Anathema differs from excommunication only inasmuch as it includes certain formal cere monies, and requires a solemn reconciliation. There was some doubt on this point until the definition of the Council of Trent. The power of excommunication belongs to those who possess ordinary or delegated jurisdiction in the external forum, but only in regard to those subject to them. Parish priests who have jurisdiction only in the forum intern urn cannot exeommunieate, and the power can never he delegated to laymen. Bishops, within their sees; archbishops, while exercising visitato•ial jurisdiction; heads of re ligious orders, within their own eommunities, all possess the power to issue excommunication. The subjects of excommunication can be only Chris tians, alive and of sound mind, guilty of a grave offense and persisting in it, and subjects of the judge giving sentence. Neither Jews, nor pagans, nor the unbaptized heathen, nor the dead. can be exeommunieated. The supposed excommunication of the dead was merely a declaration that the deceased had, while liring, been guilty of some crime to which excommunication is attached by the Church lairs. The sentence of excommunica tion may be justly inflicted on heretics or schis matics. Excommunication may he incurred with out the necessity of formal sentence; this is an important distinction. For some acts a person may be excommunieated„ but does not actually incur the sentence unless it is pronounced by a competent judge. For other faults, however, the
words of the law are that upon a given act being done the doer of it falls at once under the ban of the Church, the phrase usually employed being "Let him incur excommunication ipso faeto." These are the exeommunieations lake sententice, so called. Absolution from certain exeommuniea tions is reserved to the Pope. There are certain regulations with regard to intercourse on the part of the faithful with individuals who have been excommunicated. Those under major ex communication fall into two elasses—the tolerat ed, whom the faithful are not bound to avoid, and the non-tolerated—that is, those exeommuni eated by name and publicly denounced—with whom the faithful are forbidden to hold either religious or civil communication. The latest Papal deliverance on this subject is the Bull Apostoliem Sedis, issued by Pius IX., October 12, 1869. This permits civil intercourse, even with persons under major excommunication, for the sake of the faithful themselves, unless in very exceptional circumstances and with regard to specially designated persons. The formula of e.\: communication from the anonymous appendix to Alarculphus cited in Tristram Shandy, and often quoted as the actual formula employed by Boman Catholic authoritieR, is a forgery and has never been employed. Consult: von _Kober, Der Kir chr»bam) (Tiibingen. 1157) ; Schilling, Der chcnbann ranch eawmischen Hecht (Leipzig, 1859).