The Media Does Not Get Excommunication (Why Don't We Excommunicate Child Abusing Priests) (Updated)

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF is giving us his wisdom again!! He weighs into the Nun abortion story this week. Mirrors of Justice has it here.

However the main story is not what caught my eye. What caught my eye is again the media not understanding excommunication and its purpose.

“In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” the hospital said in a statement. “This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee.”
Sister Margaret was a member of that committee. She declined to discuss the episode with me, but the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olmsted, ruled that Sister Margaret was “automatically excommunicated” because she assented to an abortion.
“The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s,” the bishop’s communication office elaborated in a statement.
Let us just note that the Roman Catholic hierarchy suspended priests who abused children and in some cases defrocked them but did not normally excommunicate them, so they remained able to take the sacrament.

It might shock Kristoff but the Catholic Church does not excommunicate serial killers, rapists, and other assorted fiends on a regular basis. As to abortion the sanction though is automatic.

What Kristoff is not aware of no doubt is that this excommunication can often be lifted in most cases by just going to Confession!!

That is the point he seems to be missing. That is that excommunication is not a punishment so much but something to try to get the person to recognize their error and come back into the Church.

While child abuse is heinous the Church treats no sinner as out of the reach of GOD. A child abusing Priest very well might have gone to confession years and years ago and even this horrific sin would be forgiven. So excommunication is not the proper remedy here. It is apple and oranges.

Update- American Papist owns him- An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof