UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald
by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith
posted Thursday, 10 Dec 2015
Some years ago now, I used to sit in the aula of the Gregorian University and listen to the lectures of Don Rino Fisichella, a Roman priest, who lectured on the credibility of Revelation. He was a stimulating lecturer, though he sometimes got carried away, I seem to remember.
He is now an Archbishop and in charge of the New Evangelisation, and he seems to have got carried away again, suggesting that to criticise the Pope is the equivalent of a physical attack on him, which carries the penalty of automatic excommunication. In fact, a distinguished canon lawyer explains that this is simply not the case.
The Church has been here before. In the period of the Italian Risorgimento, the Piedmontese state made war on the Papal States, eventually driving the Pope out of Rome and making him the prisoner in the Vatican.
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