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Heresy

I looked up "heresy" in the CCC. It's paragraph 2089, if you're scoring at home. "Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same." So Luther may well be a sympathetic figure, as may be Calvin or any others. But they were definitely heretics. By the way, one is perfectly free to dissent from the dogmatic definitions of an ecumenical council, but if you do, you're not a Catholic in good standing of any sort, by definition. So let's cut the nonsense about how the Church acted hastily with regard to Luther, or in error. They did no such thing.

The faith of the first millenium was as much defined by fidelity to the visible Church as by its propositional content. Indeed, that's why heretics so often claimed that the Church was corrupted, and thus separated from it.

I don't have to use strawmen arguments against the Reformed; I don't interact with that theology by way of Catholic theology or Catholic presuppositions; I don't have to; questions that deserve answers suggest themselves. Maybe my editor and other Reformed readers could concentrate on being consistent, rather than blaming those who apply it consistently with being unfair.

Just my thoughts. By the way, why should I repent of my particular sins particularly under pain of eternal wrath if Christ's death on the cross has efficaciously forgiven all (past, present, and future) my sins? If God sees only Christ when he looks at me, how would he even know what I'd done? Why are we asking God to forgive our sins/trespasses that have already been forgiven? I await an answer.

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