Excommunication
Ecclesiastical
censure whereby a member of a church is deprived
of the benefits and privileges of membership. Excommunication
is the most serious ecclesiastical censure; it is
intended, however, as a corrective rather than a
vindictive form of punishment.
In
the time of Christ, excommunication
was a recognized penalty among the Jews. A distinction
is drawn in the Mishnah, the compilation of Jewish
scriptural law, between two degrees of excommunication;
of these the milder (niddui) involved exclusion
from community life for 7 to 30 days, with the performance
of penance and the wearing of mourning. Twenty-four
offenses leading to this penalty were enumerated,
most of them of a civil nature. The heavier sentence
(cherem) was more formal, involving a ritual of
solemn curses and lasting an indefinite time.
A
similar power of excommunication was recognized
from the inception of the Christian church. Two
degrees of excommunication, major and minor, were
defined early in church history. Minor excommunication
involved exclusion from the sacrament of the Eucharist
and from the full privileges of the church. Major
excommunication was pronounced upon obstinate sinners,
relapsed apostates, and heretics; its form was more
solemn, and it was less easily revoked. The duration
of the excommunication was decided by the bishop.
In
Africa and Spain the absolution of lapsed individuals
(those who in times of persecution had fallen away
from their Christian profession by actual sacrifice
to idols) was for the most part forbidden except
at death.
In
the early church no civil disabilities were connected
with excommunication, but as governments became
Christian, major excommunication was followed by
loss of political rights and exclusion from public
office. The 8th-century capitularies, or ordinances,
of Pepin the Short, king of the Franks, ordained
that major excommunication should be followed by
banishment.
Other
national laws further extended the scope of the
ecclesiastical censure. Excommunication directed
against rulers deprived them of their rights to
govern and, therefore, absolved their subjects of
allegiance to them; the church thus became an important
temporal power.
The
leaders of the Reformation also claimed the power
of excommunication. Martin Luther insisted on the
inherent right of church ministers to perform excommunication.
The French reformer John Calvin asserted that excommunication
is of the very essence of the ministry. Civil disabilities
followed excommunication in communities permeated
by the Reformation, but this practice eventually
ceased to be the rule. Nevertheless, in England
until 1813, persons excommunicated were barred from
bringing legal actions into civil court, from serving
on juries, from appearing as witnesses in any legal
proceeding, and from practicing as attorneys in
any court of the realm. All these disabilities were
removed by statute, and excommunicated persons were
declared exempt from penalty, except "such imprisonment,
not exceeding six months, as the court pronouncing
or declaring such person excommunicate shall direct."
This penalty however, is never invoked. By U.S.
laws, excommunication cannot involve the loss of
civil rights, and the civil courts cannot be used
to enforce the restoration of church membership.
In
the Roman Catholic church the power of excommunication
belongs to those prelates who possess ordinary or
delegated jurisdiction in the forum externum (the
court dealing with matters relating to the corporate
life of the church). Parish priests, who have jurisdiction
only in the forum internum (in matters of conscience),
cannot excommunicate. The power of excommunication
can never be delegated to the laity.
Excommunication may also be incurred, without the necessity
of a formal sentence, by violation of a law that carries the
penalty of "excommunication ipso facto." Absolution from certain
cases of excommunication is reserved to the bishop having
jurisdiction over the offender; absolution from a more limited
number of graver cases is reserved to the pope. Anathema,
the severest form of excommunication, differs from other disciplinary
procedures in that it includes certain characteristic formal
ceremonies.
"Excommunication,"
Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com
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