Cardinal Billot explains the difference between an Oops and Material Heresy
"...public
material heretics are likewise excluded from membership. Theological
reasoning for this opinion is quite strong: if public material heretics
remained members of the Church, the visibility and unity of Christ's
Church would perish. If these purely material heretics were considered
members of the Catholic Church in the strict sense of the term, how
would one ever locate the "Catholic Church"? How would the Church be
one body? How would it profess one faith? Where would be its
visibility? Where its unity? For these and other reasons we find it
difficult to see any intrinsic probability to the opinion which would
allow for public heretics, in good faith, remaining members of the Church." [Van Noort, pgs. 241-242]
Here Cardinal Billot, who helped write Pascendi,
explains how a Catholic making a mistake when speaking about Catholic
doctrine, is not even a material heretic, and if he is called one, we
completely distort the meaning of what a heretic is.
Here is Cardinal Billot's critical text. I have bolded the essential parts:
Heretics
are divided into formal and material. Formal heretics are those to whom
the authority of the Church is sufficiently known; while
material heretics are those who, being in invincible ignorance of the
Church herself, in good faith choose some other guiding rule.
So the heresy of material heretics is not imputable as sin and indeed
it is not necessarily incompatible with that supernatural faith which is
the beginning and root of all justification. For they may explicitly
believe the principal articles, and believe the others, though not
explicitly, yet implicitly, through their disposition of mind and good
will to adhere to whatever is sufficiently proposed to them as having
been revealed by God. In fact they can still belong to the body of the
Church by desire and fulfil the other conditions necessary for
salvation. Nonetheless, as to
their actual incorporation in the visible Church of Christ, which is our
present subject, our thesis makes no distinction between formal and
material heretics, understanding everything in accordance with the
notion of material heresy just given, which indeed is the only true and
genuine one. For, if you
understand by the expression material heretic one who, while professing
subjection to the Church's Magisterium in matters of faith, nevertheless
still denies something defined by the Church because he did not know it
was defined, or, by the same token, holds an opinion opposed to
Catholic doctrine because he falsely thinks that the Church teaches it,
it would be quite absurd to place material heretics outside the body of
the true Church; but on this understanding the legitimate use of the expression would be entirely perverted. For a material sin is said to exist only when what belongs to the
nature of the sin takes place materially, but without advertence or
deliberate will. But the nature of heresy consists in withdrawal from
the rule of the ecclesiastical Magisterium and this does not take place
in the case mentioned [of someone who is resolved to believe all that
the Church teaches but makes a mistake as to what her teaching consists in], since
this is a simple error of fact concerning what the rule dictates. And
therefore there is no scope for heresy, even materially.
(Cardinal Louis Billot S.J., De Ecclesia Christi, 4th edition, pp.289-290. Translated by John S. Daly.)
RELATED:
TradCatKnight Radio, Fr. Kramer "Heretic Pope?"
