#CancelCulture: a New Lease on Life for the Old Anathema

Over years of reading Church History, I have been continually confronted with the thesis that at some point after Thomas Becket or the famous scene in Canossa, the site where Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV did penance in 1077, standing three days bare-headed in the snow, in order to reverse his  excommunication by Pope Gregory VII, the old anathema lost its coercive force, hardened public sinners could no longer be so brought to their senses. Once the secular arm failed or refused to do the Church’s bidding, it was all over: you could forget not only the anathemas but the indices of forbidden books, the whole shooting match.

Granted, consciences were and still are bound by ecclesiastical penalties, but we have been led to believe that the hardened sinner just sloughs them off and nobody else seems much bound to respect them, failing to do their Catholic part by turning their backs on those so publicly condemned by the Church.

Well, these days, watching a very barbarous contingent of a very uncivil society just #cancel things and people, I am beginning to think the Church should probably give the declared anathema another try. I am not being facetious, I really mean it. In other words, the historians who were so sure that without the support or enforcement of the secular arm a Church censure was futile, just might have been dead wrong.

#Cancelling someone like JK Rowlings does seem to have an effect, for whatever reason, on a broader social group, with people distancing themselves from the one so anathematized (to use the old expression).  Perhaps the Church could benefit and benefit the body Catholic, by unashamedly #cancelling public figures who claim the name Catholic while denying all and everything which such a confession implies.

Let his or her local bishop lay a resounding “Anathema sit” on a nominally Catholic politician who is rabidly pro-abortion! Until we try, we will never know if it might help the Church close ranks and bring others to their senses. Caveat! St. Thomas a Becket’s firm stance was ultimately crowned with that glory which is martyrdom. What else could it mean, though, when we invite believers to embrace the Lord’s Cross?

PROPERANTES  ADVENTUM DIEI DEI