A contagion is in the air. It has been blowing through the churches for decades, leaving corpses in its wake. These live and breath in the body but the soul is not quick but dead. Such is the state of those who imbibe the putrid flow of heresy.
Too much? Perhaps, but the truth of the matter couldn’t be more earnestly nor graphically stated. For what disease is to the body, heresy is to the soul. Thus, St. John Chrysostom in his Homilies on Titus, “He does not say, ‘accuse him,’ nor ‘bring him before a judge,’ but ‘avoid him.’ For the disease is incurable, and he infects others.”
The heresies that blew out of the worldly wind of Vatican II have spread through the churches formally occupied by Catholic bishops and priests. True, there are perhaps a few laity in these churches who are not culpably ignorant. But the claims of the Church as truly Catholic could never be squared with the arid wasteland of doctrines coming out of Rome today and filtering down to the sees and parish priests and people in the pews.
For instance, do Muslims and Jews really worship the same God as Christians? Taken univocally (face value), of course not. What blithering none sense! But the false church thinks so, and would have them believe it, too.
I speak from experience. When I was in the Navy, there was this certain young Jewish woman to whom I recall assuring her that Christians and Jews were kindred. Further, all throughout my time in the university, I had an affinity for talking with a few Jews as such, because I sincerely looked at them as brothers in faith. That was all Vatican II programming.
The truth is Jews are not the brothers and sisters of Catholics, because the uncomfortable truth is the Jews denied our Lord Jesus and had Him hung on a tree. And the still more uncomfortable truth is, the Jews still deny Jesus and crucify Him anew every day in their own stoney hearts.
If that paragraph made you spiritually squeamish, there is a good chance you have Vatican 2.0 still installed in your intellect. I suggest you download Catholicism.
But the objection may arise, aren’t we making ourselves the authority in the Church to judge who is a heretic? No.
St. Robert Bellarmine, in De Romano Pontifice, is clear on this point, “Heretics are to be avoided even before excommunication, because they are already separated from the Church by their own judgment.” This is not juridical decision making. We are not calling out in law what is the case but what is the case in fact. I could be wrong, but prudence is my guide, along with all the holy tradition of my religion.
A final operational point: ought Catholics to even mingle with family, friends, and coworkers who are not Catholic? St. Thomas Aquinas in his Commentary on 2 John, suggests not, “To salute him is to show fellowship; therefore he forbids even this, lest one seem to consent to his error.”
I would not go this far, nor do so think Saint Thomas would either. The sick are in need of ministry, if only witness. How could those who are not of the faith come to the faith without the faithful showing them how to live and think and believe? Or are we to believe God manifests His truth without the mediation of His members?
No, we are the hands of God, and so we must still be present to those not of the faith. This article is about avoiding the heretic in intellectual communion, as it were, in not sharing their notions and imbibing their doctrines, not in avoiding personal witness.
Perhaps the line is too thin for words, but it seems right to me to be Christ and present to a world that would just as soon crucify me. And they who are in good health do not need a Physician but those who are sick.
