What is heresy? A primer.

any Catholics still like to join in the old, gen­tle pas­time of heresy-hunt­ing. Ray­mond Wolfe at Life Site News declares bald­ly that Fr. Mar­tin is “hereti­cal.” Fr. Tim­o­thy Rad­cliffe, accord­ing to the same arti­cle, is a “noto­ri­ous heretic.” I can find no evi­dence that either has been for­mal­ly charged, still less con­vict­ed, of heresy. This does not stop Eric Sam­mons, the edi­tor of Cri­sis Mag­a­zine, from call­ing Fr. Mar­tin “dev­il­ish­ly hereti­cal.” He (Mar­tin) “does teach heresy,” says Mark Dis­ch­er at One Peter Five. Jules Gomes at Church Mil­i­tant says Fr. Mar­tin is a “Mar­cionite.” (That’s a strange and unusu­al accu­sa­tion against Mar­tin; Mar­cionites are dual­ists who believe that God the Father in the New Tes­ta­ment is dif­fer­ent than the god of the Old Tes­ta­ment.) Lai­cized priest Tim­o­thy Williams says that Fr. Mar­tin sub­scribes to the “homo heresy.” Odd­ly, the Church has nev­er for­mal­ly defined any such thing.

And it goes on and on.

I pause here to point out that no lay Catholic has any busi­ness what­ev­er to say that any­one is a heretic. Only trained the­olo­gians at a for­mal canon­i­cal tri­al can deter­mine that any­one is guilty of heresy. The Church alone decides this. We do not sit and judge our lay broth­ers and sis­ters.

We can, how­ev­er, say what heresy is, and the rea­son we can is that the Church defines it—very specifically—in canon law. I thought it would be help­ful to dis­cuss that def­i­n­i­tion, both as a cor­rec­tion to the mis­use of the term, as well as because the sub­ject of heresy is going to come up in a post or two I plan on writ­ing soon.

Unless you’re not talk­ing about reli­gion, I am utter­ly opposed to expand­ing the seman­tic range beyond what the Church has canon­i­cal­ly defined. You can say that pineap­ple on piz­za is a heresy, but not some reli­gious idea X. enter­tains that does not fit the def­i­n­i­tion in canon law.

I can hear Dr. Clarisse Zim­ra, one of my pro­fes­sors in grad­u­ate school, inton­ing before the whole class: “Define your terms!” That’s what this post is.

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The Code of Canon Law defines heresy in Canon 751:

Heresy is the obsti­nate denial or obsti­nate doubt after the recep­tion of bap­tism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.

This is the oper­a­tive def­i­n­i­tion, in that no one could be charged or con­vict­ed of heresy with­out meet­ing the cri­te­ria that are in canon law.

• It must be “obsti­nate.” A Catholic for­mal­ly charged with heresy must refuse to recant. The Church must inter­cede, explain the error, and give him an oppor­tu­ni­ty, or sev­er­al oppor­tu­ni­ties. He or she must refuse any­way.
• It must be a “denial” or a “doubt.” The Church under­stands heresy in terms of truths you deny, not in terms of false­hoods you affirm.
• It must be after bap­tism. A Jew­ish per­son, or a Mus­lim, or Bud­dhist, or athe­ist, nev­er bap­tized into Chris­tian­i­ty, can’t be a heretic.
• It must be in denial of some truth that’s of “divine and Catholic faith.” The word “and” is impor­tant. Heresy does­n’t just deny some­thing the Church teach­es, but it also denies what God has revealed. If you deny the Church’s teach­ing on con­tra­cep­tion, for exam­ple, that’s not heresy because there is no divine rev­e­la­tion on the sub­ject. What it is is dis­sent. Deny­ing the Trin­i­ty, how­ev­er, is a heresy, since that is divine­ly revealed. Like­wise, a Protes­tant could not be guilty of heresy if he denies some­thing the Catholic Church teach­es but his own does not—say, the Assump­tion of Mary.

Stanis­laus Woy­wod, com­ment­ing on the old­er 1917 Code of Canon Law, says this last part more clear­ly: “Heresy con­sists in a stub­born denial of truths which have been defined and pro­posed by the Church as divine­ly revealed.”

The First Vat­i­can Coun­cil, in Dei Fil­ius spec­i­fied fur­ther:

All those things must be believed which are [1.] con­tained in the writ­ten word of God and in tra­di­tion, and [2.] those which are pro­posed by the Church, either in a solemn pro­nounce­ment or in her ordi­nary and uni­ver­sal teach­ing pow­er, to be believed as divine­ly revealed.

This is a strict stan­dard, and indeed, Lud­wig Ott in Fun­da­men­tals of Catholic Dog­ma lists sev­er­al degrees of error or scan­dal that fall short of heresy. For exam­ple, some are propo­si­tio the­o­log­ice erronea, or “propo­si­tions erro­neous in the­ol­o­gy.” Oth­ers are mere­ly prox­i­mate to heresy. Some are no more than “offen­sive to pious ears.” Only a denial of divine­ly revealed truths counts.

•••

One must also be care­ful to dis­tin­guish between objec­tive and sub­jec­tive heresy.

• Objec­tive heresy means that the claim being advo­cat­ed, as stat­ed, is heresy. If K. says, “Jesus is a human per­son,” the state­ment is objec­tive­ly hereti­cal. Though Jesus has a human nature, he is not a human per­son. Objec­tive heresy describes the claim, not the per­son mak­ing the claim.
• Sub­jec­tive heresy relates to the per­son mak­ing a hereti­cal claim. A per­son may have a greater or less­er degree of sub­jec­tive guilt depend­ing on a num­ber of vari­ables. K. may just not know his Chris­tol­ogy very well. Or, K. may think he’s being ortho­dox; it may be he’s con­fus­ing the terms “nature” and “per­son,” and thinks he’s uphold­ing the human­i­ty of Christ. The ortho­dox view (defined at the Coun­cil of Chal­cedon) is that Christ has two natures (human and divine) in one divine per­son. Though what K. says is objec­tive heresy, he may just be mix­ing up terms out of care­less­ness or igno­rance. His degree of sub­jec­tive guilt would be almost zero.

One might say, after read­ing some­thing that Fr. X claims, or Arch­bish­op Y, or Car­di­nal Z: “This is heresy”—as in, objec­tive heresy. But only the Church could declare X, Y, or Z to be a heretic.

•••

Keep these def­i­n­i­tions in mind every time you are tempt­ed to cry “heretic!” and you’ll do your part to reduce error and online inqui­si­tions. Don’t read or link to Life Site News, Church Mil­i­tant, One Peter Five, and Cri­sis Mag­a­zine, and you’ll do even bet­ter. The Church needs few­er self-appoint­ed Torque­madas.