What is excommunication exactly? Is it still around in the Catholic Church?
(North Carolina) A Excommunication is one of the sanctions or “punishments” Christians have applied to other Christians who seriously violate the Christian or Catholic rule of life. An excommunicated person is forbidden any liturgical ministry in the Mass or other public worship of the church and may not receive any of the sacraments. Other consequences refer to excommunicated clergy or others who hold some public office in the church. The occasional need (and I need to emphasize “occasional;” these are not punishments applied helter-skelter against Catholics who hold any unpopular or supposedly unorthodox positions not in line with what other members of the faith would prefer) of the Christian community to isolate serious offenders from participation in community activities goes back to biblical times. The Gospels and letters of the New Testament refer on several occasions to situations in which the offender should be expelled from their midst (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 5). Thes
