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Excommunication
Certain particularly grave sins incur excommunication, the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by them. In danger of death any priest, even if deprived of faculties for hearing confessions, can absolve from every sin and excommunication” (CCC §1463).
Can. 1364 §1 An apostate from the faith, a heretic or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.
Latæ sententiæ is a Latin term used in the canon law of the Catholic Church meaning literally "given (already passed) sentence". Officially, a latae sententiae penalty follows automatically, by force of the law itself, when the law is contravened.
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