Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Apostasy

To often today brothers and sisters within the Church find themselves at odds with each other. Very often the battle is fought over the use of certain methods. We should begrudge no one their method, one may be a sledge hammer while another a gentle flower, the hammer will reach some while the flower others. The Church has given us countless examples of just how nonsensical it is to begrudge another their method or approach. We need only consider St. Francis of Assisi or St. Dominic. Or perhaps St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Therese of Lisieux? Each of them had very different methods and very different personalities. What they shared were the fundamental tenets of Catholic Doctrine. Their unity was born of faith in the Mystery of Christ's presence in the Eucharist and the true doctrine he revealed through his Church.It is unlikely they used terms such as "Traditionalist," (which seems to me to be a double negative if you are a Catholic) or liberal or progressive or neo-catholic. All of these terms it seems to me smack of a politics. I find no advantage to them nor do they help to make valid distinctions. If we consider what it means to be Catholic, it means to accept tradition. It means that nothing can be updated without recourse to the tradition. Therefore, anything that is updated (aggiornimento) without the consideration of tradition (resourcement) is not inherently Catholic. There are three words that we as Catholics must revive, orthodoxy, heresy, and apostasy. And we need to revive them in charity and truth. Not wielding them as ad hominem attacks on those with whom we disagree in regards to method or approach to evangelization. Rather, applying them directly to the content of the faith professed or not. In his book Heretics, Chesterton says:"I for one have come to believe in going back to the fundamentals. Such is the general idea of this book. I wish to deal with my most distinguished contemporaries, not personally or in a merely literary manner, but in relation to the real body of doctrine which they teach. I am not concerned with Mr. Rudyard Kipling as a vivid artist or a vigorous personality; I am concerned with him as a Heretic--that is to say, a man whose view of things has the hardihood to differ from mine. I am not concerned with Mr. Bernard Shaw as one of the most brilliant and one of the most honest men alive; I am concerned with him as a Heretic--that is to say, a man whose philosophy is quite solid, quite coherent, and quite wrong. I revere to the doctrinal methods of the thirteenth century, inspired by the general hope of getting something done." G.K. Chesterton from Heretics pg. 13The Church has not asserted her authority in this manner effectively for quite some time. She has preferred to present mercy to the exclusion of justice to the point, that evil is very rarely addressed directly. The Church however, is both/and. As a result, she must always consider justice as form of God's mercy. In His wisdom God knows that sometimes, we have to experience discomfort and pain in order to seek His mercy. Our choices have to bring about confrontation or even some type of pain, whether it be physical, emotional, or spiritual, in order for us to consider renouncing our errant positions. Bad philosophy and theology begin as ideas and thoughts, however, they tend to end in idolatry and tyranny if they are not corrected or eliminated. Ideas and thoughts can be wrong and when they are they deviate from truth. When they deviate from truth, they separate themselves from God, who is truth. When they separate themselves from God they separate themselves from goodness. This cannot help but affect practice. Chesterton's words are particularly important to us today. As we encounter the new sophists and their ad-hominem's we must be particularly attentive to the content at hand. They will deviate as their reasons cannot compete with truth. We must not. When they run the way of name calling and subject changing, we must bring them back to the idea's at hand and force them, by our unwillingness to be distracted to engage in a real conversation. We must not allow them to exist. We must defeat them and eliminate them through reason, prayer, and action from the public square. And we must remember that it is not the human soul that we are judging, it is their errant ideas. We ought to do so as a result of a pure desire for their conversion.OrthodoxyIt is generally true that when a person, especially a Catholic begins a sentence by saying for example: "I am going to say something that may sound heretical," and they then choose to say something that sounds heretical,  they likely know that what they are saying sounds heretical because it deviates from orthodox teaching. Orthodoxy is a word that is not used enough today and when it is, it is not used very well. Orthodoxy comes from the Greek words orthos meaning right and doksa, meaning opinion. Orthodoksa then means having the right opinion. In the Eastern Church the word is used to identify those Churches which are not in unity with Rome, however, they accept the ancient councils of the Church, such as Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Nicea. However, in the West it was traditionally used to describe the concern for sound doctrine. An Orthodox Catholic is one who holds the right belief about both natural theology (philosophy) and supernatural theology (Sacred doctrine). He does not deviate purposely from the things that have been revealed by tradition and sacred scripture and taught definitively by the Magisterium of the Church, either in thought or in practice.If the human person is whom I consistently say that he is, than he has a mind to know the truth and a free will to live it out. Orthodoxy is the acceptance of truth or of the divinely revealed things of God for our salvation. We both know and willingly choose to accept them. This is done both freely and with the aid of God's grace. He inspires us and we give our assent. It does not and cannot stop there, however. It must result in orthopraxy. Which is true or right practice. The will must implement in practice or the visible manner in which it lives the right way of choosing in accord with the right way of thinking. This is orthodoxy. And it is the acceptance of all of those things which God revealed for our salvation. To reject those things, both in thought and in practice, is something else entirely.HereticsHeresy derives from the Greek word hairesis which means a taking, choice, sect, heresy. It is to say that there is a free deviation or taking away from something. To commit heresy is to take something away from the right way of understanding. It is to freely deviate from right thinking and right practice. To engage in heresy then is to hold a belief as dogma which is in opposition to the orthodox teaching that exists. If one were to say for example that a Lutheran could if his/her conscience compelled him receive the Holy Eucharist without the pain of sin, he/she would find himself at odds with the orthodox teaching on the matter.We consider heresy in this way:Anyone who, after receiving baptism, while remaining nominally a Christian, pertinaciously denies or doubts any of the truths that must be believed with divine and Catholic faith is considered a heretic." Fr. John Hardon Catholic Dictionary pg. 206Fr. Hardon goes on to give four criteria which constitute a formal heresy:

