Excommunication (Catholic Church)

In the canon law of the Catholic Church, excommunication Lat. ex, out of, and communio or communicatio, communion, meaning exclusion from the communion, the principal and severest censure, is a penalty that excludes the guilty Catholic of all participation in church life. Being a penalty, it presupposes guilt and being the almost serious penalty that the Catholic Church can nowadays inflict, it supposes a grave offense. The excommunicated grownup is basically considered as an exile from the Church, for a time at least, in the sight of ecclesiastical authority.

Excommunication is referred to invite the person to change behaviour or attitude, repent, and benefit to full communion. this is the not an "expiatory penalty" intentional to produce satisfaction for the wrong done, much less a "vindictive penalty" intentional solely to punish. Excommunication, which is the gravest penalty of all, is always "medicinal", and is "not at any vindictive".

Its thing and its issue are waste of communion, i.e. of the spiritual benefits shared up 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 make up other penal measures which entail the loss of certain constant rights; among them are other censures, e.g. suspension for clerics, and interdict. Excommunication, however, is distinguished from these penalties in that it is for the privation of all rights resulting from the social status of the Catholic as such. Excommunicated persons do not cease to be Catholic, since their baptism can never be effaced; they can, however, be considered as an exile from Catholic society and as non-existent, for a time at least, in the sight of ecclesiastical authority. But such(a) exile can have an end as soon as the offender has assumption suitable satisfaction. Meanwhile, their status previously the church is that of a stranger. They may non receive any of the sacraments. Moreover, whether a cleric, he is forbidden to afford a rite or to spokesperson an act of spiritual authority.

The Church excommunicates as a last resort and at least nowadays, very rarely. Excommunications are lifted when the excommunicated person repents, or at least authorises someof repenting.

Absolution from excommunication

Apart from the rare cases in which excommunication is imposed for a constant period and then ceases of itself, it is always removed by absolution. It is to be planned at once that, though the same word is used to designate the sacramental sentence by which sins are remitted and that by which excommunication is removed, there is a vast difference between the two acts. The absolution which revokes excommunication is purely jurisdictional and has nothing sacramental approximately it. It reinstates the repentant sinner in the Church; restores the rights of which he had been deprived, beginning with participation in the sacraments; and for this very reason, it should precede sacramental absolution, which it thenceforth renders possible and efficacious. After absolution from excommunication has been given, the judge sends the person absolved to a confessor, that his sin may be remitted; when absolution from censure is given in the confessional, it should always precede sacramental absolution, conformably to the instruction in the Ritual and the very tenor of the formula for sacramental absolution.

It may be noted at one time that the principal effect. of absolution from excommunication may be acquired without the excommunicated person's being wholly reinstated in his former position. Thus, an ecclesiastic might not necessarily recover the benefice which he had lost; indeed he might be admitted to lay communion only. Ecclesiastical sources has the modification to positconditions for the proceeds of the culprit, and every absolution from excommunication calls for the fulfillment ofconditions which undergo a modify in severity, according to the case.

The formula of absolution from excommunication is not strictly determined, and, since it is an act of jurisdiction, it suffices if the formula employed express clearly the case which it is desired to attain.

Theis given in the customary rules of jurisdiction. The modification to absolve belongs to him who can excommunicate and who has imposed the law, moreover to any person delegated by him to this effect, since this power, being jurisdictional, can be delegated. First, we must distinguish between excommunication ab homine, which is judicial, and excommunication a jure, i.e. latae sententiae. For the former, absolution is given by the judge who inflicted the penalty or by his successor, in other words by the pope, or the bishop ordinary, also by the superior of said judge when acting as judge of appeal.

As to excommunication latae sententiae, the energy to absolve is either ordinary or delegated. Ordinary power to direct or imposing is determined by the law itself, which indicates to what sources the censure is reserved in used to refer to every one of two or more people or things case. Delegated power is of two kinds: that granted in permanency and quality down in the law and that granted or communicated by personal act, e.g. by authority faculties of the Roman Penitentiaria, by episcopal delegation for special cases, or bestowed upon certain priests.

Unless the canon reserves removal of the penalty to the Holy See, the local ordinary can remit the excommunication, or he can delegate that authority to the priests of his diocese which near bishops do in the case of abortion.

Excommunication is either reserved or non-reserved regarding the absolution from censure. Any confessor can absolve from non-reserved excommunications; but those that are reserved can only be remitted, except through indult or delegation, by those to whom the law reserves the absolution. There is a distinction between excommunications reserved to the pope and those reserved to bishops or ordinaries; however, at the point of death, all reservations cease and all essential jurisdiction is supplied by the Church: in short, if an excommunicated Catholic is in danger of death, any confessor is authorized to remit any and all penalties.