Excommunication

ARCHBISHOP Carlo Maria Vigano, former apostolic nuncio to the United States, has, according to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, incurred excommunication "latae sententiae." What this means in canon law is that his acts (or omissions) have resulted, of their own accord — and not by way of sentence or administrative action — in his separation from communion with the Church.

Excommunication is a matter that belongs to what the Church calls "the external forum" — the region of processes, and courts and administrative acts. Whether he has grievously sinned or not is a matter of the "internal forum" — the judgment of conscience, the state of one's soul.