Anathema is what?

Anathema is the excommunication of a Christian from holy mysteries and from contact with the faithful. It was used as a punishment for especially grave sins before the Church.

Term

It comes from the Greek word αναθεμα, meaning something dedicated to God, an offering to the temple, a gift. The Greek translation of the Bible was used to convey the Hebrew term (herem) - something damned, people rejected and doomed to destruction. It was under the influence of the Hebrew language that the meaning of the word "anathema" acquired a negative meaning and was interpreted as something that people rejected, doomed to destruction, and therefore cursed.

Essence

The question of the need for anathema and its admissibility is one of the most complex church problems. Throughout the history of the Church, both the application and the non-application of this punishment were dictated by a series of concrete circumstances, chief among which was the degree of danger that the sinner represented for the church community.

In the Middle Ages, both in the East and in the West, the opinion introduced by the blessed Augustine was confirmed that Baptism does not completely exclude a person from the Church, and therefore even anathema can not finally close the way for the salvation of the soul. And still, such punishment in the era of the early Middle Ages in the West was seen as "a tradition of eternal perdition". True, it was used only for mortal sins and only when there was absolute stubbornness in error, and there was no desire for correction.

Orthodoxy said that the anathema is a cathartic proclaimed excommunication of a person (or group) whose actions and thoughts carried a threat to the unity of the Church and the purity of the dogma. This act of isolation carried an educational, healing function in relation to anathematized and precautionary in relation to the believing community. Such a punishment was applied only after many vain attempts to cause a sinner repentance and gave hope for a future repentance and, as a consequence, the return of a person to the bosom of the Church in the future, and hence, to save him.

Catholicism still believes that to anathematize is to curse and deprive any hope of salvation. Therefore, the attitude to the anathematizing of those who left this world differs. Anathema is a curse, says Catholicism, a punishment for the dead. Orthodoxy looks at it as a testimony to the excommunication of a person from the Church, which means that a person can be subjected to it at any time.

Proclamation of anathema

The act for which this punishment could be comprehended was to be of the nature of a major disciplinary or dogmatic crime, therefore personal dissidents, a false teacher, and heresiarchs were subject to personal Anatham. Because of the severity of this type of punishment, it was resorted to in extremely rare cases, when none of the softer means had any influence on the sinners.

The anathema was pronounced originally "fore and an anathema", which meant literally "let it be excommunicated". With the passage of time, the wording changed. In particular, the term "anathema" is no longer the excommunication of the subject, but the act of excommunication ("name-anathema"). Therefore, perhaps such an expression "anathematizing (it) name and (or) his heresy."

Because of the severity of this punishment, he could be subjected to a representative council of bishops or a synod with the Patriarch at the head, and in especially difficult situations - the Ecumenical Council. If any Patriarch solves this question alone, then the decision was drawn up anyway as a conciliar one.

When the anathema was imposed after death, it was forbidden to commemorate the deceased person's soul, to hold a requiem, requiem service, and to give permissive prayers.

Withdrawal of anathema

The imposition of this punishment did not at all mean that the way to return to the Church and, as a consequence, to salvation was ordered. To remove this higher church punishment, it was necessary to perform a complex legal action: the repentance of a sinner in public. In case of sufficient grounds (completeness and sincerity of repentance, absence of threat from the sinner for other members of the Church and execution of the imposed punishment), the body that appointed the punishment could take a decision on the forgiveness of the anathematized one. Anathema could be removed after death. Then again, any kind of commemoration of the deceased was allowed .