Excommunication. Among the forms of censure traditionally imposed by the Christian Church for grave offenses, the most solemn and severe is excommunication, i.e., the denial of the sacraments to the offender and (in the case of clerics) from the right to adminster them. In graver forms the excommunication may even prohibit the offender's attending church services. Excommunicated clerics are automatically deprived of all offices, dignities or stipends to which they would otherwise be entitled. (Lesser ecclesiastical censures are interdict and suspension.) Anglican usage also envisions the possibility of excommunication, although it is sparingly imposed. All Christian bodies protect themselves in one way or another against grave public offenses such as persistent attempts to disturb the peace of the church during divine worship or to do bodily harm to clergy or people. After due repentance, the sentence of excommunication may be lifted. In no case does it purport to separate the offender from God; nevertheless, among those who account the sacraments the supreme channels of his grace, as in Catholic tradition, and for whom the Church is the dearest institution on earth, excommunication entails an incomparably poignant sadness, most of all when it is felt to be undeserved. It should be noted that in the primitive Christian Church discipline was much more severe than it has ever been since and certain sins (e.g., murder, adultery) committed after baptism were deemed so incompatible with the Church's expectation that the offender was excommunicated with virtually no hope of ever being received back into the fold. In Buddhism, moreover, a form of excommunication consisting of permanent expulsion is practiced in the case of monks guilty of certain offenses specified in the Patimokkha, an ancient text dealing with disciplinary matters: theft, murder, sexual misconduct, and boasting of supernatural powers. Other offenses, considered less grave, may be punished by temporary expulsion, approximately the counterpart, in Christian tradition, of suspension. The four offenses punishable by permanent expulsion are called pārājika, i.e., "entailing defeat": both the moral defeat of the individual monk and the threat to the repute and the vitality of the monastic community to which he has belonged.

Geddes MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, New York: Paragon House, 1989

 excommunication : (nt.) nikkaḍḍhana; paṇāmana.

A.P. Buddhadatta Mahathera, Concise Pali-English and English-Pali Dictionary [available as digital version from Metta Net, Sri Lanka]