Anathema is the excommunication of a Christian from the holy sacraments and from contacts with the faithful. It was used as a punishment for especially grave sins against the Church.
Term
Derived from the Greek word αναθεΜα, meaning something dedicated to God, an offering to the temple, a gift. In the Greek translation of the Bible, it was used to convey the Hebrew term (herem) - something cursed, rejected by people 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 began to be interpreted as something that people rejected, doomed to destruction and therefore cursed.
Essence
The question of the need for an anathema and its permissibility is one of the most difficult church problems. Throughout the history of the Church, both the application and non-application of this punishment was 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 introduced by Blessed Augustine was established that Baptism does not completely exclude a person from the Church, and therefore even an anathema cannot completely close the path for the salvation of the soul. And yet such a punishment inthe era of the early Middle Ages in the West was seen as a "tradition to eternal perdition". True, it was applied only for mortal sins and only when there was absolute persistence in delusions, and there was no desire for correction.
Orthodoxy said that an anathema is a conciliarly proclaimed excommunication of a person (or group), whose actions and thoughts threatened the unity of the Church and the purity of doctrine. This act of isolation had an educational, healing function in relation to the anathematized and warning in relation to the believing community. Such a punishment was applied only after many futile attempts to arouse repentance in 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.
Catholicism still believes that to anathematize is to curse and deprive of any hope of salvation. Therefore, the attitude towards the anathematization of those who left this world differs. Anathema is a curse, according to Catholicism, a punishment for the dead. And Orthodoxy looks at it as evidence of a person's excommunication from the Church, which means that a person can be subjected to it at any moment.
Proclamation of anathema
The deed for which this punishment could befall should have been in the nature 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, it was resorted to in extremely rare cases, when none of the milder means forsinners had no influence.
The anathema was originally pronounced “let the name be anathema”, which literally meant “let it be excommunicated”. The wording has changed over time. 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 “I anathematize (eat) a name and (or) his heresy” is possible.
Because of the severity of this punishment, a representative council of bishops or a synod headed by a Patriarch, and in especially difficult situations, an Ecumenical Council could subject him to punishment. If any Patriarch resolved such an issue individually, then the decision was formalized anyway as a conciliar one.
When anathema was imposed after death, it was forbidden to commemorate the soul of the deceased, hold a memorial service, a funeral service, and say permissive prayers.
Removing the anathema
The imposition of this punishment did not mean at all that the path to return to the Church and, as a result, to salvation was ordered. To remove this highest ecclesiastical punishment, it was necessary to perform a complex legal action: the repentance of the sinner in public order. In the case of sufficient grounds (fullness and sincerity of repentance, the absence of a threat from the sinner to the rest of the members of the Church and the execution of the prescribed punishment), the body that imposed the punishment could decide to forgive the anathematized. The anathema could also be removed after death. Then again any kind of commemoration of the deceased was allowed.