifice have become popular with death cultists. By the Church’s morality, these profane images are sacrilegious. A healthy society informed by Christian morals would not allow them to exist. The hierarchy’s silence on the matter sows confusion as to where moral authority lies. That’s the original definition of scandal.
Just as companies can issue C&D orders when their IPs are infringed, canon law gives the bishops a mechanism for dealing with people who counterfeit Christian morality. The penalty for obstinately persisting in grave, public sin is simple excommunication, i.e. getting barred from Holy Communion. Then penalty is powerfully symbolic as well as medicinal. Admission to the Eucharistic banquet is a visible sign that the recipient is in full communion with the Church. Being denied the Eucharist is an unmistakable signal that the offender is not a Catholic in good standing and lacks moral authority.
What everybody misses is that excommunication isn’t just for the offender’s sake. It prevents public scandal by removing any ambiguity about what Christian morality is and who its rightful stewards are. It’s moral IP protection. Thankfully, some prelates are starting to get it.
Countless social ills would be mitigated if our shepherds went back to exposing wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Death Cult seized control of Western society by falsely claiming the moral high ground on every issue. Maybe if their morality were at all coherent, we wouldn’t be in such deep trouble. But each day brings further proof that the Cult’s knock-off moral code is degenerating into clown-nosed insanity.
It’s worth remembering that Dillahunty was once hailed by Reddit atheists as a champion of reason. Now the former arch-skeptic fanatically declares that some women have penises. His glib denial of transubstantiation doctrine provides the key to his madness. The ancient understanding that every substance has an intrinsic essence, which changes to its superficial qualities cannot alter, explodes the delusion that wearing a dress turns a man into a woman. It turns out that the West cannot discard Jesus and hold on to reason after all.
Death Cultists aren’t the only ones who’ve been driven moon-barking mad after cutting themselves off from the font of reason. Internet hucksters repackaging 19th century fads have found ready marks among oak tree LARPers and fedora-tippers who dislike black people. Never mind that St. Paul was a Benjaminite, and that Baur identified Paul as championing gentile Christianity against Petrine Judaizing. Baur–and Hegel, for that matter–provide additional testimony for keep a tight leash on one’s ideas.
“Once you start you’ll finish!”
