Catholic thought recognizes three classes of apostasy. One such class, perfidiæ, applies to lay people:
Perfidiæ is the complete and voluntary abandonment of the Christian religion, whether the apostate embraces another religion such as Paganism, Judaism, Mohammedanism, etc., or merely makes profession of Naturalism, Rationalism, etc. The heretic differs from the apostate in that he only denies one or more of the doctrines of revealed religion, whereas the apostate denies the religion itself, a sin which has always been looked upon as one of the most grievous. The "Shepherd" of Hermas, a work written in Rome in the middle of the second century, states positively that there is no forgiveness for those who have wilfully denied the Lord. [Similit. ix. 26, 5; Funk, Opera Patrum apostolicorum (Tübingen, 1887), I, 547]. Apostasy belonged, therefore, to the class of sins for which the Church imposed perpetual penance and excommunication without hope of pardon, leaving the forgiveness of the sin to God alone.
The other kinds, apostasy ab ordine and monachatus, apply to clerics and monks.
Note that in classic Church teaching, apostasy is the most grievous sin, and the most the Church would do to you is refuse to forgive you. Even that punishment was relaxed over time as apostasy was pulled into the circle of sins for which the Church could grant absolution.
Were there temporal as well as spiritual punishments? Certainly, but remember that by and large, the Church can only apply temporal penalties to the Church heirarchy -- priests, bishops, nuns, monks, and so forth. No more salary, no pension -- stuff like that. Punishments for lay people were properly the responsibility of Caesar.
And there were punishments over history. People were killed. But invariably the institutions that were responsible for this sort of thing, most notoriously the Spanish Inquisition, were hardly under Church control, but rather were organs of a secular government, and being used to pursue more political goals than religious ones.
Contrast this medieval situation to this one today:
On Monday, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan Mazar-i-Sharif to protest the court's decision Sunday to dismiss the case.
"Abdul Rahman must be killed. Islam demands it," said senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed, from the nearby northern city of Kunduz. "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."
Abdul Rahman, of course, is the man at the centre of a case of religious conversion in Afghanistan. Reported by his family for the crime of having a Bible in his possession, he faced state-sanctioned death, but international pressure forced the government of President Hamid Karzai to lift the penalty and release Rahman, on the excuse that Rahman was insane.
However, he now faces the mob.
UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said Rahman has asked for asylum "outside Afghanistan."
"We expect this will be provided by one of the countries interested in a peaceful solution to this case," he said.
No country has yet offered asylum to Rahman, said an official familiar with the case who declined to be named because of its sensitivity.
News now that Italy is offering to take Rahman.
Are Christians attacking Islam? Yes, if you count killing with kindness. Consider just one set of foreigners, Canadians.
Canadian Christians selflessly came to the aid of an Afghan boy ravaged by cancer. One of those Christians was a soldier who is part of contingent of soldiers fighting, and sometimes dying, to help prevent the Taliban from taking over again. Afghanistan is a recipient of vast amounts of Canadian aid, second only to Iraq (see Table K).
I wonder if these ranting clerics ever give a thought to how lucky they are that their nonsense is tolerated. Christians insist that God is patient and tolerant, even of those who reject Him, while Muslims seem to believe that Allah is unforgiving and eager to extract payment for any slight. The one thing these Muslims can't afford is to win this argument. Should the moment ever come when Christians decide that the Christian view is wrong and that the Muslims are right about how God wants His people to behave, with the technology at our disposal, Christians would wipe these Muslims mobs out in moments for having insulted the Christian God.
