I just read this very good article written years ago by John S Daly, 'Heresy in History'.

I recommend this for everyone to read.  It outlines many cases of heresy in Church History and how the Church was often seemingly painfully slow in sending out anathemas and excommunications.  For all of us, whether Indult, R&R or sedevacantist or doubtist, this should give us much to think on, and I hope give us pause before we declare our fellow Catholics on this forum or otherwise, heretics, schismatics or apostates.

Here is the first part posted, with the link to follow:

AMDGVM


Heresy in History

Synopsis

Church history shows that one should be very slow to judge that someone claiming to be subject to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church is in fact a heretic or schismatic, and that, in the extreme case where this judgment is formed by a private individual, it gives no pretext whatever to condemn or withdraw from communion with those Catholics who do not share that judgment.

Introduction

All sedevacantists necessarily hold that private individuals can sometimes recognise heresy even before the culprit has been condemned by the authorities of the Church. They are right to do so, and the same applies to schism. However, it seems that some carry this exceptional principle much too far, and are prompt to condemn others as heretics or schismatics when the fact is not sufficiently founded.

In the case of heresy it is necessary that there should be rejection of a truth which it is manifest that the culprit knows is certainly taught by the Church to be believed with divine and Catholic faith. In the case of schism it must be manifest that the culprit has intentionally withdrawn from what he recognises to be the communion of the Catholic Church, either in the person of the pope, or in the person of the great mass of the faithful.

If even one of these elements is lacking in either case, or subject to prudent doubt, the judgment of heresy or schism cannot be made by the private individual - authoritative judgment must intervene.

The aim of this study is to assemble a representative sample of historical examples which show: (i) that good and learned Catholics have traditionally been very slow to conclude, even before the judgment of the Church, that a given person has fallen into heresy and can therefore no longer be counted a Catholic; (ii) what factors are necessary to justify the judgment of heresy and how they were evaluated in practice, and (iii) the attitude traditionally taken when orthodox-believing Catholics disagreed with one another, before the intervention of authority, as to whether this or that person or group were in fact heretics or schismatics.

While on the one hand it is imperative to shun heresy, on the other hand it is no less obligatory to refrain from rashly judging our neighbour to be a heretic - the most horrible accusation that can be conceived against anyone claiming or wishing to be a Catholic. Prudence is therefore needed to avoid all excess in either direction. The lessons of Church history must be of great utility for forming one's conscience.


1. Erasmus of Rotterdam

On the subject of Erasmus of Rotterdam, St Alphonsus Liguori tells us that he called the invocation of Our Lady and of the saints idolatry; he condemned monasteries and religious vows and rules, opposed the celibacy of the clergy, jeered at indulgences, relics, feasts, fasts and even auricular confession. He went do far as to claim that man is justified by faith alone and to call into doubt the authority of the Scriptures and of the Councils. St Alphonsus adds that Erasmus accused of audacity the granting of the name of "God" to the Holy Ghost! So it is not surprising to see St Alphonsus quote the proverb according to which Luther hatched out the egg that Erasmus had laid. Nor is it surprising to learn from him that "several writers openly accuse Erasmus of heresy".

But was Erasmus for all that a heretic? He was esteemed by several popes, one of whom asked him to refute Luther. He remained a close friend of St Thomas More. St Alphonsus concludes in his own name, with Bernini, that Erasmus died with the character of an unsound Catholic, but not of a heretic, as he submitted all his writings to the judgement of the Church. (History of Heresies and their Refutation)

What is quite certain is that notwithstanding his doctrines, which even before the Council of Trent could scarcely be considered excusable from the censure of heresy, notwithstanding numerous contemporary complaints and refutations, and notwithstanding his great learning, which diminished the possibility of blameless ignorance, it was and is permissible to consider Erasmus a Catholic. Were one to hold him definitely a heretic, it would follow that Pope Paul III, St Thomas More and many other excellent Catholics remained in communion with a heretic.

