excommunication

excommunication
    n 1: the state of being excommunicated [syn: {excommunication},
         {exclusion}, {censure}]
    2: the act of banishing a member of a church from the communion
       of believers and the privileges of the church; cutting a
       person off from a religious society [syn: {excommunication},
       {excision}]
    

Excommunication \Ex`com*mu`ni*ca"tion\, n. [L. excommunicatio:
   cf. F. excommunication.]
   The act of communicating or ejecting; esp., an ecclesiastical
   censure whereby the person against whom it is pronounced is,
   for the time, cast out of the communication of the church;
   exclusion from fellowship in things spiritual.
   [1913 Webster]

   Note: excommunication is of two kinds, the lesser and the
         greater; the lesser excommunication is a separation or
         suspension from partaking of the Eucharist; the greater
         is an absolute execution of the offender from the
         church and all its rights and advantages, even from
         social intercourse with the faithful.
         [1913 Webster]
    

EXCOMMUNICATION, n.

    This "excommunication" is a word
    In speech ecclesiastical oft heard,
    And means the damning, with bell, book and candle,
    Some sinner whose opinions are a scandal --
    A rite permitting Satan to enslave him
    Forever, and forbidding Christ to save him.
                                                            Gat Huckle
    

EXCOMMUNICATION, eccl. law. An ecclesiastical sentence, pronounced by a 
spiritual judge against a Christian man, by which he is excluded from the 
body of the church, and disabled to bring any action, or sue any person in 
the common law courts. Bac. Ab. h.t.; Co. Litt. 133-4. In early times it 
was the most frequent and most severe method of executing ecclesiastical 
censure, although proper to be used, said Justinian, (Nov. 123,) only upon 
grave occasions. The effect of it was to remove the excommunicated "person 
not only from the sacred rites but from the society of men. In a certain 
sense it interdicted the use of fire and water, like the punishment spoken 
of by Caesar, (lib, 6 de Bell. Gall.). as inflicted by the Druids. Innocent 
IV. called it the nerve of ecclesiastical discipline. On repentance, the 
excommunicated person was absolved and received again to communion. These 
are said to be the powers of binding and loosing the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven. This kind of punishment seems to have been adopted from the Roman 
usage of interdicting the use of fire and water. Fr. Duaren, De Sacris 
Eccles. Ministeriis, lib. 1, cap. 3. See Ridley's View of the Civil. and 
Ecclesiastical Law, 245, 246, 249.