“Once a Catholic Always a Catholic”? Not Necessarily. – Padre Peregrino
Many Catholics casually say the following line to ex-Catholics in order to get them back into a Church building: “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.” It sounds welcoming, but it’s theologically wrong.
This is because the Magisterium of the Catholic Church and the Church Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Popes all taught: A bad Catholic never ceases to be a Catholic, provided his failure be not faith-based but morality-based (and also provided those moral failures be not excommunicable.) On the other hand, a baptized person who has purposely rejected even one tenet of the traditional Catholic faith is a heretic who is no longer Catholic. Furthermore, a baptized person who has purposely rejected Jesus Christ as the only Savior of the world is now an apostate and even farther outside the Church.
A heretic maintains the character of baptism, but not the grace of baptism. This is the key distinction.
This is wrong. This is another novel idea coined by sedes so as to convince themselves that popes are not popes. The idea goes something like this: "Heretics are outside of the Church therefore a pope who is a heretic cannot be head of the Church."
I will stick only to the subject at hand in this post.
Heresy is a sin, the worst of all the sins.
There is a necessary distinction that is being ignored here:
1) heretics (baptized in infancy or not) who've been that way since the age of reason, and
2) Catholic who have fallen into heresy. - See Canon 751 below
Canon Law makes that distinction:
Canon 751"Generally the norms specified in the above canons are to be observed whenever it is a case of the baptism of the infant of two heretics or schismatics,
or of two Catholics who have fallen into apostasy, heresy, or schism."
Canon 2314§ 1.
All apostates from the Christian faith and each and every heretic or schismatic:
1.° Incur by that fact excommunication"
Excommunication is a censure attached to the sin (of heresy in this case) by the Code of Canon Law. Note that excommunication does not mean one is outside of the Church.
What is a censure?
From Commentary on the Code of Canon Law....
"1525. A censure is a penalty by which a subject (by Baptism) of the Church
is deprived of some spiritual benefits, or of benefits connected with matters spiritual, because of obstinate violation of some law of the Church,
until such time as he repents and obtains absolution." All heretics who were Catholic, remains a Catholic with the sin of heresy and the censure of excommunication on their soul for that sin - - until they repent and are absolved in the sacrament of penance. The Dimonds understood this until they went sede - see attached short video clip.
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