Anathema is the excommunication of a Christian from the holy sacraments and from contacts with the faithful. Applied 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 word “anathema” acquired a negative meaning and began to be interpreted as what was rejected by people, doomed to destruction and therefore cursed.
Essence
The question of the need for anathema and its admissibility is one of the most difficult church problems. Throughout the history of the Church, both the application and non-application of this punishment were dictated by a series of specific circumstances, the main of which was the degree of danger that the sinner posed to the church community.
In the Middle Ages, both in the East and in the West, the opinion was established, introduced by St. Augustine, that Baptism does not completely exclude a person from the Church, and therefore even anathema cannot completely close the way for the salvation of the soul. And still, such a punishment in the early Middle Ages in the West was considered as "a tradition of eternal destruction." True, it was used only for mortal sins and only when there was absolute persistence in error, and there was no thirst for correction.
Orthodoxy said that anathema is a collegially proclaimed excommunication of a person (or group), whose actions and thoughts threatened the unity of the Church and the purity of dogma. This act of isolation carried an educational, healing function in relation to the anathematized and preventive in relation to the believing community. Such punishment was used only after many futile attempts to evoke repentance from the sinner and gave hope for future repentance and, as a result, the return of a person to the bosom of the Church in the future, and, therefore, for his salvation.
The Catholic Church still believes that to anathema means to curse and deprive all hope of salvation. Therefore, the attitude towards anathematization of those who left this world is different. Anathema is a curse, Catholicism believes, is a punishment for the dead. And Orthodoxy looks at it as evidence of 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, should have had the character of a major disciplinary or dogmatic crime, therefore, schismatics, false teachers, heresiarchs were subjected to personal Anathema. Due to the severity of this type of punishment, they resorted to it in extremely rare cases, when none of the milder means on sinners exerted their influence.
An anathema was pronounced from the beginning: “let there be anathema”, which literally meant “let it be excommunicated”. Over time, the wording has changed. In particular, the term “anathema” is no longer the excommunication of the subject, but the act of excommunication itself (“name-anathema”). Therefore, such an expression is possible: “anathematizing (eating) a name and (or) his heresy”.
Due to the seriousness of this punishment, the representative council of bishops or the synod with the patriarch at the head, or, in especially difficult situations, the Ecumenical Council could subject him. If any Patriarch resolved such a question individually, then the decision was drawn up all the same as a conciliar.
When anathema was applied after death, it was forbidden to remember the soul of the deceased, to hold a memorial service, a memorial service, and to say permissive prayers.
Anathema
The imposition of this punishment did not at all mean that the path to return to the Church and, as a result, to salvation was ordered. To remove this supreme church punishment, it was necessary to perform a complex legal action: repentance of a sinner in public order. In the case of sufficient reasons (the fullness and sincerity of repentance, the absence of a threat from the sinner for the rest of the Church members and the execution of the prescribed punishment), the body that appointed the punishment could decide to forgive the anathematized person. Anathema could be lifted even after death. Then again, any kind of commemoration of the deceased was allowed .