§ 1. On The Notion And Division Of Excommunication

498. Notion. Excommunication (ἀφορισμός, ἀνάθεμα) is a censure by which someone (a physical person) is deprived of the ecclesiastical communion of the faithful.

It is said: ecclesiastical communion, because excommunication deprives one of participation in those goods which depend upon the power and will of the Church. What those goods are will be said in the following paragraph, where there will be discussion of the effects of excommunication. Since the Church has indirect power over civil affairs, she can also, when necessity exists, deprive an excommunicated person of civil rights, as will be said below. But the Church is by no means able to deprive a man of internal union, which consists in sanctifying grace, by which man is joined to God. Therefore, at least it is not repugnant that an excommunicated person be in the state of sanctifying grace and, after death, in the kingdom of heaven.

Excommunication is the gravest among all ecclesiastical censures, because neither suspension nor interdict deprives one of as many goods as it does. Therefore, according to the discipline of the Church in force, excommunication cannot be inflicted except on account of a grave crime committed, and except upon physical persons, not upon moral persons as such.

499. Division. 1. Formerly major and minor excommunication were distinguished. But minor excommunication, which deprived one only of the reception of the sacraments and of passive election to benefices,¹¹⁸ no longer exists, at least as a censure inflicted by the law itself.¹¹⁹

2. Major excommunication either leaves a man (bound by this censure) tolerated or renders him one to be avoided.

Before Martin V at the Council of Constance (in the year 1418), all excommunicated persons were to be avoided. According to the discipline of the Church in force, none are to be avoided except:

1. one who has laid violent hands upon the person of the Roman Pontiff;

2. one who has been excommunicated by name by the Apostolic See and has been publicly denounced as one to be avoided.¹²⁰

Scholion. On the anathema maranatha. In ancient times there existed still another species of excommunication which was called anathema maranatha (from the Syriac expression which means "the Lord comes"),¹²¹ and from which one was ordinarily not absolved except at the point of death, and indeed sometimes was not absolved at all; cf. what Benedict XIV says concerning this matter, which is obsolete today.¹²²

¹¹⁸ Cf. c. 10, X 5, 27.

¹¹⁹ Holy Office, December 5, 1883 (Collect. de Prop. Fide, n. 1608).

¹²⁰ Code of Canon Law, c. 2258, § 2. Excommunicated persons to be avoided are very rare today.

¹²¹ Cf. 1 Cor. 16:22.

¹²² De syn. dioec. l. 10, c. 1, n. 7.