P
Pax_et_Caritas
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Any heresy cuts a person off from the soul of the Church, but a secret heretic remains a member of the body of the Church. This is certain. Even the Sedavacantists admit this.Before you get too far.
Anyone who denies a defined article of faith is a heretic. It doesn’t have to be public, or declared.
Excommunication is a penalty for a public act where penalties are listed for it in the Canon Law of the Church.
A heretic, albeit, a private heretic is no longer a member of the Church. He has separated himself off from the body of Christ.
Sec 23 of Mystici Corporis so states this:
**“For not every sin, however grave it may be, is such as of its own nature to sever a man from the Body of the Church, as does schism or heresy or apostasy.” **
I don’t know what this does for the rest of his thesis, but you are starting out on the wrong foot. Heresy can be a private matter, but it is enough to cast someone out of the Body of Christ. Formal excommunication is not required.
peace
This is what one of them wrote: "Nobody thinks that occult heretics are non-members of the Church, and it is membership in the Church which governs the capacity to possess an office in her. This is all entirely clear from Bellarmine (and Van Noort and every other manualist, of course)…
The quote from Mystici Corporis would apply to a heretic in the canonical sense, which is a public heretic.