Is Heresy Dead?

Heresy is the lifeblood of religions. There are no heresies in a dead religion.

--Andre Suares

By that standard, Roman Catholicism is surely alive and well. Unbothered by papal warnings against dissent and rebellion, Catholic theologians are today publicly questioning established dogma in a way that might have earned them excommunication in the 19th century and execution in the 16th. Several Dutch thinkers, for example, have tried to redefine the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Eucharist, which was made dogma at the Council of Trent; others have proposed radical new ideas on original sin (TIME, March 21). Even the conventional concepts of God, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ and the reality of his Resurrection are considered open for theological reconsideration. Last month, in an effort to establish the boundaries of such searching, Pope Paul VI appointed a 30-man international commission of theologians to study, among other questions, the distinction between heresy and the permissible limits of dissent within the church.

The creation of the commission was unquestionably the mildest reply that doctrinal dissent has ever received in Roman Catholic history. In the days of the medieval Inquisition, even heretics who offered to recant were burned at the stake for having dared to question at all. During the first decade of the 20th century, Modernists like French Abbe Alfred Loisy, who championed scholarly Biblical criticism, and British Jesuit George Tyrrell, who urged the revision of old dogmatic formulas, were excommunicated for beliefs that have become commonplace in the postconciliar church. Vatican II was indeed a watershed. Not since the Council has Rome formally condemned anyone as a heretic.

Moral Suasion. For many Christian thinkers, Catholic and Protestant alike, the whole notion of heresy has become a treacherous one. In fact, heresy may be as dead as God was supposed to be. Except for extremely conservative denominations, most Protestant bodies have abandoned the idea that a communicant can be expelled or punished for denying an article of faith. After an abortive attempt to condemn the Rt. Rev. James A. Pike* for heresy by the Episcopal House of Bishops, a committee of prelates concluded that moral suasion and intellectual arguments were the only means the church had to keep dissidents in line.

One of the problems with heresy is that its very existence depends upon an outdated concept of what faith is--adherence to a particular body of doctrine rather than an inner spiritual commitment. According to Lutheran Theologian Joseph Sittler of the University of Chicago, "Heresy is a workable notion when faith is identified with propositions, but it becomes a flexible notion when a distinction is made between the reality of faith and statements made about it." Catholic Theologian Eugene C. Bianchi of Emory University suggests that the whole notion of heresy rests on the presumption that doctrine is static rather than dynamic and subject to change.

Language Limitations. Father Daniel C. Maguire of Catholic University goes so far as to suggest that the concept of heresy may disappear as the church "moves away from totally verbal, formal expression to a symbolic expression of belief." For him, as indeed for many other theologians, the problem is that the limitations of language make any doctrinal formulations of belief inadequate and thus always open to clarification and revision. Redemptorist Francis X. Murphy of Rome's Accademia Alfonsiana suggests that most of today's supposed heretics are not in fact denying basic dogmas but simply the outdated concepts that surround them. "It is not deviation in the basic dogma," he says, "but in theological explanations given for these dogmas."

On the other hand, some theologians contend that the notion of heresy ought to be itself redefined rather than dropped entirely. In their view, a heretic is not so much one who questions a specific traditional doctrine but one who fails to live and think in harmony with the essential Christian commandment of love. One form of modern heresy, proposes Bianchi, "might be that which destroys human freedom and man's ability to develop and communicate, such as economic exploitation, racism and imperialistic wars." In a new book called Do We Need the Church?, Father Richard McBrien of Pope John XXIII Seminary near Boston suggests that a selfish exponent of rugged individualism who ignores the plight of the poor is much more of a heretic than someone who doubts, for instance, the Assumption of Mary.

When Dissent Destroys. Nonetheless, Christianity is based on certain axiomatic beliefs--the existence of God, for example--and the church, like any other community, has the right to protect its own identity. But how? Christian thinkers tend to be guarded in their answers. Jesuit Joseph Fichter of Harvard Divinity School proposes that the question of whether a man is a heretic or not "should be left in the hands of God." Episcopal Theologian John Macquarrie suggests that the limits of disbelief should be set "when dissent begins to destroy the community." In any event, reaction to such dissent will not take the harsh form it often did in the past. "Condemnation of their views should be sufficient," says Catholic Philosopher Daniel Callahan. "Even in a reformed church community, people are likely to be swayed by a strong condemnation."

By and large, theologians regard the new papal commission as a promising step forward in dealing with the troubling question of heresy. Although its membership includes several orthodox doctrinaires, it is graced with the presence of such thoughtful progressives as German Jesuit Karl Rahner, Father Walter Burghardt of Woodstock College and Canadian Philosopher Bernard Lonergan. Since some of these men--notably Rahner--have been themselves suspected of heterodoxy in the past, they are unlikely to set a narrow limit on the right of intellectual dissent.

-Who announced last month that he is leaving the Episcopal Church, partially because it is a "dying institution" and partially because Bishop C. Kilmer Myers of San Francisco refused to officiate at Pike's third marriage--to his research assistant, Diane Kennedy.

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