• Previous valid Baptism
• External profession of current Christian status(rejection of this status renders one an apostate)
• Open denial or positive doubt regarding a divinely revealed truth as proposed by the Catholic Church
• Disbelief must be morally culpable "where a nominal Christian refuses to accept what he knows is a doctrinal imperative." Fr. John Hardon Catholic Dictionary pg. 206

To be clear for one to be a formal heretic he must reject or question a truth taught not merely by the authority of the Church but in union with the word of God revealed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. In other words, you could reject the fittingness of the Norvus Ordo, while accepting it's validity. As Pope Benedict XVI has said it is a fabrication. So, while it was promulgated by the authority of the Church and as such is valid. It is a departure from the Sacred Tradition and Sacred Theology of liturgy. While on the other hand if we were to insist that there were no parameters instituted which inform us as to who should and should not receive the Holy Eucharist we have departed from the Apostolic Tradition and the theology of the Church.  To be a heretic is to reject tradition. It is implied in the word. The modernists who hang on every word of all of this "serene theology" that is going around, are by the very definition of the word, heretics. To be a heretic is to depart from tradition. If someone were to suggest that doctrine is stiff and rigid and imply that it should be fluid and evolving is to suggest that we can update or understand the faith in our modern era apart from the Apostolic Tradition. If they have not made a proclamation of formal heresy, I can assure you it is not far off. They have rejected orthodoxy, which if you recall is right reason, right thinking, a right understanding of the doctrine of the Church as understood through the lens of the magisterium, Apostolic Tradition, and Sacred Theology/Scripture. It should be noted that the person must recognize his/her obligation to believe. If the person were to act in good faith the heresy would be only material and would imply neither guilt or a sin against the faith. This would apply for example, to me. I make every effort to be precise in my words and my arguments. However, sometimes, I am not. Never intentionally, never with malice and always willing to correct myself if I have spoken in error. Nevertheless, in my imperfection, I am sure that I have not always conveyed the truth perfectly or perfectly clearly. However, I have always conveyed it in good faith. ApostasyThe word apostasy derives from the Greek word apostasis, which means revolt or a standing off. This is the word we ought to use for those people who are baptized into the supernatural life of Christ and have professed the faith, but however, of their own free will, now reject it entirely. "For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God." Hebrews 6: 4-6Martin Luther was a formal was certainly a heretic. But, I think that the case could be made for his apostasy. While he continued to profess a Christian world view, he renounced the orthodox teaching of the Church on a number of matters preferring his own ideas to the Apostolic Tradition, Sacred Theology/Scripture, and magisterium of the Church. He separated himself from the divine gift of sanctifying grace. Everything that he did, all that he built, was built on the principle of revolution. He revolted against the Church. There is not a single prophet who announced Martin Luther as the reformer of the Church. There was not a single miracle attached to his revolt against the Church. Does this mean that he could not have returned and received God's mercy? Father of the Church, St. John Chrysostom commenting on the passage from Hebrews said:"If we so desire, Christ can be formed in us anew. Listen to what Paul says: "my little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you! (Gal 4:9). All that we need do is lay hold of Penance. See how kind God is to us! We have fallen once again! Yet not even then did he punish us: instead, he gave us the medicine of Penance, which is powerful enough to destroy and eliminate all our sins, Provided we know what type of medicine it is an how to use it." (Hom. on Heb, 6)Certainly, he could have returned. There is however, no evidence that he did. In fact, penance was one of the sacraments of God's sanctifying grace that Martin Luther rejected. In our politically charged world in which we find ourselves in the middle of a crisis of faith. Few believe that their is a divine revelation which supecedes politics and philosophy. Heck politics refuses to believe that their is a philosophy which supercedes politics. The errors of the culture are embraced as if they were truth and the truth is rejected as if it were heresy. We need only look at the rejection of the natural law in regards to the indissoluble union of one man and one woman ordered toward the procreation and education of children. Right thinking people recognize it as marriage. However, they are condemned by a culture hell bent on implementing error into practice. These are the heretics and the apostates against whom we fight. We should be careful, not to condemn a brother because he chooses a different method. Only because that method is the product of erroneous belief. Let us embrace orthodoxy and combat the evil departures of the modern heretics and apostates in charity. I leave you with the brilliance of one of the great orthodox thinkers in the history of the Church: "It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. " G.K. Chesterton, Heretics