Excommunication
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Excommunication is religious censure which is used to deprive or suspend membership in a religious community. The word literally means "out of communion".
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Catholic Communion
Excommunication is the most serious penalty that can be imposed for Catholics. While a person excommunicated is not "damned" by the Church, the person is barred from participating in its communal life. The outward sign of this loss of community involves barring the person from participating in liturgy, i.e., receiving the Eucharist or the other Sacraments. Certain other rights and privileges normally resulting from membership in the church are revoked, such as holding ecclesiastical office. Excommunication is intended to be only temporary, a "medicinal" procedure intended to guide the offender toward repentance. In the Catholic Communion excommunication is usually terminated by repentance, confession, and absolution. Excommunications offences must be absolved by a more senior official or a priest that has permission from a senior official.
Automatic excommunication
There are a few offenses for which Catholics are automatically excommunicated:
- Apostasy
- Heresy
- Schism
- Desecration of the Eucharist
- Physical force against the Pope
- One who actually procures an abortion and all accomplices
- Priest who absolves a partner in adultery
- Priest who directly violates the sacramental seal of confession
- Both parties to the consecration of a bishop without a Papal mandate
Also, in the matter of Papal conclaves, all who are present in the conclave, including Cardinals and aides, are bound by oath to keep the details of the conclave secret. Only the Pope can allow details on the election to be released. If anyone present at the conclave reveals secret information without the authorization of the Pope, that person would face automatic excommunication.
Some ecclesiastical offenses incur an automatic interdict, which for a lay person is virtually equivalent to excommunication.
Eastern Orthodox Communion
In the Orthodox Church, excommunication is the exclusion of a member from the Eucharist. It is not expulsion from the Church. This can happen due to minor reasons like not having confessed within that year or be imposed as part of a penitential period. The Orthodox Church does have a means of expulsion, by pronouncing anathema, but this is reserved only for acts of serious and unrepetant heresy. Even in that case, the individual is not "damned" by the Church but is instead left to his own devices.
Children of the Faith
In this fundamentalist cult, which is only known to be found in New Zealand, anyone can be excommunicated by their parents after evening prayers or by the church leader at any time. This is the highest penalty. The cultists will say that the excommunicated person is "dead to them", unless they repent and "make atonement for their years of sin".
Calvin's view on excommunication
In John Calvin's Institutes of The Christian Religion, he said (4.12.10):
- For when our Saviour promises that what his servants bound on earth should be bound in heaven, (Matth. 18: 18,) he confines the power of binding to the censure of the Church, which does not consign those who are excommunicated to perpetual ruin and damnation, but assures them, when they hear their life and manners condemned, that perpetual damnation will follow if they do not repent. [Excommunication] rebukes and animadverts upon his manners; and although it ... punishes, it is to bring him to salvation, by forewarning him of his future doom. If it succeeds, reconciliation and restoration to communion are ready to be given. ... Hence, though ecclesiastical discipline does not allow us to be on familiar and intimate terms with excommunicated persons, still we ought to strive by all possible means to bring them to a better mind, and recover them to the fellowship and unity of the Church: as the apostle also says, "Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother" (2 Thess. 3: 15). If this humanity be not observed in private as well as public, the danger is, that our discipline shall degenerate into destruction.
Some Reformed churches today do not make use of excommunication (or church discipline in its lesser forms), though it is often still required by their constitutions.
In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the "Mormons"), practices excommunication, as well as the lesser sanctions of disfellowship or probation, as penalties for those guilty of serious sin. The decision to excommunicate a member is generally the province of the leadership of a Stake, which consists of several local congregations. Excommunications occur only after a formal "church court" in which twelve members of the Stake High Council listen to evidence and then vote.
Excommunication includes losing the right to take the Sacrament (Communion); in addition, a person who has been excommunicated loses their membership in the church, and to regain membership, the person must be re-baptized. Excommunicated persons are welcome and encouraged to attend church meetings, but they cannot participate, and they cannot enter a Latter-day Saint temple, or wear Temple garments. In many cases, the church publicizes the fact that a person has been excommunicated, but not the reasons why, which are kept confidential. Excommunicated members may be re-baptized after a waiting period, and after sincere repentance, as judged by a series of interviews with church leaders.
Excommunication is generally reserved for what Mormons consider to be the most serious sins, including serious crimes, adultery, polygamy, homosexual conduct, apostasy, teaching false doctrines, or openly criticizing LDS leaders. In the case of apostasy, false teaching, or being openly critical of church leadership, excommunication is often done as a last resort after repeated warnings.
Some critics have charged LDS leaders with using the threat of excommunication to silence member researchers and critics who disagree with established LDS policy and doctrines, perhaps most notably the so-called September Six.
However, LDS policy dictactes that local leaders are responsible for excommunication, without influence from General Church leadership. LDS apologists claim that many alleged excommunications never take place or are used as a publicity stunt to draw attention to one's cause for gain. A recent example they point to is Thomas Murphy, who claimed he was threatened with excommunication because his DNA research challenged LDS teachings. (see Archaeology and the Book of Mormon). Such an excommunication to this date has never taken place or been arranged.
As an lighter penalty, a Latter-day Saint may be disfellowshipped, which means that they do not lose their membership in the church, but they may not participate in the Sacrament or in church meetings, and they may not wear Temple garments. For more minor sins, or where the sinner appears truly repentant, the member may be put on probation for a time, which means that further sin will result in disfellowship or excommunication.
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses resort to disfellowshipping in cases where a person has seriously violated the Bible's moral standards, based on their understanding of the Bible. Disfellowshipping is not automatic, the individual’s sincere repentance or lack thereof is the determining factor. If a judicial committee established by the congregation is convinced that the person has not repented of the sin(s) committed, disfellowshipping will result. If the person believes that an error in judgment has been made, he or she has the right to appeal. The matter would then be investigated by a committee of different elders from another congregation. Disfellowshipped persons may be reinstated into the congregation if they cease the activities that led to their disfellowshipping and give evidence of having repented; they will not, however, be considered eligible for special privileges, such as being a congregation elder, for a number of years after their reinstatement. For more information, see Practices of Jehovah's Witnesses and Shunning.
In Judaism
Cherem is the highest ecclesiastical censure in the Jewish community. It is the total exclusion of a person from the Jewish community. Except in rare cases in the Ultra-Orthodox community, cherem stopped existing after The Enlightenment, when local Jewish communities lost their political autonomy, and Jews were integrated into the greater gentile nations which they lived in. A fuller discussion of this subject is available in the cherem article.
External links
et:Ekskommunikatsioon
fr:Excommunication
no:Ekskommunikasjon
