.
These are good questions:
I would like to know what exactly His Excellency means by wholly innocent and wholly guilty.
When one sins, is that person wholly guilty?
When one apostates [apostatizes], is that person wholly guilty?
When one denies a dogma, is that person wholly guilty?
Does one need to be wholly guilty when denying a dogma to be considered heretic?
It comes down to objective vs. subjective reality.
One is wholly innocent when either he did not do the bad thing, or else he was entirely unaware of his actions and/or his involvement in the action/s. E.g., an utter lunatic, being insane, cannot be held responsible for committing a crime.
Wholly guilty means the perpetrator was conscious of his actions and aware of his taking part in the bad thing that happened, even if he may not have been cognizant of how bad it was.
When one sins, that person is wholly guilty, and he is responsible to confess his sin to a priest under the seal of confession, to do penance and to amend his life so as to firmly resolve to never sin that way again (because to SAY that he has so resolved while in fact harboring the intention to forget all about this resolution to amend his life in the future is a lie which invalidates the confession, and if the matter is serious, it is a MORTAL sin to thus lie).
Apostasy is an objective reality. One might apostatize being fully cognizant of what he is doing, or he might apostatize while being under some delusion that makes him think he is finally seeing the truth, or whatever. Regardless of his subjective state of confusion or clear thinking, the objective reality of his falling away from the true faith is a thing in itself, and as such, he cannot be his own judge, because his point of view might corrupt any accurate observation of that real thing.
Regarding denial of dogma, we are all responsible to learn what the Church teaches and to foster a love for the truth. Fr. Nicholas Gruner (R.I.P.) was very astute in his last years, summarizing the state of the world by saying it is characterized by the vast majority of people worldwide no longer having any love for the truth. If dogma is anything, it is truth. Our Lord said "I am the truth." So if we would love God, we therefore would also love dogma. But to deny that which we love would be impossible, for it would prove that we don't really love it at all. We might SAY that we love God, but if we deny that which He has revealed through the authority of His Church, we would make ourselves liars. Now, if we are sane, and we are aware of our lie, we are wholly responsible and wholly guilty. However, even if we are insane, the objective reality of our denial is a thing in itself; i.e., it could scandalize children (for which it would be better for us to have a millstone tied about our neck and thrown into the depth of the sea).
Finally, "Does one need to be wholly guilty when denying a dogma to be considered [a] heretic?"
This is a great question. Traditionally, the Church brings a suspected heretic before a tribunal and explains the heresy he has professed, to be sure that he comprehends what the Church teaches and how it is different from what he has been saying in public (you are not called to a tribunal for errors you keep to yourself). An example would be the tribunal of Galileo Galilei, 400 years ago. The subject is given the opportunity to abjure his error and repent of the harm it has done to the faith of any others. If he does so, he is forgiven, but there might be something he has to do to make up for the damage, such as make a public announcement or make several public appearances in certain places, or whatever. On the other hand, if he refuses to admit being wrong and continues to persist in his error, he eventually would be judged a heretic, that is, obstinate in his error. In this case, yes, he is wholly guilty of denying a dogma and consequently deemed a heretic.
In the process of this tribunal it might become evident that the subject, the man on trial, is somehow incompetent or not mentally intact, or perhaps utterly bonkers. Or, it could be discovered that he is demonically possessed. In these cases (and more), there may be several possible proceedings, but in any case, the damage done to others by his professing his error is an objective reality, whether or not the subject is responsible for that damage. In this kind of case, the subject might still be considered a heretic, depending on the particulars of the case, or, perhaps he would not be considered a heretic, but if not, there would have to be good reasons for such leniency.
On a personal level, I know a man who was baptized Catholic and raised in a mixed marriage home where his mother was Catholic but his father was Presbyterian. They are both long deceased, and he has entirely fallen away from the faith, only hanging on to a few trappings of Christianity and continuing to attend his local protestant community meetings on Sundays. He openly denies the Immaculate Conception and claims that Our Lady had other children. He raised two daughters scandalizing them with these lies, among others. When I tried to correct his errors, he fully understood me and wantonly persisted in his error with all the more false zeal and misdirected energy. Is he a heretic?
It seems to me that he apostatized from the faith of his baptism in defiance of his mother's teaching and that of the Church, and as such, he would be a heretic. But just try and get the local diocese to agree with that! They're all about making
"peace" with false religions, and so they don't want to make waves.
If I tell him he's a heretic, he takes that as a
personal insult (regardless of whether it is objectively true or not) and then goes and looks for some way of returning the 'favor' in some unrelated way, to get even. As Andrew Carnegie would say, that's no way to make friends and influence people.
.
Topic: CONCILIAR POPES III (Read 1600 times)