Excommunication
Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular those of being in communion with other members of the congregation, and of receiving the sacraments.
It is practiced by all of the ancient churches as well as by other Christian denominations; however, it is also used more generally to refer to similar types of institutional religious exclusionary practices and shunning among other religious groups. The Amish have also been known to excommunicate members that were either seen or known for breaking rules, or questioning the church, a practice known as shunning. Jehovah's Witnesses use the term disfellowship to refer to their form of excommunication.
The word excommunication means putting a specific individual or group out of communion. In some denominations, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the member or group. Excommunication may involve banishment, shunning, and shaming, depending on the group, the offense that caused excommunication, or the rules or norms of the religious community. The grave act is often revoked in response to manifest repentance.
Bahá'í Faith
Excommunication among Bahá'ís is rare and generally not used for transgressions of community standards, intellectual dissent, or conversion to other religions. Instead, it is the most severe punishment, reserved for suppressing organized dissent that threatens the unity of believers. Covenant-breaker is a term used by Bahá'ís to refer to a person who has been excommunicated from the Bahá'í community for breaking the 'Covenant': actively promoting schism in the religion or otherwise opposing the legitimacy of the chain of succession of leadership.Currently, the Universal House of Justice has the sole authority to declare a person a Covenant-breaker, and once identified, all Bahá'ís are expected to shun them, even if they are family members. According to 'Abdu'l Baha Covenant-breaking is a contagious disease. The Bahá'í writings forbid association with Covenant-breakers and Bahá'ís are urged to avoid their literature, thus providing an exception to the Bahá'í principle of independent investigation of truth. Most Bahá'ís are unaware of the small Bahá'í divisions that exist.
Christianity
The purpose of excommunication is to exclude from the church those members who have behaviors or teachings contrary to the beliefs of a Christian community. It aims to protect members of the church from abuses and allow the offender to recognize their error and repent.Catholic Church
Within the Catholic Church, there are differences between the discipline of the majority Latin Church regarding excommunication and that of the Eastern Catholic Churches.Latin Church
Excommunication can be either latae sententiae or ferendae sententiae.The Catholic Church teaches in the Council of Trent that "excommunicated persons are not members of the Church, because they have been cut off by her sentence from the number of her children and belong not to her communion until they repent".
In the papal bull Exsurge Domine, Pope Leo X condemned Luther's twenty-third proposition according to which "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 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. The excommunicated person, being excluded from the society of the Church, still bears the indelible mark of Baptism and is subject to the jurisdiction of the Church. They are excluded from engaging in certain activities. These activities are listed in Canon 1331 §1, and prohibit the individual from any ministerial participation in celebrating the sacrifice of the Eucharist or any other ceremonies of worship; celebrating or receiving the sacraments; or exercising any ecclesiastical offices, ministries, or functions.
File:Isabelo de los Reyes, Sr..jpg|right|thumb|upright|Isabelo de los Reyes, founder of the Aglipayan Church, was excommunicated by Pope Leo XIII in 1903 as a schismatic apostate.
Under current Catholic canon law, excommunicates remain bound by ecclesiastical obligations such as attending Mass, even though they are barred from receiving the Eucharist and from taking an active part in the liturgy. "Excommunicates lose rights, such as the right to the sacraments, but they are still bound to the obligations of the law; their rights are restored when they are reconciled through the remission of the penalty."
These are the only effects for those who have incurred a latae sententiae excommunication. For instance, a priest may not refuse Communion publicly to those who are under an automatic excommunication, as long as it has not been officially declared to have been incurred by them, even if the priest knows that they have incurred it—although if the person's offence was a "manifest grave sin", then the priest is obliged to refuse their communion by canon 915. On the other hand, if the priest knows that excommunication has been imposed on someone or that an automatic excommunication has been declared, he is forbidden to administer Holy Communion to that person.
In the Catholic Church, excommunication is normally resolved by a declaration of repentance, profession of the Creed and an Act of Faith, or renewal of obedience by the excommunicated person and the lifting of the censure by a priest or bishop empowered to do this. "The absolution can be in the internal forum only, or also in the external forum, depending on whether scandal would be given if a person were privately absolved and yet publicly considered unrepentant."
Eastern Catholic Churches
In the Eastern Catholic Churches, excommunication is imposed only by decree, never incurred automatically by latae sententiae excommunication. A distinction is made between minor and major excommunication. Those on whom minor excommunication has been imposed are excluded from receiving the Eucharist and can also be excluded from participating in the Divine Liturgy. They can even be excluded from entering a church when divine worship is being celebrated there. The decree of excommunication must indicate the precise effect of the excommunication and, if required, its duration.Those under major excommunication are in addition forbidden to receive not only the Eucharist but also the other sacraments, to administer sacraments or sacramentals, to exercise any ecclesiastical offices, ministries, or functions whatsoever, and any such exercise by them is null and void. They are to be removed from participation in the Divine Liturgy and any public celebrations of divine worship. They are forbidden to make use of any privileges granted to them and cannot be given any dignity, office, ministry, or function in the church, they cannot receive any pension or emoluments associated with these dignities etc., and they are deprived of the right to vote or to be elected.
Eastern Orthodox Church
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, excommunication is the exclusion of a member from the Eucharist. It is not expulsion from the churches. This can happen for such reasons as not having confessed within that year; excommunication can also be imposed as part of a penitential period. It is generally done with the goal of restoring the member to full communion. Before an excommunication of significant duration is imposed, the bishop is usually consulted. The Eastern Orthodox do have a means of expulsion, by pronouncing anathema, but this is reserved only for acts of serious and unrepentant heresy. As an example of this, the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, in its eleventh capitula, declared: "If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, as well as their impious writings, as also all other heretics already condemned and anathematized by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and by the aforesaid four Holy Synods and all those who have held and hold or who in their impiety persist in holding to the end the same opinion as those heretics just mentioned: let him be anathema."Lutheran churches
Although Lutheranism technically has an excommunication process, some denominations and congregations do not use it. In the Smalcald Articles Luther differentiates between the "great" and "small" excommunication. The "small" excommunication is simply barring an individual from the Lord's Supper and "other fellowship in the church". While the "great" excommunication excluded a person from both the church and political communities which he considered to be outside the authority of the church and only for civil leaders. A modern Lutheran practice is laid out in the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod's 1986 explanation to the Small Catechism, defined beginning at Questions No. 277–284, in "The Office of Keys".Many Lutheran denominations operate under the premise that the entire congregation must take appropriate steps for excommunication, and there are not always precise rules, to the point where individual congregations often set out rules for excommunicating laymen. For example, churches may sometimes require that a vote must be taken at Sunday services; some congregations require that this vote be unanimous.
In the Church of Sweden and the Church of Denmark, excommunicated individuals are turned out from their parish in front of their congregation. They are not forbidden, however, to attend church and participate in other acts of devotion, although they are to sit in a place appointed by the priest.
The Lutheran process, though rarely used, has created unusual situations in recent years due to its somewhat democratic excommunication process. One example was an effort to get serial killer Dennis Rader excommunicated from his denomination by individuals who tried to "lobby" Rader's fellow church members into voting for his excommunication.