Fr. Greg Bramlage wants to excommunicate “sociopath” Melinda Gates.

don’t know any­thing about Fr. Greg Bram­lage oth­er than that he’s the chair­man of some­thing called Mis­sion­ar­ies of the New Evan­ge­liza­tion and he’s prone to say wild things on Face­book that now and then make their way into my News Feed. Once he called the Unit­ed Nations “the right arm of Freema­son­ry.” Anoth­er time he said that the very future of Chris­tian­i­ty depends upon Don­ald Trump. Now he wants to excom­mu­ni­cate Melin­da Gates; I’m not sure why. The title of the arti­cle he shares, from the Hin­dus­tan Times, is “‘Real­ly good qual­i­ty sex edu­ca­tion starts very, very ear­ly’: Melin­da Gates.” Is that why? Mrs. Gates says sex edu­ca­tion should start “very, very ear­ly” and Bram­lage thinks this war­rants anoth­er Exsurge Domine? “Excom­mu­ni­cate this sociopath!” he cries.

The Church does have guide­lines for sex edu­ca­tion with­in the fam­i­ly. But it is impor­tant to note that they are broad and have noth­ing to say about how ear­ly is too ear­ly. The doc­u­ment is titled “The Truth and Mean­ing of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty” (TMHS); here are its few para­me­ters.

• Sex edu­ca­tion should be the “edu­ca­tion of chil­dren for chasti­ty” (22). [Note that chasti­ty is not the same as celiba­cy and includes with­in its mean­ing a faith­ful mar­ried life. Some con­fuse the two.]
• Par­ents should be the pri­ma­ry edu­ca­tors of their chil­dren in this area (23).
• Instruc­tion should be age-appro­pri­ate (75–77). [That means only that par­ents should explain things at the right time and in a way the child can under­stand.]

The Church does not say any­thing so spe­cif­ic as “start teach­ing all this at the age of eight,” or “twelve,” or “no ear­li­er than ten.” Dif­fer­ent chil­dren mature at dif­fer­ent paces and only a par­ent can know when the “appro­pri­ate time” is. “Each child should receive indi­vid­u­al­ized for­ma­tion,” the Church says. Par­ents, the Church says, “can adapt the stages of edu­ca­tion in love to the par­tic­u­lar require­ments of each child” (77).

Indeed the Church real­izes that some instruc­tion is going to have to start fair­ly ear­ly:

From the ear­li­est age, par­ents may observe the begin­ning of instinc­tive gen­i­tal activ­i­ty in their child. It should not be con­sid­ered repres­sive to cor­rect such habits gen­tly that could become sin­ful lat­er [i.e., mas­tur­ba­tion], and, when nec­es­sary, to teach mod­esty as the child grows (69).

The Church does say that the age of innocence—from about 5 years old to puberty—“must nev­er be dis­turbed by unnec­es­sary infor­ma­tion about sex” (78); but the word here is unnec­es­sary infor­ma­tion. The Church does not advise par­ents to with­hold any infor­ma­tion or instruc­tion. Nor does it give us a list of what’s “unnec­es­sary”; par­ents must dis­cern for them­selves.

•••

It’s hard to know, based upon the arti­cle at Hin­dus­tan Times (HT), what Mrs. Gates said that is at odds with the Church on any of these points. Here’s the lead:

“Chil­dren are curi­ous about their bod­ies and it’s nat­ur­al for them to ask ques­tions,” says Melin­da Gates, 52, who describes her­self as the co-chair of the Bill and Melin­da Gates Foun­da­tion, busi­ness and moth­er. “My girls were sev­en-10 years old when me, and Bill with our son, went to sex edu­ca­tion class­es with them. Real­ly good qual­i­ty sex edu­ca­tion starts very, very ear­ly.”

Much of this—that chil­dren are curi­ous and ask questions—simply repeats com­mon knowl­edge that the Church itself points out (cf. TMHS 75–76). Mrs. Gates says she start­ed sex edu­ca­tion for her daugh­ters when they were between 7 and 10. That hard­ly seems too ear­ly to me. We don’t know any­thing about the chil­dren or the con­tent of the pro­gram or how the Gates’ explained it. We do know that both par­ents attend­ed the class­es with their chil­dren; that seems in keep­ing with the Church’s view that par­ents are the pri­ma­ry edu­ca­tors.

HT con­tin­ues:

“A young girl needs to under­stand her body and under­stand repro­duc­tive health and as a par­ent, we need to have that con­ver­sa­tion. You have to start very young and have ongo­ing dia­logues — kids need par­ents, school, rel­a­tives, old­er sis­ter, com­mu­ni­ty self-help work­er for good qual­i­ty infor­ma­tion so they can make deci­sion about their bod­ies and get empow­ered about their bod­ies,” [Mrs. Gates] said.

One might say that “repro­duc­tive health” and “get empow­ered about their bod­ies” are code words for abor­tion. The arti­cle does not men­tion abor­tion, though Bill and Melin­da Gates are cer­tain­ly pro-choice. That’s well-known. If you advo­cate for legal abor­tion, as they do, you’re cer­tain­ly a dis­si­dent Catholic. But the Church is not going to excom­mu­ni­cate you for it; I explain why below.