Those who today see pertinacity on all sides among traditional Catholics could hardly fail to hold that Erasmus was a heretic and therefore to censure all these good Catholics as heretics or schismatics for remaining in communion with him. Such a conclusion is clearly incorrect and can only be based on false premises.


2. John Henry Cardinal Newman

In 1845 an Anglican minister became a Catholic - John Henry Newman. Already learned in patristics, he did not equip himself with an adequate formation in Catholic theology. Ordained priest, he wrote on theological questions, admitting errors in Holy Scripture, salvation outside the Church, etc. One of the propositions later condemned by St Pius X's Lamentabili (Prop. 25) appears three times verbatim in different writings of Newman. Naturally in the prelude to the 1870 Vatican Council he opposed papal infallibility. His writings were attacked by Cardinals Franzelin, Lépicier and Billot, by Perrone and Brownson among others. Cardinal Manning reproached him with ten distinct heresies to be found in his writings. Other bishops spoke of his heresies also. Detailed refutations appeared which he could hardly have been unaware of. Nonetheless he retracted nothing.

So was he a heretic? Far from being excommunicated...he was himself raised to the cardinalate! The whole Church remained in communion with him. The only explanation for this must be that, despite appearances, his errors were not deemed to be directly and explicitly heretical...or else that the Catholics of the day, from the pope down, had a conception of pertinacity considerably more demanding than that in circulation among members of that sedevacantist school which hurls its anathemas so lightly in our days.

(Richard Sartino: Another Look at John Henry Cardinal Newman)

3. The Jansenist “Appelant” Bishops

During the eighteenth century Jansenist controversies, several bishops appealed against the teachings of the Church which infallibly condemned numerous Jansenist errors. So were these "appelant" bishops heretics? We can be sure that there were not so publicly and definitely, for the Church retained them in their episcopal offices and no one at all withdrew from communion with them.

Cardinal Billot explains the case. He says that those inwardly tainted with heresy deliberately hid and veiled their heresies so that it was impossible to be sufficiently sure about what their position really was. He explains too that it was possible for some element of doubt to remain about whether the infallibility of the bulls being rejected was itself an object of divine faith.

Billot shows that it was possible to know that these bishops were not Catholics only from the moment when "they began to reject openly and pertinaciously and unambiguously the bull Unigenitus which the Church had received with unanimous agreement as a rule of faith.” (De Ecclesia, p. 294) And only from that moment "were they no longer considered to be true and legitimate bishops."

I suggest that there is no trace of laxism or of wishful thinking in maintaining that the majority of traditionalists, including the clergy, are not in a state of opposition to the Church more blatant than the bishops in question were in the period immediately preceding their rejection of Unigenitus. I do not believe that as a generality they reject "openly and pertinaciously and unambiguously" infallible constitutions.


4. Fr Alfred Loisy

Fr Alfred Loisy, a notorious Modernist for many years, was excommunicated by name as a heretic by the Inquisition under St Pius X in 1908. Here is the text of the decree:

"It is already known everywhere that the priest Alfred Loisy, currently resident in the diocese of Langres, has taught orally and published in written form many things that overturn the most essential foundations of the Christian faith. However there was some hope that he had perhaps been deceived rather by love of novelty than by depravity of mind and that he would submit to the recent declarations and prescriptions of the Holy See in these matters. That is why hitherto grave canonical sanctions have been abstained from.

"But the opposite occurred, for, despising everything, not only did he not abjure his errors, but he also, by new writings and letters to his superiors, had the hardihood to confirm them obstinately. As his entrenched contumacy after the formal canonical admonitions is therefore now clearly established, this supreme congregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, in order not to prove unfaithful to its task, and by express mandate of our holy Lord pope Pius X, pronounces sentence of major excommunication against the priest Alfred Loisy by name and personally, and declares him to be struck by all the penalties of the publicly excommunicated and thus that he is vitandus and must be avoided by all."

