'“Who is not with me is against me” (Luke 11:23); “and if he will not hear the Church let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican” (Matthew 18:17); “he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mark 16:16). The Apostles acted upon their Master’s directions. All the weight of their own Divine faith and mission is brought to bear upon innovators. “If any one”, says St. Paul, “preach to you a gospel, besides that you have received, let him be anathema” (Galatians 1:9). To St. John the heretic is a seducer, an antichrist, a man who dissolves Christ (1 John 4:3; 2 John 7); “receive him not into the house nor say to him, God speed you” (2 John 10). St. Peter, true to his office and to his impetuous nature, assails them as with a two-edged sword: " . . . lying teachers who shall bring in sects of perdition, and deny the Lord who bought them: bringing upon themselves swift destruction . . . (2 Peter 2:1, 17). St. Jude speaks in a similar strain throughout his whole epistle. . .
What Paul did at Corinth he enjoins to be done by every bishop in his own church. Thus Timothy is instructed to "war in them a good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some rejecting have made shipwreck concerning the faith. . . He exhorts the ancients of the Church at Ephesus to “take heed to yourselves, and to the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you bishops, to rule the Church of God, . . .** I know that, after my departure, ravening wolves will enter in among you, not sparing the flock** . . . Therefore watch, . . .” (Acts 20:28-31). “Beware of dogs”, he writes to the Philippians (3:2), the dogs being the same false teachers as the “ravening wolves”. The Fathers show no more leniency to perverters of the faith. A Protestant writer thus sketches their teaching (Schaff-Herzog, s.v. Heresy): “Polycarp regarded Marcion as the first-born of the Devil. Ignatius sees in heretics poisonous plants, or animals in human form. Justin and Tertullian condemn their errors as inspirations of the Evil One;. . . [Jerome calls the congregations of the heretics synagogues of Satan (Ep. 123), and says their communion is to be avoided like that of vipers and scorpions (Ep. 130).]” These primitive views on heresy have been faithfully transmitted and acted on by the Church in subsequent ages. There is no break in the tradition from St. Peter to Pius X.
The role of heresy in history is that of evil generally. Its roots are in corrupted human nature. It has come over the Church as predicted by her Divine Founder; it has rent asunder the bonds of charity in families, provinces, states, and nations; the sword has been drawn and pyres erected both for its defence and its repression; misery and ruin have followed in its track. The prevalence of heresy, however, does not disprove the Divinity of the Church, any more than the existence of evil disproves the existence of an all-good God. Heresy, like other evils, is permitted as a test of faith and a trial of strength in the Church militant; probably also as a punishment for other sins. . . The endless controversies with heretics have been indirectly the cause of most important doctrinal developments and definitions formulated in councils to the edification of the body of Christ. Thus the spurious gospels of the Gnostics prepared the way for the canon of Scripture; Patripassian, Sabellian, Arian, and Macedonian heresies drew out a clearer concept of the Trinity; . . . And so down to Modernism, which has called forth a solemn assertion of the claims of the supernatural in history.
The Church’s legislation on heresy and heretics is often reproached with cruelty and intolerance. Intolerant it is: in fact its raison d’être is intolerance of doctrines subversive of the faith. But such intolerance is essential to all that is, or moves, or lives, for tolerance of destructive elements within the organism amounts to suicide. Heretical sects are subject to the same law: they live or die in the measure they apply or neglect it. The charge of cruelty is also easy to meet. All repressive measures cause suffering or inconvenience of some sort: it is their nature. But they are not therefore cruel. The father who chastises his guilty son is just and may be tender-hearted. Cruelty only comes in where the punishment exceeds the requirements of the case. Opponents say: Precisely; the rigours of the Inquisition violated all humane feelings. We answer: they offend the feelings of later ages in which there is less regard for the purity of faith; but they did not antagonize the feelings of their own time, when heresy was looked on as more malignant than treason. In proof of which it suffices to remark that the inquisitors only renounced on the guilt of the accused and then handed him over to the secular power to be dealt with according to the laws framed by emperors and kings. Medieval people found no fault with the system, in fact heretics had been burned by the populace centuries before the Inquisition became a regular institution. And whenever heretics gained the upper hand, they were never slow in applying the same laws: so the Huguenots in France, the Hussites in Bohemia, the Calvinists in Geneva, the Elizabethan statesmen and the Puritans in England. Toleration came in only when faith went out; lenient measures were resorted to only** where the power to apply more severe measures was wanting.** The embers of the Kulturkampf in Germany still smoulder; the separation and confiscation laws and the ostracism of Catholics in France are the scandal of the day. Christ said: “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” (Matthew 10:34). The history of heresy verifies this prediction and shows, moreover, that the greater number of the victims of the sword is on the side of the faithful adherents of the one Church founded by Christ.
The Catholic Encyclopedia
