Heresy is defined by theCatholic Church as "the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception ofbaptism of some truth which is to be believed bydivine and Catholic faith".[1] The termheresy connotes both the belief in itself, and the attitude towards said belief.[2]
Heresy has a specific meaning in the Catholic Church when it applies to someone's belief. There are four elements which constitute a person'sformal heresy:[3]
Therefore, to become a heretic and thus losecommunion with the Catholic Church and hence no longer be Catholic, one must deny or question a truth that is taught by the Catholic Church as revealed by God, and at the same time know that the Catholic Church teaches it. However, if the person denied or questioned such a doctrine, but ingood faith, that person is not considered a formal heretic by the Catholic Church, though it is an expression ofmaterial heresy.[3]
Canon 751 of theLatin Church's1983Code of Canon Law,promulgated byPope John Paul II in 1983, defines heresy as the following: "Heresy is the obstinate denial or doubt after the reception ofbaptism of some truth which is to be believedby divine and Catholic faith". Heresy is contrasted withapostasy – "the total repudiation of the Christian faith" –, and withschism – " the refusal of submission to theSupreme Pontiff or ofcommunion with themembers of the Church subject to him".[4] This definition and contrast are reused in theCatechism of the Catholic Church. TheCatechism also contrasts heresy withincredulity, which is "the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it".[5]
The Catholic Church distinguishes betweenformal andmaterial heresy. The difference is the heretic's subjective disposition towards their opinion.[2]
The heretic who is aware that their belief is at odds with Catholic teaching and yet freely and willingly continues to cling to their beliefpertinaciously,[2] "who denies a necessary truth out ofvincible ignorance or from an error held out ofbad or doubtful faith",[6] is a formal heretic. This sort of heresy issinful because in this case the heretic freely and knowingly holds an opinion that, in the words of theCatholic Encyclopedia, "is destructive of the virtue of Christian faith [...] disturbs the unity, and challenges the Divine authority, of the Church" and "strikes at the very source of faith".[2]
Material heresy refers to an opinion objectively contradictory to the teachings of theChurch, which as such is heretical, but which is uttered by a person who does not know the belief is heretical. A person who holds a material heresy may therefore not be a heretic in the strict sense.[7] Material heresy is an opinion that is such that by holding it someone "denies a truth that must be held by divine and Catholic faith, but he is such because ofinvincible ignorance or because of an error held ingood faith.Good faith in an erring man is a prudent judgment whereby the one in error thinks that he does not err, but on the contrary, that he is in possession of the truth".[6] The opinion of a material heretic may produce the same objective results as formal heresy, but the heretic commits no sin by holding it.[2]
The Catholic Church distinguishes betweenmanifest,occult,public, andprivate heretics:[8][note 1]
Amanifest heretic is someone whose error or doubt in faith cannot be hidden by any excuse. But anoccult heretic is said to be someone whose error or doubt in faith remains sufficiently hidden.
Apublic heretic is someone who openly adheres to some hereticalsect. But aprivate heretic is a person who does not openly adhere to any heretical sect.
Robert Bellarmine and most modernCatholic theologians (such asPalmieri,Billot,Straub [de], andMersch [Wikidata]) consider that occult heretics "remain members of the Church, because the loss of membership of the Church, just as much as its acquisition, on account of thevisibility of the Church, can only result from external legally ascertainable facts";Ludwig Ott deems this opinion as "more probable".[10]
According to Ott, manifest heretics, even when they are onlyheretic materially, are not part of the Catholic Church. He adds that manifest material heretics "do not belong to the body of the Church, that is to the legalcommonwealth of the Church. However, this does not prevent them from belonging spiritually to the Church by their desire to belong to the Church (votum Ecclesiae) and through this, achievingjustification andsalvation".[10]
Salaverri and Nicolau give the following summary of theological opinions:[11]
Thatformal and manifest heretics are not members of the body of the Church, can well be said to be a unanimous opinion among Catholics.
a) That formal, butoccult, heretics are not members of the Church, is defended by some authors, such asSuárez,Molina,Billuart [fr],Franzelin,Michelitsch [Wikidata],Stolz,Fraghi [it],Journet,Zapelena [Wikidata], and a few others.But the contrary opinion is more common.
b) Thatmerely material heretics, even ifmanifest, are members of the Church, is argued byFranzelin,De Groot [nl],D'Herbigny,Caperan [Wikidata],Terrien, and a few others. But the contrary opinion ismore common.
Salaverri and Nicolau, for their part, consider that material (even if manifest) heretics along with occult heretics are part of the Catholic Church.[12]
There are four degrees of heresy in the Catholic Church according to theCatholic Encyclopedia:[2]
Other classifications oftheological censures exist.
In the thirteenth century heresy was defined byRobert Grosseteste as "an opinion chosen by human preference contrary to holy scripture, publicly avowed and obstinately held", a conscious intellectual choice not a private doubt.[13]
It was further elaborated byThomas Aquinas as "a species ofinfidelity in men who, having professed thefaith ofChrist, corrupt itsdogmas". Aquinas notes:[2]
The right Christian faith consists in giving one's voluntary assent to Christ in all that truly belongs to His teaching. There are, therefore, two ways of deviating from Christianity: the one by refusing to believe in Christ Himself, which is the way of infidelity, common toPagans andJews; the other by restricting belief to certain points of Christ's doctrine selected and fashioned at pleasure, which is the way of heretics. The subject-matter of both faith and heresy is, therefore, thedeposit of the faith, that is, the sum total of truths revealed inScripture andTradition as proposed to our belief by the Church. The believer accepts the whole deposit as proposed by the Church; the heretic accepts only such parts of it as commend themselves to his own approval.