So we see that the Holy See does not blush to avow having long refrained from striking the heretic with excommunication, even though his heresies, which "overturn the most essential foundations of the Christian faith," were “already known everywhere”. And the justification for this restraint, leaving Catholics in communion with one who no longer believed in the resurrection or the virgin birth of our Lord, was the hope that he might be led astray only by "love of novelty"...which, however, is scarcely a virtue!

Now the fact that Loisy was truly a heretic even before this decree is much more certain than the notion that all the SSPX-supporters in our days are heretics, since his doctrines were much more manifestly opposed to those of the Church, even concerning the most essential foundations of the Christian faith, and without having the advantage of being able to offer, by way of excuse, the attempt to explain a truly unheard of and complicated situation such as that which today prevails in the Church.

However, far from condemning those who remained in communion with Loisy before his excommunication, the Holy See knowingly permitted them to do so, in order to wait until the very last minute before fulminating its excommunication!

5. Those Communicating with Loisy after his Condemnation

The decree excommunicating the heretic Loisy was promulgated 7th March 1908 and appeared in the 19th March issue of the French theological review L'Ami Du Clergé for the same year, accompanied by a commentary. This commentary explains the effects of the different excommunications in force at the time (still a decade before the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law currently in force): "in the case of those excommunicated by name by the pope [this was Loisy's case] the constitution Apostolicae Sedis contains an excommunication...against clergy who communicate in divinis knowingly and willingly with them by admitting them to religious services."

In other words, one incurs excommunication as a result of all religious communication with a heretic on the following conditions:

(a) The heretic must have been excommunicated by name by the Holy See.
(b) The culprit must communicate in religious services with him knowingly and willingly.
(c) The culprit must be a cleric.
(d) Even then, the excommunication incurred by the communicator is a minor excommunication, such that he is not himself regarded as a heretic or as vitandus.

Is there not a slight difference between that and the idea that one becomes an excommunicated schismatic or heretic by the simple fact of communicatio in sacris with a heretic even when he has not been excommunicated by anyone and when one is not aware that he is a heretic at all, and that this applies not only to the clergy but also to the laity?

And in any event, the excommunication in question was softened yet further by Pope Benedict XV when he promulgated our present Code of Canon Law...

6. Communist Party Members

On 1st July 1949 the Holy Office replied to several enquiries concerning the status of Catholics who had become members of the Communist Party. It emerges from the replies that every Catholic consciously enrolling himself as a member of the Communist Party is excluded from the sacraments as ill-disposed; but that these persons are not excluded from membership of the Church as heretics or apostates unless they expressly hold the materialistic and anti-Christian doctrines of the Communists. (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 1949)

In other words, a Catholic could join the Communist party without being deemed to have lost the faith, on condition of not having embraced manifestly anti-Christian doctrines, which could occur if the miscreant simply imagined that the Communist Party represented the best solution to social problems... (See Canon E.J. Mahoney: Priests' Problems, p. 262)

So the Holy See judges it possible to remain a Catholic while being a member of the Communist Party. And yet some Catholics in our days think that one ceases to be a Catholic by the simple fact of remaining in communion with those who assist at the Masses of the SSPX? These Catholics must recognise that the Holy See seems quite unaware of the supposed duty of presuming pertinacity in the external forum even in cases where the error is much more manifest and hard to excuse than the errors of the SSPX in our days.

7. Czechoslovakian Schismatic “Catholic Action”

Less than two weeks before the above-mentioned decision, the Holy Office had published another decree, this time condemning a group in Czechoslovakia, purportedly belonging to Catholic Action, but which in reality was a fake, set up by the Church's enemies to seduce the faithful. The Holy Office declared that this organisation was "schismatic" and that any person, cleric or lay, who should knowingly and willingly adhere to it, would incur (or had already incurred) the excommunication of Canon 2314 as a schismatic. (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, XLI, p. 333, Holy Office, 20th June 1949)

It is therefore possible to be a member of a schismatic group without oneself being either schismatic or excommunicated, even by external forum presumption. Yet it is argued that association with any of the different traditionalist groups who in our days hold one or more errors convicts those involved automatically of heresy or schism, at least by external forum presumption. NO - where the miscreant does not err from the Catholic faith or communion knowingly and willingly the conclusion clearly does not follow.

