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Heresy (OSV Encyc. 1997)
The virtue of faith is an expression of our trust in God's truthfulness. By this virtue, we accept something as true not because its truth is naturally evident to our mind, but simply because we have it on God's word, communicated to us in Scripture or Tradition as interpreted by the Magisterium, "the living teaching office of the Church" (DV 10).
Faith is an act of love, precisely because it proceeds from the will rather than from the mind. The will - choosing to accept God's word - "tells" the mind to accept what the mind itself does not see. However, it would be wrong to think that the believer has "closed" his eyes and is looking into the dark. He has rather opened them and is looking into the light, a light that is too bright for his mind to penetrate. Faith does not constrict the mind. On the contrary, the believer is conscious of looking out onto infinite horizons of truth.
Nevertheless, since the mind does not humanly "see" the evidence of what faith proposes to it, the possibility always remains of doubting, of withholding assent, of refusing to see in faith. As with all the virtues, faith too is subject to temptations, which take the form of doubts against what is proposed to our mind for belief. Our doubts can be voluntary or involuntary. God wants his followers to be persons of strong faith who reject doubts quickly ("O man of little faith, why did you doubt?": Mt. 14:31).
Even doubts in small matters displease God if one consents to them. More important matters may also become the object of temptations to doubt. Then of course a more vigorous fight against them is required. If one voluntarily doubts (i.e. consenting to the doubt) something clearly taught by the Church, one sins against faith and is just a step short of heresy. One commits the sin of heresy either by obstinately remaining in the doubt, or by passing from doubt to positive and formal disbelief, rejecting or denying some point of truth that the Church, in the use of its divine authority, proposes to be believed.
Temptations against faith therefore, while to be expected, are especially dangerous and ought to be firmly resisted and rapidly rejected. Sins against faith are almost always serious; yet not every such sin automatically constitutes heresy. Heresy in its strict sense is incurred by a person who formally denies and persistently rejects a truth which "must be believed with divine and catholic faith", precisely because it is proposed by the Magisterium of the Church as revealed by God (cf. c. 751).
"Heretic" comes from a Greek word that means "picking and choosing". We can legitimately pick and choose in a supermarket or in our political preferences, but not in what God has revealed. To do so means setting up one's own judgment as the final standard and gauge of truth in matters of salvation, and refusing to accept that there Jesus Christ established his Church as possessor and teacher of his truth.
A wrong understanding of conscience and particularly of the relation between truth, freedom and conscience (cf. VS 35-64), can lead to a 'picking and choosing' attitude towards Church teaching. A Catholic who does not accept the Real Presence or the Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, for instance, cannot fail to realize that this means putting his or her own conscience above what God teaches through the Church. He or she should reflect moreover that not to admit the possibility, "my conscience may be wrong", is to endow one's conscience with the infallibility one denies to the Church. Our Lord did not say 'whoever listens to his conscience, hears me', but 'whoever listens to you (the Apostles and their successors) hears me, and whoever rejects you rejects me' (cf. Lk 10:16).
Right from the start of the Church one sees the Apostles expressing their concern that Christians should not get their faith wrong (Gal 1:6; I Tim 1:19; Jam 5:19-20; 2 Pet 2:1-3; 2 Jn 8-9; Jud 3-4). Perhaps it was easier then to stray into heresy, since the doctrines were so new and their content had not always been precisely established. Today, after twenty centuries over which the exact meaning of each point of christian doctrine has been clarified in magisterial teaching, it should be much more difficult. Yet it still occurs. Lack of interest in knowing and studying the teachings of the magisterium, absence of sound catechetical instruction, carelessness in reading works by unreliable authors, failure to consult doubts with those qualified to advise, are some of the ways in which a person "can stray from the truth" (cf. 2 Tim 2:18).
Certain doctrinal positions, without being necessarily heretical, are hard to reconcile with the thought of the Church. While specialists in theology may perhaps hold them at least tentatively, they would be imprudent to propagate them. Catholics who are non-specialists would be wise to look particularly to the guidance of the magisterium in such matters, which are high risk areas. Faith is too precious to be subjected to unnecessary dangers for, as the Scripture reminds us, "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6).
Heresy is not an outdated notion. What we have to do with here is not in fact a mere notion, but a real personal danger: that of straying outside the limits of the saving power of Christ's truth.