According to Jesuit historian David Collins, in the roughly 700 years following the demise of the Roman Empire, there was only a single known execution of a heretic. However, in 1160s, Western European states adopted more extreme policies.[14]
Then-Catholic priestMartin Luther made comments that were later summarized in the 1520bullExsurge Domine as: "Haereticos comburi est contra voluntatem Spiritus" ("It is contrary tothe Spirit toburn heretics"). This summary was one of the statements specificallycensured in this papal bull.[15][16] When Luther did not accept the bull nor to give a broad recantation of his writings, he wasexcommunicated in the subsequent 1521 papal bullDecet Romanum Pontificem.[citation needed]
Jansenism was an early modern theological movement popular in France in the mid-seventeenth century, that held that only a certain portion of humanity waspredestined to be saved. The heresy according to Roman Catholic doctrine, lay in denying the role offree will in the acceptance and use ofgrace.
The last case of a heretic being executed was that of the schoolmasterCayetano Ripoll, denounced for teachingdeism by the local Board of FaithJunta de Fe, then tried by the state and hanged to death 26 July 1826 inValencia after a two-year trial.[17]
Some of the doctrines ofProtestantism that the Catholic Church considers heretical are:sola scriptura,sola fide, the universalpriesthood of all believers, and the denial oftransubstantiation.[18]
In his bookThe Meaning of Christian Brotherhood,Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:
The difficulty in the way of giving an answer is a profound one. Ultimately it is due to the fact that there is no appropriate category in Catholic thought for the phenomenon of Protestantism today (one could say the same of the relationship to the separated churches of the East). It is obvious that the old category of 'heresy' is no longer of any value. Heresy, for Scripture and theearly Church, includes the idea of a personal decision against the unity of the Church, and heresy's characteristic is pertinacia, the obstinacy of him who persists in his own private way. This, however, cannot be regarded as an appropriate description of the spiritual situation of the Protestant Christian. In the course of a now centuries-old history, Protestantism has made an important contribution to the realization of Christian faith, fulfilling a positive function in the development of the Christian message and, above all, often giving rise to a sincere and profound faith in the individual non-Catholic Christian, whose separation from the Catholic affirmation has nothing to do with the pertinacia characteristic of heresy. Perhaps we may here invert a saying ofSt. Augustine's: that an old schism becomes a heresy. The very passage of time alters the character of a division, so that an old division is something essentially different from a new one. Something that was once rightly condemned as heresy cannot later simply become true, but it can gradually develop its own positive ecclesial nature, with which the individual is presented as his church and in which he lives as a believer, not as a heretic. This organization of one group, however, ultimately has an effect on the whole. The conclusion is inescapable, then: Protestantism today is something different from heresy in the traditional sense, a phenomenon whose true theological place has not yet been determined.[19]
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in thepublic domain.Heresy being a choice, the element of intent is essential to culpability. Theologians commonly distinguish between 'formal' and 'material' heresy. The distinction is between the matter of heresy, viz. an utterance expressing a proposition that does in fact contradict a dogma, and the formal element, viz. the utterance of the proposition in full knowledge that it contradicts the faith and that the church has proposed the opposite as a dogma. Hence a theologically uneducated person who denies, say, theAssumption of the Blessed Virgin (defined in 1950), in ignorance of its being a dogma, has uttered the matter of heresy, but is in no wise a heretic strictly speaking. If it is pointed out to him that the Assumption is a dogma and he still denies it, though the proof put to him is clear, he will have committed formal heresy, i.e. heresy in the strict sense. Even if a person is doubtful about a proof put to him as to the existence of a dogma, as long as his rule of faith is to believe whatever the church teaches, he cannot be called a heretic even if he denies ade fide proposition. In other words, one does not have to be theologically well educated or informed to avoid heresy. Even the simplest peasant, as theologians are fond of putting it, can have the faith and avoid all heresy simply by having the interior disposition, not con- tradicted by habitual external action, to believe whatever the church teaches. Hence the term 'material heretic' is like the term 'rubber duck': a material heretic is not a heretic, he is only responsible for uttering a statement that is, in its content, objectively contrary to the faith. Moreover, canon law requirespertinacity, that is, an obstinate refusal to accept church teaching, not a one-off denial or expression of doubt. This follows the instruction of St. Paul in theletter to Titus (3:10): 'A man that is a heretic [haereti'kon], after the first and second admonition avoid, knowing that such a person is subverted, and sins, being condemned by his own judgment.'
The generic terms of the proposition [Members of the Church are all and only those who have received the sacrament of baptism, and are not separated from the unity of the profession of the faith, or from hierarchical unity.] (particularly the second part of it) cover a variety of categories of people: 'formal' and 'material' heretics: 'public' and 'occult'—heretics; 'formal' and 'material' schismatics; 'total' and 'partial' excommunicates; etc. Since the theologians are not all of one mind in discussing some of these categories, they differ in some of the theological labels they append to each category considered singly.
In the first part we say: heretics, apostates and schismatics, who areformal and manifest, by that very fact are separated from the Church. [...]
Therefore herewe are not considering the further questions, which are debated among Catholic authors, about heretics, apostates and schismatics who are merely material or occult
