Heresy: A Forgotten Word
by Emmanuel Valenza
Your Excellency:
In his decree Lamentabili (1907) and in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), Pope St. Pius X explicated the erroneous positions of Modernism. Aware of the protean forms of Modernism, he called it "the synthesis of all heresies." Modernists assaulted the whole Catholic Creed, especially the Church's teachings on revelation, faith, and dogma.
The central tenet of Modernism is that dogma and truth are relative to the condition of man, who, like society, is always changing. Since human nature is constantly changing and truth evolves with it, dogma cannot be an unalterable deposit of truths handed down in the Church from Christ. Rather, dogma evolves parallel to the development of religions experience and sentiment in man and in society. In fact, Modernism stresses that all aspects of religion are metamorphic. Pope St. Pius X remarks: "First of all they [the Modernists] lay down the general principle that in a living religion everything is subject to change, and must in fact be changed. In this way they pass to what is practically their principle doctrine, namely, evolution under the penalty of death—dogma, Church, the Books we revere as sacred, even faith itself" (Pascendi Dominici Gregis).
Needless to say, revealed truths are from God, not man. George Tyrrell, the Modernist leader in England, held that the Church's view of revelation as "necessarily trumpeted from the clouds" is silly. On the contrary, Christ, the eternal Word of the Father, became man and made known to mankind the teachings of the Father (John 7:16). Therefore, the revealed deposit originated in Heaven. The path of revealed truth is as follows: God the Father sent the Son; the Son sent the apostles, the apostles sent the Church; and the Church guards, interprets, and teaches the deposit of faith.
Christ entrusted the deposit of faith to the apostles and promised the everlasting assistance of the Holy Spirit, the soul of the Church, to prevent the Church from teaching error. He says: "But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your mind all things, whatever I have said to you" (John 14:26).
Pope St. Pius X, fearing the infiltration of Modernist ideas into the Church, issued the "Oath Against Modernism" in 1910. All the clergy, as well as many lay professors, were obliged to take the oath. Since the Church is engulfed by Modernist errors from within its bosom, it would be beneficial for the Church to bring back the oath. Here are the convictions of a few Modernists operating within the Church:
Revelation is not something given to Bishops, priests and other teachers to be dispensed by them. Never is revelation something to be dispensed and handed down by them, stated in books or solidified in Creeds. The Christian receives revelation immediately, that is, he receives it not from men or books but from the indwelling spirit. What I wish to oppose here is the supposition that revelation can be something outside of man, something that can be passed down over the centuries, something that can be delivered to men by other men . . . for the individual believer, revelation must happen in the present experience of the community . . .
To think that revelation is enclosed in doctrines taught by the apostles and not changed since that time would be to deny that God gave Himself to man. Not first in books or institutions, doctrines or rituals is God's revelation to be met, but in people. Man for man is the way to God. (Theology of Revelation, Herder and Herder, New York, 1966, pp. 91,130).
Avery Dulles on heresy:
Heresy is frequently defined as the denial of a revealed truth taught as such by the universal magisterium of the church. This definition is itself not unproblematic. Can we unequivocally identify statements made by popes, councils and other church officials as truths revealed by God? Recent explorations in the epistemology of revelation give grounds for caution. And even if this difficulty is solved, one has to face the problem of determining whether revelation is being contradicted. Usually those accused of contradicting the Church's dogma perceive themselves as interpreting the dogmas in a new and appropriate way.
If Church teaching were perfectly static, judgments about orthodoxy and heresy would be much simpler than they are. But doctrine develops and shifts as the church, meditates on the implications of revelation and reformulates its faith in the context of a changing world. ("Heresy Today?", America, vol. 142 (March 1, 1980), p. 162.
Charles E. Curran on heresy:
'Heresy,' in the strict sense of the term, is a denial of a truth proposed by the church as revealed. Many of the tensions in the life of the church today between the hierarchical magisterium and the theologians do not concern the revealed truths of faith, no matter how this term is understood. Discussions about moral issues such as contraception and sterilization or the possibility of dissent from authoritative, noninfallible teachings of the hierarchical magisterium on moral issues do not involve heresy in the strict sense of the term. (Heresy and Error, America, vol. 142 (March 1,1980), p. 164.
Andrew Greeley on heresy:
Well, I don't know that I can find much trace in the Bible of the idea that there was such a thing as heresy—it seems to me to be an idea that came along much later on, and I wonder if we might not be well advised to put it aside. I think there may well be some theologians who speak a little bit beyond what the consciousness of the Church's own message would be able to permit, at the present time; but I'd much prefer to handle this by having a board of theologians sit down and discuss the matter with the theologian who seems to have gone beyond the consciousness and see whether it can be worked out—see whether he really can say the things he says and still, at least at the present time, be part of us. But the idea of excommunicating people and labeling them heretics seems to be terribly old-fashioned. (Come Blow Your Mind With Me, 1911, p. 229)
Your Grace, if the Modernists were obliged to take the oath, they would make many promises, among them are:
. . . I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously.
. . . I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our creator and lord.
