Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to end or at least regulate the communion of a member of a congregation with other members of the religious institution who are in normal communion with each other. The purpose of the institutional act is to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular, those of being in communion with other members of the congregation, of receiving the sacraments; the term is historically used to refer to excommunications from the Catholic Church, but it is used more to refer to similar types of institutional religious exclusionary practices and shunning among other religious groups. For instance, many Protestant denominations, such as the Lutheran Churches, have similar practices of excusing congregants from church communities, while Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as the Churches of Christ, use the term "disfellowship" to refer to their form of excommunication; the Amish have been known to excommunicate members that were either seen or known for breaking rules, or questioning the church.

The word excommunication means putting a specific group out of communion. In some denominations, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the group. Excommunication may involve banishment and shaming, depending on the group, the offense that caused excommunication, or the rules or norms of the religious community; the grave act is revoked in response to sincere penance, which may be manifested through public recantation, sometimes through the Sacrament of Confession, piety or through mortification of the flesh. Within the Catholic Church, there are differences between the discipline of the majority Latin Church regarding excommunication and that of the Eastern Catholic Churches. In Latin Catholic canon law, excommunication is a applied censure and thus a "medicinal penalty" intended to invite the person to change behaviour or attitude and return to full communion, it is not an "expiatory penalty" designed to make satisfaction for the wrong done, much less a "vindictive penalty" designed to punish: "excommunication, the gravest penalty of all and the most frequent, is always medicinal", is "not at all vindictive".

Excommunication can be either latae ferendae sententiae. According to Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki, "excommunication does not expel the person from the Catholic Church, but forbids the excommunicated person from engaging in certain activities..." These activities are listed in Canon 1331 §1, prohibit the individual from any ministerial participation in celebrating the sacrifice of the Eucharist or any other ceremonies of worship. Under current Catholic canon law, excommunicates remain bound by ecclesiastical obligations such as attending Mass though they are barred from receiving the Eucharist and from taking an active part in the liturgy. "Excommunicates lose rights, such as the right to the sacraments, but they are still bound to the obligations of the law. They are urged to retain a relationship with the Church, as the goal is to encourage them to repent and return to active participation in its life; these are the only effects for those. For instance, a priest may not refuse Communion publicly to those who are under an automatic excommunication, as long as it has not been declared to have been incurred by them if the priest knows that they have incurred it.

On the other hand, if the priest knows that excommunication has been imposed on someone or that an automatic excommunication has been declared, he is forbidden to administer Holy Communion to that person.. In the Catholic Church, excommunication is resolved by a declaration of repentance, profession of the Creed and an Act of Faith, or renewal of obedience by the excommunicated person and the lifting of the censure by a priest or bishop empowered to do this. "The absolution can be in the internal forum only, or in the external forum, depending on whether scandal would be given if a person were absolved and yet publicly considered unrepentant." Since excommunication excludes from reception of the sacraments, absolution from excommunication is required before absolution can be given from the sin that led to the censure. In many cases, the whole process takes place on a single occasion in the privacy of the confessional. For some more serious wrongdoings, absolution from excommunication is reserved to a bishop, another ordinary, or the pope.

These can delegate a priest to act on their behalf. Interdict is a censure similar to excommunication, it too excludes from ministerial functions in public worship and from reception of the sacraments, but not from the exercise of governance. In the Eastern Catholic Churches, excommunication is imposed only by decree, never incurred automatically by latae sententiae excommunication. A distinction is made between major excommunication; those on whom minor excommunication has been imposed are excluded from receiving the Eucharist and can be excluded from parti

Brenda Anne Marie Schultz-McCarthy is a former Dutch tennis player. Known by her maiden name Brenda Schultz, she married Sean McCarthy, a former American football player at University of Cincinnati, on 8 April 1995 and adopted his surname. Schultz is known for her fast serve. Schultz' career high was in 1996 when she reached World No. 9. She reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon and the US Open in 1995, she retired from tennis in 1999 with longstanding injuries. She came out of retirement in 2005, playing Fed Cup and WTA tournaments in 2006; the best result of her comeback came in June 2006 at the Tier III Ordina Open in the Netherlands, reaching the quarterfinals with wins over two players ranked in the top 70 on the WTA Tour. In July 2006, Schultz-McCarthy claimed her place as the fastest server in WTA history, recording a 130 mph serve in the first round of the Western & Southern Financial Group Women's Open qualifying tournament, held in Cincinnati, Ohio. Venus Williams held the women's record set in 1998 of 127 mph in a match in a quarter-finals win against Mary Pierce in Zurich.

Williams would tie the record in 2008. In June 2007, Schultz-McCarthy won an ITF tournament in Surbiton. Fastest recorded tennis serves Brenda Schultz-McCarthy at the Women's Tennis Association Brenda Schultz-McCarthy at the International Tennis Federation Brenda Schultz-McCarthy at the Fed Cup Brenda Shultz-McCarthy Tennis and Adventure Camp

Blackhammer Chambered Cairn is a Neolithic cairn on Rousay, in Orkney, Scotland. It is a scheduled monument in the care of Historic Environment Scotland, it is thought to date from around 3000 BC. The structure is a typical stalled cairn, with an interior divided into seven compartments by pairs of upright stone slabs; the cairn has a modern roof, as the cairn was only a few feet high. Access is by a ladder in the roof, as the original entrance was sealed. There have been finds of bones and pottery in the cairn. Prehistoric Orkney Timeline of prehistoric Scotland Orkneyjar Blackhammer Cairn Historic Environment Scotland: Visitor guide