Excommunication and Catholicism
In the Catholic Church there are two classes of sanctions that can be levied against a member of the church who has violated church law; censures and expiatory penalties. Excommunication is a form of censure or medicinal penalty imposed by canon law. As a medicinal penalty, the intent of excommunication is not to shun offenders but to warn them of their unsuitable behavior and to facilitate their reform and reconciliation with the church. Even so, excommunication is considered the severest form of censure under canon law in that it prohibits offenders from celebrating the Eucharist. This paper focuses on the history of excommunication within the Catholic Church, the methods of excommunication, its effects, and what an excommunicate must do to regain full fellowship with the church.
History of Excommunication
New Testament
In the early church, excommunication isolated the wrongdoer from the church community; it forbade participation in the Holy Communion and denied an excommunicate’s rights to the Sacraments. Excommunicates were avoided by all Christians, not only in religious affairs but in everyday life as well (Kerin, 1997). Although the term excommunication did not appear in church documents until the fourth century (Lawlor, 2003), the custom of excommunication in the early Christian community is said to have been modeled on the practice of the Jewish Synagogue (Collinge, 1997). Scriptural references in the New Testament empower members of the Christian community to disassociate themselves from those who have committed acts contrary to the teachings of Jesus. Matthew 18: 15-17, indicates that ...