No vice is ever truly private, but some vices are more private than others. For some vices, the privacy of the vice is a choice.

When you publicize your vice, you affect others, often in a sinful way. People are the way they are. Communities are the way they are. The way people and communities are is that their mores are defined by what people do. Every public act conveys a signal. Every discrete public act is effectively a declaration of principle. There is no way to say, “I am going to do this, but it doesn’t mean anything.” The words may leave your mouth, but they don’t mean anything.

I refer to “discrete public acts” because a public sin is different if its accompanied by an apology or repentance. If there is an apology or repentance, the unit of meaning includes the apology or repentance, so the message is different. But publicly sinning without apology or repentance is intrinsically a social act to change the community’s definition of sin.

Therefore, every public sin is inherently an act of excommunication in degree. I don’t mean it’s a formal act of excommunication. I mean that it is inherently an act that breaks community—ex communio.

Two things can happen. Either the community’s mores are shifted, which mean that the community after the public sin is different from the community before. The past and the present are no longer the same community. They are no longer in full communion.

Or the community maintains its mores by excluding the sinner. His communion is the one broken.

There are potentially socio-cultural implications. It may be that the doctrine of Progress is an excommunion doctrine.

There are also potential implications for judgment and salvation. That’s for next week.  First, on Friday, I am going to lay some groundwork by talking about the heresy (?) of progress between kingdoms.