Excommunication Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Eastern Orthodox Church === In the [[Eastern Orthodox Church]], excommunication is the exclusion of a member from the [[Eucharist]]. It is not expulsion from the churches. This can happen for such reasons as not having confessed within that year; excommunication can also be imposed as part of a penitential period. It is generally done with the goal of restoring the member to full communion. Before an excommunication of significant duration is imposed, the bishop is usually consulted. The Eastern Orthodox do have a means of expulsion, by pronouncing [[anathema]], but this is reserved only for acts of serious and unrepentant heresy. As an example of this, the [[Second Council of Constantinople]] in 553, in its eleventh capitula, declared: "If anyone does not anathematize [[Arius]], [[Eunomius of Cyzicus|Eunomius]], [[Macedonius I of Constantinople|Macedonius]], [[Apollinaris of Laodicea|Apollinaris]], [[Nestorius]], [[Eutyches]] and [[Origen]], as well as their impious writings, as also all other heretics already condemned and anathematized by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and by the aforesaid four Holy Synods and [if anyone does not equally anathematize] all those who have held and hold or who in their impiety persist in holding to the end the same opinion as those heretics just mentioned: let him be anathema."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xii.vii.html |title=NPNF2-14. The Seven Ecumenical Councils - Christian Classics Ethereal Library |publisher=Ccel.org |date=2005-06-01 |access-date=2014-07-29}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page