Though Rome has censured errant theologians before, it has rarely resorted to excommunication.
So far, threats of excommunication have persuaded legislators from approving a comprehensive reproductive health bill, which would fund contraception programs.
The Vatican has said it was unaware of Bishop Williamson's views about the Holocaust when it decided to cancel his excommunication.
It's the canonical crime of abortion, which Peters said more aptly applies to abortion providers, that would incur automatic excommunication and require a bishop's intervention.
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The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that person who procures an abortion incurs automatic excommunication, a penalty that often only a bishop can lift.
CNN: Pope: All priests can forgive those who've had abortions
The Vatican ordered Williamson to recant, and said the pope was not aware of Williamson's views on the Holocaust when he lifted the excommunication.
And the scrutineers are explicitly exhorted not to form any sort of cabal or make any plans to sway the election, under pain of excommunication.
Until now, any German Catholic who stopped payment faced eventual excommunication.
Although the measures laid out in the decree are similar to excommunication from the church, German observers say the word is carefully avoided in the decree.
And cardinals take the threat of excommunication more seriously, perhaps, than translators or support staff on hand during the wider meetings ahead of the Sistine Chapel lockdown.
The late Archbishop Lefebvre made them bishops in unsanctioned consecrations in Switzerland in 1988, prompting the immediate excommunication of all five by the late Pope John Paul II.
Divulging details of the conclave is punishable by excommunication.
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