This was originally called He is to Be Accused by His Subjects at my main site but is today updated. This is a continuation of my weekend series, reproducing on Substack past favorites from my normal website.
I do not want this blog to turn my readers into “heresy hunters” since recognizing heresy is not enough to obtain eternal life. Also, there is so much heresy in current “Catholics” (both lay and clergy) that your “heresy hunting” would become an exhausting effort.
But this blog is worth writing because there is an odd gnostic-myth floating around Catholic circles today that a heretic in the hierarchy can only be recognized by either a group of Cardinals or an obsolete battery of canonical trials. While it is true that the saints seem to delineate between “material heresy” (small points) and “manifest heresy” (obvious heresy) the latter is held by saints to be easily-identified by your average faithful lay-man or lay-woman living in sanctifying grace. To believe secret wisdom on recognizing orthodoxy belongs to a shifty group of Cardinals is peak-gnosticism. (Gnosticism is the old and tired heresy that only a certain group of “enlightened-elites” have access to “secret” divine-knowledge.)
Rather, the Catholic Church has always taught you only need the true faith and blue-collar common-sense to identify a manifest heretic. This means you do not need a group of Cardinals behind you with “an imperfect council” or canonists forming a “canonical trial” to recognize an obvious enemy of the Catholic faith. (This is important because a manifest-heretic, by definition, ceases not only to be a member of the hierarchy, but even a member of the Catholic Church.)
Although a “material-heretic” could historically be judged a “formal-heretic” only by a canonical trial, Fr. Paul Kramer asserts in his recent book that “any prelate can be judged for heresy by his inferiors” in regards to obvious (or manifest) heresy. In other words, if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck—it is a duck! And, as such, “the duck” heretic must be avoided as a non-Catholic intruder (even if he purports himself to be part of the hierarchy) by your average member of the lay-faithful. (The key-word here is faithful, as in catechized and orthodox.)
I realize this is the opposite of what most of the traditional Catholic faithful currently believe.
Continue reading at Padre Peregrino