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Excommunication in the Catholic Church

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This article's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. The reason given is: Information needs to be included relating to the state of canon law since the introduction of revised codes of canon law in 1918, 1983 and 1991. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2017)
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In the canon law of the Catholic Church, excommunication (Lat. ex, "out of", and communio or communicatio, "communion"; literally meaning "exclusion from communion") is a form of censure. In the formal sense of the term, excommunication includes being barred not only from the sacraments but also from the fellowship of Christian baptism.[1] The principal and severest censure, excommunication presupposes guilt; and being the most serious penalty that the Catholic Church can inflict, it supposes a grave offense. The excommunicated person is considered by Catholic ecclesiastical authority as an exile from the Church, for a time at least.

Excommunication is intended to invite the person to change behaviour or attitude, repent, and return to full communion.[1] It is not an "expiatory penalty" designed to make satisfaction for the wrong done, much less a "vindictive penalty" designed solely to punish. Excommunication, which is the gravest penalty of all, is always "medicinal".[2]

Its object and its effect are loss of communion, i.e. of the spiritual benefits shared by all the members of Catholic society; hence, it can affect only those who by baptism have been admitted to that society. There can and do exist other penal measures which entail the loss of certain fixed rights; among them are other censures, e.g. suspension for clerics, and interdict. Excommunication, however, is distinguished from these penalties in that it is the privation of all rights resulting from the social status of the Catholic as such. A person who has been excommunicated — unless excommunicated for apostasy, heresy or schism — is still considered a Catholic and still has all the duties of that relationship, including attending Mass. They are, however, to refrain from receiving the Eucharist.[3]

General concepts
In Latin Catholic canon law, excommunication is a rarely applied[4] censure; it is a "medicinal penalty" intended to invite the person to change behaviour or attitude, repent, and return to full communion.[5] It is not an "expiatory penalty" designed to make satisfaction for the wrong done, nor is it "vindictive".[6]

The Catholic Church cannot, nor does it wish to, pose any obstacle to the internal relations of the soul with God; it even implores God to give the grace of repentance to the excommunicated. The rites of the church, nevertheless, are the providential and regular channel through which divine grace is conveyed to Christians; exclusion from such rites, especially from the sacraments, entails the privation of this grace, to whose sources the excommunicated person no longer has access.[7]

Pope Leo X's papal bull Exsurge Domine (May 16, 1520) condemned as twenty-third proposition that "excommunications are merely external punishments, nor do they deprive a man of the common spiritual prayers of the Church". Pope Pius VI in Auctorem Fidei (August 28, 1794) condemned the notion which maintained that the effect of excommunication is only exterior because of its own nature it excludes only from exterior communion with the Church, as if, said the pope, excommunication were not a spiritual penalty binding in heaven and affecting souls.[7]

Genuine excommunication must not be confused with a refusal of ecclesiastical communion which was rather a refusal of episcopal communion. It was the refusal by a bishop to communicate in sacris (i.e., worship in common) with another bishop and his church, in consideration of an act deemed reprehensible and worthy of chastisement. It was undoubtedly the measure to which St. Martin of Tours had recourse when he refused to communicate with the Spanish bishops who caused Emperor Maximus to condemn to death the heretic Priscillian with some of his adherents.[7]

Anathema is a sort of aggravated excommunication, from which, however, it does not differ essentially, but simply in the matter of special solemnities and outward display.[7]

The terminology used to qualify the modalities of excommunication may vary depending on the author.[8]

A jure and ab homine
Excommunication is either a jure (by law) or ab homine (by judicial act of man, i.e. by a judge). The first is provided by the law itself, which declares that whosoever shall have been guilty of a definite crime will incur the penalty of excommunication. The second is inflicted by an ecclesiastical prelate, either when he issues a serious order under pain of excommunication or imposes this penalty by judicial sentence and after a criminal trial.[7]

Latæ sententiæ and ferendæ sententiæ
Further information: Latae sententiae and ferendae sententiae
Excommunication is either latæ sententiæ or ferendæ sententiæ.[7]

Latae sententiae excommunication is incurred as soon as the offence is committed and by reason of the offence itself (eo ipso) without intervention of any ecclesiastical judge; it is recognized in the terms used by the legislator, for instance: "the culprit will be excommunicated at once, by the fact itself [statim, ipso facto]".[7]

Ferendae sententiae excommunication is considered by the law as a penalty and is inflicted on the culprit only by a judicial sentence; in other words, the delinquent is rather threatened than visited with the penalty, and incurs it only when the judge has summoned him before his tribunal, declared him guilty, and punished him according to the terms of the law. It is recognized when the law contains these or similar words: "under pain of excommunication"; "the culprit will be excommunicated".[7]

Public and occult
Excommunication ferendæ sententiæ can be public only, as it must be the object of a declaratory sentence pronounced by a judge; but excommunication latæ sententiæ may be either public or occult.[7]