8. Michel de Bay

Doctor Michel de Bay (Baius), born in 1513 took part in the council of Trent and became a celebrated theologian at the university of Louvain where he opposed the Protestants, and in particular the Calvinists. "He seems to have been activated by a sincere desire to defend the Church, but...like so many of the Church's impulsive and ill-equipped champions he fell into the very errors which he had set out to destroy." (Brodrick: Blessed Robert Bellarmine, Vol. II, p. 3) From his youth he had a love of novelty disguised as a return to more ancient traditions. He affected to disdain the scholastics, without being very familiar with them, and to adhere instead to St Augustine.

A pronounced vice in his character was the ease with which he called heretics all those who failed to agree with his theological ideas, which, of course, he considered to be manifestly the only orthodox ones. From 1551 onwards he spread his errors from his professorial chair. In 1561 Pope Pius IV imposed silence on him, which he did not respect. In 1567 St Pius V drew up a decree condemning 79 of his theses, without promulgating it. De Bay was sent a copy and defended himself; reading his defence determined the pope to give public confirmation to the condemnation, in which several of de Bay's ideas were qualified as heretical. De Bay himself, out of charity, was not named, as it was hoped that his opposition to the doctrines of the Church was not conscious.

De Bay made himself the model of the future Jansenists (who were in many ways his spiritual descendants), by pretending to submit, without changing his beliefs in the slightest. He continued to spread his errors on the pretext that the decree condemned only false interpretations of his thinking.

St Robert Bellarmine arrived in Louvain as professor of theology also. From 1570 to 1576 he publicly opposed the errors of de Bay in his lectures, but without ever naming him. In speaking of him he always considered him as a learned Catholic, most worthy of respect, and at this time called him "prudent, pious, humble, erudite".

Nonetheless St Robert never ceased to hope for a new condemnation of his errors, and this appeared in 1579 (Pope Gregory XIII).

Bellarmine returned to Rome and later the Venerable Leonard Lessius came to replace him at Louvain. By way of preparatory information, Bellarmine told him that in his opinion the doctrine of de Bay and his disciples on the subject of predestination was heretical.

Lessius wrote from Louvain to Bellarmine at Rome, informing him that de Bay continued to spread his errors in private, even after the new condemnation, and sometimes even in public, and that his numerous disciples propagated them with great enthusiasm.

Supported by the advice of Bellarmine, Lessius continued to oppose these errors in his lectures, but without ever naming him or condemning the man who was the source of so much evil, and the precursor of Jansenism.

Now in the light of this account, one is forced to ask whether some sedevacantists in our days are not very much prompter than St Robert Bellarmine was in identifying pertinacity, and more animated by the bad example of de Bay himself than by the good example of St Robert and of the Ven Leonard Lessius. For in the light of the principles of those who call all SSPX followers heretics or schismatics, and place all traditional priests save one or two in the same bag, how is it possible to deny that de Bay was a heretic? And that granted, how is it possible for them not to condemn St Robert Bellarmine, doctor of the Church, for having remained in communion with (and even praised) one whose heretical doctrines and manifest bad faith he was all too well aware of?

Once again, if the Church presumes all who go astray in doctrine to be pertinacious, St Robert Bellarmine was clearly not aware of it. And while it can be possible to recognise someone as a pertinacious heretic even before the intervention of the Holy See, the fact remains that St Robert was slower to draw that conclusion, even after several Roman condemnations, than some are today when relying only on their own judgment of what seems evident.


http://strobertbellarmine.net/heresyhistory.html