Nor will the Church excom­mu­ni­cate you if you advo­cate con­tra­cep­tion, and Mrs. Gates does men­tion birth con­trol:

“We’ve made some great progress. … 30 mil­lion addi­tion­al women and girls are using the con­tra­cep­tives of their choice (since FP2012),” said [Mrs. Gates]. “By 2020, we want to move clos­er to reach the goal of uni­ver­sal access and to con­tra­cep­tives to ensure every woman can plan her fam­i­ly and future. I’d like to see a lit­tle more, but a lot of ground­work has been done.”

Reach­ing ado­les­cents is a pri­or­i­ty, she says. “Ado­les­cents are not being served by the fam­i­ly plan­ning com­mu­ni­ty. With 500 mil­lion girls in the world very soon, if we don’t give them fam­i­ly plan­ning options and infor­ma­tion about their bod­ies, they will get trapped in cycles of pover­ty,” she says.

So Mrs. Gates advo­cates “fam­i­ly plan­ning,” and that includes pos­si­ble recourse to abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tives. Is that why Fr. Bram­lage demands her excom­mu­ni­ca­tion?

•••

I’m afraid that’s not going to hap­pen. The 1983 Code of Canon Law lists just sev­en excom­mu­ni­ca­ble offens­es.

• Heresy, apos­ta­sy, or schism (Canon 1364)
• Dis­card­ing or mis­us­ing the con­se­crat­ed species (Canon 1367)
• Using phys­i­cal force against the pope (Canon 1370)
• Grant­i­ng abso­lu­tion to a per­son with whom you have had illic­it sex­u­al con­tact (Canon 1378)
• Con­se­crat­ing a bish­op with­out per­mis­sion from the Holy See (Canon 1382)
• Break­ing the seal of the con­fes­sion­al (Canon 1388)
• Procur­ing an abor­tion (Canon 1398)

Canon 1398 does not apply to Gates here because it has to do specif­i­cal­ly with procur­ing an abor­tion. The Church can’t excom­mu­ni­cate you just because you are pro-choice. Even if Mrs. Gates did have an abor­tion at one time or more, for all we know, an excep­tion of Canon 1324 applies in her case. If you were under 16, or if you were “coerced by grave fear,” the Church does not excom­mu­ni­cate you. And so on; there are sev­er­al more exemp­tions. We don’t have these details in Mrs. Gates’ case and they are none of our busi­ness.

Nor does Canon 1364 apply. Mrs. Gates is pro-choice; she’s pro-con­tra­cep­tion. That makes her a dis­si­dent Catholic, not a heretic. Heresy goes fur­ther than mere dis­si­dence. Heresy, accord­ing to Canon 751, is “the obsti­nate denial or obsti­nate doubt after the recep­tion of bap­tism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.”

The illic­it­ness of abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tion are points of Catholic faith but not of divine faith. This is an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion. To be a heretic, you must deny a point of divine rev­e­la­tion. The Church’s teach­ing on abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tion have not been divine­ly revealed. To reject them means that you are in dis­sent, not that you are in heresy. The Church excom­mu­ni­cates heretics, not dis­senters.

•••

I am used to see­ing Catholics grow very impa­tient and frus­trat­ed and ask things like, “Why are Nan­cy Pelosi or Joe Biden still allowed to receive the Eucharist?” Fr. Bram­lage goes fur­ther; he wants to kick Mrs. Gates out of the Church alto­geth­er. He even calls her a “sociopath,” which is bizarre. A sociopath is some­one who has no con­science, but the most we can say about Melin­da Gates is that she has a mal­formed con­science. That’s dif­fer­ent than hav­ing no con­science at all.

In part I sym­pa­thize with the frus­tra­tion, but the nuclear option isn’t going to solve any­thing. All it means is, a minor­i­ty of frus­trat­ed peo­ple, self-described Faith­ful­Catholics™, will feel good that they got rid of all the bad, bad black sheeps. They will rejoice at retain­ing Catholi­cism as a pri­vate pos­ses­sion of their own with excom­mu­ni­ca­tion as their weapon against the unwel­come. I remem­ber watch­ing a talk by Car­di­nal Arinze, and after­ward some­one asked him what the Church could do about politi­cians who are pro-choice and vote for laws per­mit­ting abor­tion. The gen­tle­man ask­ing the ques­tion seemed to think the pope ought to do some­thing real­ly dire and show them they could­n’t get away with it. Arinze said some­thing along the lines of, “What do you think? That the pope ought to send the Swiss Guard to arrest them?”

Excom­mu­ni­ca­tion, right­ly under­stood and applied, is an act of love. It is a last-ditch effort to get a per­son to under­stand the dire spir­i­tu­al dan­ger in which he stands. That’s not going to hap­pen if it’s used as a first-choice weapon of puri­ty. All that does is turn Catholi­cism from a church into a clique. There are times—rare times—when a par­ent may need to turn a way­ward child over to the police or kick him out. You don’t do it if your child cheats on a test or dis­obeys a cur­few or takes a razor and cuts the cat’s hair off. You do it when you have no options left.

The world is full of will­ful, dis­obe­di­ent peo­ple; we don’t get to just throw them in jail. Some­one like Fr. Bram­lage, who demands excom­mu­ni­ca­tion when Melin­da Gates express­es some opin­ions that make her a dis­si­dent at worst, reveals how lit­tle imag­i­na­tion he has about win­ning souls. Excom­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes, not love, but a way of say­ing “I give up on Melin­da Gates.” That’s pret­ty sad, from a priest.