Pope John Paul II and today Pope Benedict XVI has addressedt this question of heresy and Protestantism. And while the full answer is still unavailable, the one thing that both popes make clear is the modern day Protesantism is not heresy. Here is what Pope Benedict has to say about the matter.
The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, pp. 87-88: “The difficulty in the way of giving an answer is a profound one. Ultimately it is due to the fact that there is no appropriate category in Catholic thought for the phenomenon of Protestantism today (one could say the same of the relationship to the separated churches of the East). It is obvious that the old category of ‘heresy’ is no longer of any value. Heresy, for Scripture and the early Church, includes the idea of a personal decision against the unity of the Church, and heresy’s characteristic is pertinacia, the obstinacy of him who persists in his own private way. This, however, cannot be regarded as an appropriate description of the spiritual situation of the Protestant Christian. In the course of a now centuries-old history, Protestantism has made an important contribution to the realization of Christian faith, fulfilling a positive function in the development of the Christian message and, above all, often giving rise to a sincere and profound faith in the individual non-Catholic Christian, whose separation from the Catholic affirmation has nothing to do with the pertinacia characteristic of heresy. Perhaps we may here invert a saying of St. Augustine’s: that an old schism becomes a heresy. *** The very passage of time alters the character of a division, so that an old division is something essentially different from a new one. Something that was once rightly condemned as heresy cannot later simply become true, but it can gradually develop its own positive ecclesial nature, with which the individual is presented as his church and in which he lives as a believer, not as a heretic.*** This organization of one group, however, ultimately has an effect on the whole. The conclusion is inescapable, then: Protestantism today is something different from heresy in the traditional sense, a phenomenon whose true theological place has not yet been determined.”
Remember, Pope John Paul was trained in the Carmelie School of theology and Pope Benedict is trained in the Augustinian and Franciscan schools of theology. The three schools define heresy very differently from what we’re used to, because they are very influenced by theology of history. Even though they are different schools, they agree with each other.
While there is a definite separation and there is a definite transmission of distorted beliefs from one generation to another and other beliefs have been set aside, the Protestant does not believe them as a heretic. He believes them as a person of faith. This is his or her faith.
To understand the Holy Father, I had to think back to the American Revolution. To the English of the 18th century, the colonists were terrorists and rebels. To the Americans, they were patriots. Today, the English no longer look at Americans as terrorists or rebels and Americans still feel very uncomfortable with the English system of government. Over 200 years, the younger generations are not in the same place as the original generations involved in the conflict. We have to deal with each other, not as good vs bad, but as two distinct communities that came from one common stock and figure out how to get back to being one. We should be able to know truth from error, and right from wrong without applying labels that no longer work.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
