HERESY
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HERESY
state of conscience technically termed bona fides, good
faith, is thus produced. It implies inculpable belief
in error, a mistake morally unavoidable and therefore
always excusable, sometimes even laudable. In the
absence of good faith worldly interests often bar the
way from heresy to truth. When a government, for
instance, reserves its favours and functions for adher-
ents of the state religion, the army of civil servants
becomes a more powerful body of missionaries than
the ordained ministers. Prussia, France, and Russia
are cases in point.
VI. Christ, the Apostles, and the Fathers on Heresy. — Heresy, in the sense of falling away from the Faith, became possible only after the Faith had been promulgated by Christ. Its advent is clearly foretold. Matt., xxiv, 11, 23-26: "... many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many. . . . Then if any man shall say to you: Lo here is Christ, or there, do not believe him. For there shall rise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect. Behold I have told it to you, beforehand. If there- fore they shall say to you: Behold he is in the desert, go ye not out: Behold he is in the closets, believe it not. " Christ also indicated the marks by which to know the false prophets: "Who is not with me is against me" (Luke, xi, 23); "and if he will not hear the Church let him be to thee as the heathen and the pul> lican " (Matt., xviii, 17) ; " he that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark, xvi, 16). The Apostles acted upon their Master's directions. All the weight of their own Divine faith and mission is brought to bear upon innovators. " If anyone", saysSt. Paul, " preach to you a gospel, besides that you have received, let him be anathema " (Gal., i, 9). To St. John the here- tic is a seducer, an antichrist, a man who dissolves Christ (I John, iv, 3; II John, 7): "receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you" (II John, 10). St. Peter, true to his office and to his impetuous nature, assails them as with a two-edged sword: "... Ij-ing teachers who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them; bringing upon themselves swift destruction . . . These are fountains without water, and clouds tossed with whirlwinds, to whom the mist of darkness is re- served" (II Pet., ii, 1, 17). St. Jude speaks in a simi- lar strain throughout his whole epistle. St. Paul admonishes the disturbers of the unity of faith at Corinth that "the weapons of our warfare . . . are mighty to God unto the pulling down of fortifica- tions, destroying counsels, and every height that ex- alteth itself against the knowledge of God . . . and having in readiness to revenge all disobedience " (II Cor., X, 4, 5,6).
What Paul did at Corinth he enjoins to be done by every bishop in his own church. Thus Timothy is instructed to " war in them a good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some rejecting have made shipwreck concerning the faith. Of whom is Hymeneus and Alexander, whom I have delivered up to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme " (I Tim., i, 18-20). He exhorts the ancients of the Church at Ephesus to " take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the church of God, . . . I know that, after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock . . . There- fore watch, . . ." (Acts, XX, 28, 29, 31). "Beware of dogs", he writes to the Philippians (iii, 2), the dogs being the same false teachers as the "ravening wolves". The Fathers show no more leniency to per- verters of the faith. A Protestant writer thus sketches their teaching (Schaff-Herzog, s. v. Heresy) : " Polycarp regarded Marcion as the first-born of the Devil. Ignatius sees in heretics poisonous plants, or animals in human form. Justin and Tertullian con- demn their errors as inspirations of the Evil One;
Theophilus compares them to barren and rocky islands
on which sliips are wrecked; and Origen says, that as
pirates place lights on cliffs to allure and destroy ves-
sels in quest of refuge, so the Prince of this world
Ughts the fires of false knowledge m order to destroy
men. [Jerome calls the congregations of the heretics
synagogues of Satan (Ep. 123), and says their com-
munion is to be avoided like that of vipers and scor-
pions (Ep. 130).]" These primitive views on heresy
have been faithfully transmitted and acted on by the
Church in subsequent ages. There is no break in the
tradition from St. Peter to Pius X.
VII. Vindication of Their Te.\ching. — The first law of life, be it the life of plant or animal, of man or of a society of men, is self-preservation. Neglect of self- preservation leads to ruin and destruction. But the life of a religious societj', the tissue that binds its members into one body and animates them with one soul, is the sjTnbol of faith, the creed or confession adhered to as a condition sine qiti'i non of membership. To undo the creed is to undo the Church. The integ- rity of the rule of faith is more essential to the cohesion of a religious society than the strict practice of its moral precepts. For faith supplies the means of mending moral delinquencies as one of its ordinary functions, whereas the loss of faith, cutting at the root of spiritual life, is usually fatal to the soul. In fact the long Ust of heresiarchs contains the name of only one who came to resipiscence: Berengarius. The jealousy with which the Church guards and defends her deposit of faith is therefore identical with the instinctive duty of self-preservation and the desire to live. This instinct is by no means peculiar to the Catholic Church: being natural it is universal. All sects, denominations, confessions, schools of thought, and associations of any kind have a more or less com- prehensive set of tenets on the acceptance of which membership depends. In the Catholic Church this natural law has received the sanction of Divine pro- mulgation, as appears from the teaching of Clirist and the Apostles quoted above. Freedom of thought ex- tending to the essential beliefs of a Church is in itself a contradiction; for, by accepting membership, the members accept the essential beliefs and renounce their freedom of thought so far as these are concerned.
But what authority is to lay down the law as to what is or is not essential? It is certainly not the authority of individuals. By entering a society, whichever it be, the individual gives up part of ms individuality to be merged into the community. And that part is precisely his private judgment on the essentials: if he resumes his liberty he ipso facto sepa- rates himself from his church. The decision, there- fore, rests with the constitutional authority of the society — in the Church with the hierarchy acting as teacher and guardian of the faith. Nor can it be said that this principle unduly curtails the play of human reason. That it does curtail its play is a fact, but a fact grounded in natural and Divine law, as shown above. That it does not curtail reason unduly is evi- denced by this other fact: that the deposit of faith (1) is itself an inexhaustible object of intellectual effort of the noblest kind, lifting human reason above its nat- ural sphere, enlarging and deepening its outlook, solic- iting its finest faculties; (2) that, side by side with the deposit, but logically connected with it, there is a multitude of doubtful points of which discussion is free within the wide bounds of charity — "in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus charitas. " The substitution of pri\ate judgment for the teaching magisterium has been the dissolvent of all sects who have adopted it. Only those sects exhibit a certain consistency in which private judgment is a dead letter and the teaching is carried on according to confessions and catechisms by a trained clergy.
VIII. Church Legislation on Heresy. — Heresy, being a deadly poison generated within the organism
