Excommunication - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition excommunication

Definition :

Excommunication, an ecclesiastical interdict or censure, divided into the greater and the lesser; by the greater a person was excluded from the communion of the church and the company of the faithful, and was rendered incapable of any legal act; by the lesser he was merely debarred from participation in the Sacraments.

See No. 33 of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion as to avoiding an excommunicated person 'until he be openly reconciled by penance, and received into the church by a judge that hath authority thereto'; Canon 112, to the effect that the minister and churchwardens shall yearly within 40 days after Easter exhibit to the Bishop or his Chancellor the names and surnames of all the parishioners, as well men as women, which being of the age of sixteen years received not the Communion at Easter before; and Jenkins v. Cook, (1876) 1 PD 80, in which the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council admonished a vicar to refrain from refusing to administer the Communion to a parishioner.

The old law was thus put:--Excommunicato interdicitur omnis actus legitimus, quod agere non potest, nec aliquem convenire, licet ipse ab aliis possit conveniri. Co. Litt. 133.--(Every legal act is forbidden an excommunicated person, so that he cannot act, nor sue any person, but he may be sued by others.)

Excommunication was formerly the process by which the decrees and orders of the Ecclesiastical Courts were enforced; but in all cases of contempt of Court it has now been abolished, and in lieu thereof, where a lawful citation or sentence has not been obeyed, the judge has power, after a certain period, to pronounce such person contumacious and in contempt, and to signify the same to the Court of Chancery; whereupon a writ de contumace capiendo shall issue having the same force as formerly belonged, in case of contempt, to a writ de excommunicato capiendo, 53 Geo. 3, c. 127, s. 2.

A sentence of censure pronounced by a spiritual court for an offense failing under ecclesiastical cognizance; expulsion from religions society or community, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 588.