Thanks, Joe Offer, for your intelligent and sensitive comments.

I had a brief conversation yesterday with a friend who seems familiar with Catholic theology and practice, and he told me emphatically that being refused communion is NOT the same thing as being excommunicated. We didn't have time to discuss this at length, so I am still unclear on what the difference is.

I thought I was safe on etymological grounds-that the root "communi" in "excommunicate" meant "communion"-but my friend said it means "community." So being excommunicated means being "thrown out of the community." I still don't know what that means in practical terms.

By the way, just so you don't think I was speaking totally out of my hat: my first wife was formally excommunicated from the small fundamentalist Lutheran sect that she was brought up in, because she told her pastor she didn't believe in something that they considered fundamental. It might have been the inerrancy of the Bible. (I had never been a member of that church, so there was no question of excommunicating me, although she and I believed mostly the same things.) I think that's how "excommunication" was explained to me at the time: that she wouldn't be allowed to take communion.

I know that church had a strict rule that only members of that sect could take communion. The church was small enough that the pastor personally knew every member. Visitors from other parishes had to bring a letter from their home church stating that they were members in good standing, and had to meet with the local pastor privately before the service, if they wanted to receive communion.