I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different and may never be understood in any other way. (Denz. 2147)
As your Excellency knows, theological faith is the assent of the intellect, with the help of grace, to a revealed truth. We gave our assent not because our own judgment is satisfied, but because such truths are taught on the authority of God's Church. Unless our faith is based on the authority of God and the infallibility of His Church, then we are not true Catholics. Here are the beautiful words of John Henry Cardinal Newman:
And now, my brethren, who are not Catholics, perhaps you will tell me, that, if all inquiry is to cease when you become Catholics, you ought to be very sure that the Church is from God before you join it. You speak truly; no one should enter the church without a firm purpose of taking her word in all matters of doctrine and morals, and that, on the ground of her coming directly from the God of Truth. If you do not come in this spirit, you may as well not come at all; high and low, learned and ignorant, must come to learn. . . you must come, I say, to the Church to learn; you must come, not to bring your own notions to her, but with the intention of ever being a learner; you must come with the intention of taking her for your portion and of never leaving her. Do not come as an experiment; do not come as you would take sittings in a chapel, or tickets for a lecture-room; come to her as to your home, to the school of your souls, to the Mother of Saints, and to the vestibule of heaven. (A Newman Treasury, edited by Charles Frederick Harrold, p. 192).
If it is believed that Christ founded the Church in order to continue His work of redemption for all time, then Catholics are not at liberty to pick from the rich harvest of Catholic doctrine the ones they like, and discard the teachings they find objectionable—like a farmer who separates the wheat from the chaff. There are no chaff among the doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church. It is impossible to be a Catholic unless one accepts, fully and completely, all the Church's doctrinal decrees. An individual either believes or disbelieves that the authority of the Church to teach comes from God. No middle position is possible. There is no such thing as a partial faith. Catholics believe the Church's teaching because Christ, through the Holy Ghost leads His Bride to truth and protects her from error. Before His Ascension, our Lord said to His apostles: "Behold I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world" (Matt. 28:20). At the Last Supper He said: "I will ask the Father and He will give you another Advocate to dwell with you forever, the Spirit of truth. . . " (John 14: 16-17).
A Catholic who disbelieves even one doctrine of the Church is, in effect, calling Christ a liar and a deceiver. If the Church in her teaching authority could lead men into error, then Christ would have broken His promise. To call Christ a liar is to doubt His divinity. In contradistinction, St. Paul, believing that Christ is Truth, calls His Church "the pillar and mainstay of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15).
Your Excellency, as you know, when Catholics begin to accept articles of faith at random, they are no longer Catholics—in fact, they never had the Faith. Such Catholics think that the "object" of faith is a collection of unrelated and isolated dogmas, instead it is the whole infallible teaching of the Church on faith and morals.
Your Grace, is not a heretic one who chooses to accept certain dogmas revealed by God and to dismiss others? Instead of following the authority of the Church, the heretic uses private judgment. There is a distinction between "formal" and "material" heresy, but the distinction is unnecessary when unorthodox church members are allowed to flaunt their heretical teachings in the classroom and in public. St. Paul warns the faithful against heretics: "A factitious man avoid after a first and second admonition, knowing that such a one is perverted and sins, being self-condemned" (Titus 3: 10-11).
What does a member of the Church have to say or to do to be excommunicated? Why has Holy Mother Church ceased to exercise her power to excommunicate? If so-called Catholics are free to use private judgment in matters of faith and morals, and if they can reject teachings of the Church without punishment, then how do they differ from Protestants? If they are in fact Protestants, why are they allowed to remain in the Church while other Protestants are excluded?
Your Excellency, liberals have a great amount of power in the Church. The revolt en masse to the encyclical "Humanae Vitae"; the "Call to Action" conference in Detroit in 1977, which Father Vincent P. Miceli, S.J., a distinguished scholar, called "A Call to Revolution"; the diabolical book Human Sexuality, a product of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) in 1977; more recently, the Bishops' Pastoral Letter on war and peace, which relies heavily on advice from recalcitrant Church members—we can go on and on—all attest to the immense and pernicious influence of the liberals.
The apostles were commissioned by Christ to teach all nations whatsoever He had commanded (Matt. 28: 18-19). Not only were they commissioned to teach, but they were also given authority. Since the Bishops are the lawful successors of the apostles, it is their duty to preserve, interpret, and proclaim the deposit of faith. One way of preserving and teaching the truths handed down from Christ is to repress heresy. The Catholic Church has the duty to protect the faithful from the cancerous teaching of unorthodox Catholics. Your Excellency, since the Bishops, who are the only divinely appointed teachers in their respective dioceses, are empowered to dismiss unorthodox members of the Church and do not do so, Catholics can only conclude that 1) the Bishops agree with their statements, or 2) the Bishops lack the courage to take steps to dismiss them.
Catholics used to trust priests to reiterate the Church's teaching on faith and morals. But they did not rely on the priest as priest; nor did Catholics trust the priest simply because he was the rector of a particular church. The faithful went to priests for assistance because the position of the latter demanded that their teaching agree with the convictions of the Bishop, who, in turn taught what was proclaimed by Holy Mother Church.
The situation today is disgraceful. Catholics trust neither priests nor Bishops. Liberals openly attack even infallible statements of the Magisterium, using shibboleths like "the spirit of Vatican II" and "reinterpret doctrines to meet the needs of modern man", as a smoke screen for their infidelity to the Church.
The Church is in such dilapidated condition that if we did not have Christ's promise of ultimate victory, we would tend to think Satan's triumph is inevitable.
Your Excellency, Catholics are looking for leadership in the battle against the radicals in the Church. We hope and pray that you will use your very influential position to help remove, in the words of St. Paul, ". . . many disobedient, vain babblers and deceivers. . . These must be rebuked, for they upset whole households, teaching things that they ought not, for the sake of base gain" (Titus 1 10-11).
We remain, Your Grace, your obedient servants.
The Editors
The Most Reverend Pio Laghi
The Apostolic Delegation
3339 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008
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