Dealing With Excommunicated Persons

If a person labors under full excommunication, having been officially declared by name as one to be shunned, the faithful can have no dealings with him whatever. In other cases, it is not forbidden to deal with excommunicated persons in temporal matters,such as business transactions or casual social encounters.

It may happen, according to the canonical terms of the penalty of excommunication as imposed, that one who deliberately and perversely disobeys the law by dealing with “anexcommunicated person named as one to be shunned,” is himself subject to excommunication.

It is a sin to disobey the command of the Church by dealing in matters not permissible with an excommunicated person. This offence is a mortal sin: (a) if it involves a sharing of the cause for which the penalty and censure of excommunication was imposed; or (b) if it deals with religion; or (c) if it implies contempt for the Church.