An excommunication is public through the publicity of the law when it is imposed and published by ecclesiastical authority; it is public through notoriety of fact when the offence that has incurred it is known to the majority in the locality, as in the case of those who have publicly done violence to clerics, or of the purchasers of church property. This excommunication is valid in the forum externum and consequently in the forum internum.[7]
Excommunication is occult when the offence entailing it is known to no one or almost no one. This excommunication is valid in the forum internum only.[7]
The practical difference of validities in the forums is very important:[7]

He who has incurred occult excommunication should treat himself as excommunicated and be absolved as soon as possible, submitting to whatever conditions will be imposed upon him, but this only in the tribunal of conscience; he is not obliged to denounce himself to a judge nor to abstain from external acts connected with the exercise of jurisdiction, and he may ask absolution without making himself known either in confession or to the Sacred Penitentiaria. According to the teaching of Benedict XIV, "a sentence declaratory of the offence is always necessary in the forum externum, since in this tribunal no one is presumed to be excommunicated unless convicted of a crime that entails such a penalty".
Public excommunication, on the other hand, is removed only by a public absolution; when it is question of simple publicity of fact (see above), the absolution, while not judicial, is nevertheless public, inasmuch as it is given to a known person and appears as an act of the forum externum.
Total or partial
Salaverri and Nicolau note:[9]

An excommunication [...] can be total or partial according as the excommunicated person is excluded from communion with the faithful in all or only in some of the good which fall under the jurisdiction of the Church.

Reserved and non-reserved
Excommunication is either reserved or non-reserved. This division affects the absolution from censure. In the forum internum any confessor can absolve from non-reserved excommunications; but excommunications that are reserved can only be remitted, except through indult or delegation, by those to whom the law reserves the absolution.[7]

There is a distinction between excommunications reserved to the pope (these being divided into two classes, according to which they are either specially or simply reserved to him), and those reserved to bishops or ordinaries. As to excommunications ab homine, absolution from them is reserved by law to the judge who has inflicted them. In a certain sense, excommunications may also be reserved in view of the persons who incur them; thus, absolution from excommunications in foro externo incurred by bishops is reserved to the pope; again, custom reserves to him the excommunication of sovereigns.[7]

Formal and material
See also: Hylomorphism
There is a difference between formal and material excommunication:[9]

An excommunication is a censure or penalty whereby a delinquent or obstinate person is excluded from the communion of the faithful, until after abandoning his contumacy he is absolved. That can be called formal which affects a man who is really delinquent and obstinate. But that can be said to be merely material, which concerns a subject who through invincible error is thought to be delinquent and obstinate when in reality he is not such.

Perfect excommunication
An excommunication perfect or a perfect excommunication, is defined as follow:[10]

We call that excommunication perfect whereby the Apostolic See properly intends to separate a delinquent and obstinate person from the body of the Church. Therefore, besides the privation of spiritual goods which fall under the jurisdiction of the Church, a perfect excommunication implies, as its own special nature, this manifest intention of separating someone from the body of the Church. But because the dominant intention of the Church is "to impose an excommunication for healing and not for ruin," therefore, if by his contrition the excommunicated person recovers grace and charity, by that fact his excommunication ceases to be perfect, even though juridically he really remains an excommunicated person to be avoided, and he cannot licitly participate in the communion of the faithful until he is absolved.

Membership of the Church
See also: Body of Christ and Mystici corporis Christi
Salaverri and Nicolau give the following summary of theological opinions on excommunication and membership:[11]
That those who have been excommunicated from the Church by a perfect excommunication are not members of the body of the Church is an opinion common among Catholics.

a) That the Church wishes indeed to punish by excommunication delinquent members, but de facto does not intend to separate the excommunicated from the body of the Church, although she says that they are to be avoided, is held by D'Herbigny, Dieckmann, Spacil, Sauras, with Báñez, Valentia, Suarez and Guamieri [sic, Guarnieri].

b) That those excommunicated with a partial excommunication are members of the Church is a common opinion among Theologians

Salaverri and Nicolau's opinion is that only those which have been excommunicated by a "total, formal and perfect excommunication" can be said to be outside of the Catholic Church.[12]

Catholic priest Joseph Krupp states that the person excommunicated is still considered Catholic and still has all the duties of that relationship, including going to Mass and the like. These persons are, however, to refrain from receiving Communion.[3]

Edward N. Peters states:[13]

Because excommunication can be imposed only on a Catholic (that is, one who is in full communion with the Church according to canon 205 [of the 1983 Code of Canon Law]), excommunication deprives one of the fullness of the communion that he or she previously enjoyed. [...] Excommunication does not mean that one is no longer a Christian (because Christian baptism imprints an indelible character on the soul) or no longer a Catholic (for although there are ways to renounce one's Catholic identity, excommunication is not one of them). It does mean, though, that one is deprived of the benefits of full communion with the Catholic Church.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki holds a similar view as that of Krupp and Peters.[14]

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