m e o ee as e eaen an pucan aew :. n e ceerae ex: asoever you sa bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosedalso in heaven" (Matthew 18:18; cf. 16:19), it is not only the remission of sins that is referred to, but likewiseall spiritual jurisdiction, including udicial and penal sanctions. Such, moreover, was the urisdictionconferred on St. Peter by the words: "Feed my lambs"; "feed my sheep" (John 21:15, 16, 17). St. Paulexcommunicated regularly the incest Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:5) and the incorrigible blasphemers whomhe delivered over to Satan (1 Timothy 1:20). Faithful to the Apostolic teaching and example, the Church,from the very earliest ages, was wont to excommunicate heretics and contumacious persons; since the fourthcentury numerous conciliary canons pronounce excommunication against those who are guilty of certainoffences. Of the facts there can be no doubt (Seitz, Die Heilsnotwendigkeit der Kirche, Freiburg, 1903).
Excommunication not only External
In the first Christian centuries it is not always easy to distinguish between excommunication and penitentialexclusion; to differentiate them satisfactorily we must await the decline of the institution of public penanceand the well-defined separation between those things appertaining to the
orum internum
, or tribunal of conscience and the
orum externum
, or public ecclesiastical tribunal; nevertheless, the admission of a sinner to the performance of public penance was consequent on a previous genuine excommunication. On the other hand, formal exclusion from reception of the Eucharist and the other sacraments was only mitigatedexcommunication and identical with minor excommunication (see below). At any rate, in the first centuriesexcommunication is not regarded as a simple external measure; it reaches the soul and the conscience. It isnot merely the severing of the outward bond which holds the individual to his place in the Church; it seversalso the internal bond, and the sentence pronounced on earth is ratified in heaven. It is the spiritual sword, theheaviest penalty that the Church can inflict (see the patristic texts quoted in the Decree of Gratian, cc. xxxi,xxxii, xxxiii, C. xi, q. iii). Hence in the Bull "Exsurge Domine" (16 May, 1520) Leo X ustly condemnedLuther's twenty-third proposition according to which "excommunications are merely external punishments,nor do they deprive a man of the common spiritual prayers of the Church". Pius VI also condemned(Auctorem Fidei, 28 Aug., 1794) the forty-sixth proposition of the Pseudo-Synod of Pistoia, whichmaintained that the effect of excommunication is only exterior because of its own nature it excludes onlyfrom exterior communion with the Church, as if, said the pope, excommunication were not a spiritual penalty binding in heaven and affecting souls. The aforesaid proposition was therefore condemned as false, pernicious, already reprobated in the twenty-third proposition of Luther, and, to say the least, erroneous.Undoubtedly the Church cannot (nor does it wish to) oppose any obstacle to the internal relations of the soulwith God; she even implores God to give the grace of repentance to the excommunicated. The rites of theChurch, nevertheless, are always the providential and regular channel through which Divine grace isconveyed to Christians; exclusion from such rites, especially from the sacraments, entails therefore regularlythe privation of this grace, to whose sources the excommunicated person has no longer access.
History of Excommunication
While excommunication ranks first among ecclesiastical censures, it existed long before any suchclassification arose. From the earliest days of the Christian society it was the chief (if not the only)ecclesiastical penalty for laymen; for guilty clerics the first punishment was deposition from their office, i.e.reduction to the ranks of the laity. Subsequently, when ecclesiastical discipline allowed clerics more easily toresume their ministry, the ancient deposition became suspension; thenceforth even clerics were subject toexcommunication, by which they lost at once their rights as Christians and as clerics. Both laymen and clericswere henceforth threatened or punished with excommunication for offences that became daily more definiteand numerous, particularly for refusing obedience either to special ecclesiastical precepts or the general lawsof the Church. Once the
orum externum
, or public ecclesiastical tribunal, was distinctly separated from the
orum sacramentale
, or tribunal of sacramental penance, say from the ninth century on, excommunication became raduall an ever more owerful means of siritual overnment a sort of coercive measure ensurin
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