Until Ratzinger or JPII acts in an official capacity, (since excommunication is an official, external Church penalty), there is no excommunication.
See my Post #12.
This is an AUTOMATIC excommunication based on public heresy. No act by any churchman is necessary.
Dear sinkspur,
"Until Ratzinger or JPII acts in an official capacity, (since excommunication is an official, external Church penalty), there is no excommunication."
Not quite.
1. The theologian is stating that an automatic excommunication has applied as a result of becoming a public heretic.
2. The theologian, at the request of the Curia, has spelled out the reasons why Mr. Kerry is a public heretic.
3. Whether Mr. Kerry is a public heretic or not is a matter of fact, not of opinion.
4. Thus, whether Mr. Kerry is automatically excommunicated is a matter of fact, it requires no ruling from the Vatican, official or otherwise.
5. You are right that until the recognition of the fact of Mr. Kerry's excommunication is made officially, he may continue to pretend to be a Catholic.
6. But should the Vatican get around to giving an official recognition, it doesn't mean that Mr. Kerry wasn't excommunicated all along.
7. Unless he wishes to try to argue with the unarguable truth and logic of the theologian's position, a reasonable person will recognize that Mr. Kerry is excommunicated.
Along with Chappaquidick Ted, Lesbo Mikulski, and a host of others.
sitetest
Sinky, you are referring to the external forum.
In the internal forum, the state of Mr. Kerry's affiliation (or rather, lack thereof) with our Church is quite clear. He holds heresies publicly, he is divorced and remarried outside the Church without the benefit of an annulment, and he takes communion with and worships with non-Catholics. He is clearly not a member of the Church in good standing so far as his outward actions reflect his internal disposition.
I think you are wrong on your Canonical interpretation.
There are LOTSA excommunicandi wandering around out there--e.g., Catholic women who have had abortions and not sought sacramental forgiveness.
Latae sententiae means just that: one excommunicates oneself; it does not require paperwork.
In the case outlined above, it's clear from recent history that Kerry is latae sententiae. The "recent history" is the removal of "Catholic" from literature distributed by Tom Daschle. Albeit in that case it was at the request of Daschle's Bishop, the Bishop would NOT have made the request unless Daschle was, in fact, excommunicated by virtue of his public record on abortion.
Open/shut.
But, everone knows he is a phony "catholic." He is divorced/remarried and goes to Communion (forbidden) when he isn't politicking on a Sunday in a black church in Miami cavorting with probaorts Sharpton and Jackson