Excommunication
ANDREI PSAREV
Excommunication is a formal exclusion from church fellowship until repentance has been attained (cf. 1Tim. 1.20). According to the gospel, the church may excommunicate a transgressor if all attempts at persuasion have failed (Mt. 18.17). Excommunication may be public (called anathema; cf. 1Cor. 16.22) or private (called aforismos; cf. 1Cor. 5.20).
Private excommunication may be prescribed by a priest for scandalous personal sins. Nowadays privately excommunicated Christians are allowed to participate in worship, but not to partake of the Eucharist. Excommunication in the Orthodox understanding is not tantamount to damnation. It is meant as a therapeutic remedy intended to hasten an errant Christian’s realization that he or she has deviated, to make necessary life-changes and to appreciate the church membership that their actions have deprived them of. Bishops are required to take care that excommunicants shall not be lost to the church (Apostolic Constitutions 3.12). Canon 4 of the seventh ecumenical council forbade a bishop to impose excommunication while under the influence of passion (anger).
The Apostolic Canons (3rd-early 4th centuries) identify the sins that must necessarily be punished by excommunication, although without specifying duration. The Ancyra Council (314) specified for excommunicants various degrees of participation in communal worship (Canon 25). The duration of excommunication depends on the depth of the repentance shown (Canon 5).
An anathematized person, whether alive or dead, is not eligible for public Orthodox commemoration. The names of excommunicated bishops are removed from the lists for commemoration. Excommunication is considered a means of exerting moral pressure on errant bishops. An Orthodox Christian cannot take part in the worship of a community that has been excommunicated since it would be a demonstration of disloyalty toward the church hierarchy (Council of Antioch, Canon 2). In order to protect the flock from heterodoxy, Orthodox bishops have usually prescribed rigor toward heretics, but leniency in relation to offenders against ethical or church discipline.
Anathema is proclaimed for grave dogmatic and disciplinary crimes only by a bishop in the context of a council after a determination of the guilt of a person or a group, and when all attempts to elicit repentance have failed. The anathemas against those heretics condemned by the seven ecumenical councils are solemnly repeated throughout the Orthodox Church on the first Sunday of Great Lent. The Council of the Russian Church of 1666–7 also anathematized schismatic Old Believers. However, in 1971 this anathema was found inappropriate and was revoked.
Rules regarding Orthodox clergy are more strict than those pertaining to the laity. Excommunication for a priest may be temporary (suspension) or permanent (deposition). Normally, the excommunication of a clergyman or a layman can be reversed only by the bishop or priest who originally imposed the sanction. But the ritual of confession (Greek rite) also contains provision for a confessor to lift “the ban of a priest» In cases of unfair excommunication a clergyman may appeal to the synod of bishops (Antioch, Canon 20).
Byzantine aristocrats, even emperors, could be excommunicated. In the times of the Byzantine and Russian empires, excommunicants were also deprived of civil rights. Excommunication could thus be used for political purposes. In Muscovy St. Sergius of Radonezh (d. 1392) ordered that all churches in Nizhnii Novgorod be closed for civil insubordination. In 1943 Metropolitan Sergii Stragorodskii anathematized Russian clergy who collaborated with the Nazis.
SEE ALSO: Canon Law; Confession; Metanie (Metanoia); Repentance
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Kiparisov, V. (1897) O tserkovnoi distsipline. Sergiev Posad.
McGuckin, J. A. (2004) “Excommunication” and “Penance,” in J. A. McGuckin (ed.) The
West-minster Handbook to Patristic Theology.
Louis-ville: Westminster/John Knox Press. Maksimovich, K. (2001) “Anafema,” in Pravoslavnaia
Entsiklopedia, vol. 2. Moscow: Pravoslavnaia
Entsiklopedia.