Heresies, censured errors and cautions

The Church should adapt her doctrine to modern civilization; natural and active virtues outrank supernatural and passive ones; religious vows are outdated.

Condemned or rejected: Testem Benevolentiae, Leo XIII (22 January 1899).

Hold instead: The supernatural virtues are higher; the contemplative life is not inferior; doctrine is not adapted to the age.

Speaking of God as if He were simply the biggest creature, with human passions and limits, or as if “being” meant the same of God and creatures.

Condemned or rejected: Lateran IV (1215): “between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying a greater dissimilitude.”

Hold instead: Our words apply to God analogically; He is incomprehensible even when truly known.

Those in grace, or who love, are free from the moral law; the commandments no longer bind.

Condemned or rejected: Trent Session 6 canons 19–21 (1547); Veritatis Splendor 76 (1993).

Hold instead: The commandments bind the justified; love fulfils the law, it does not abolish it.

Sexual acts between persons of the same sex can be morally good, and the Church should recognize or bless such unions as marriages.

Condemned or rejected: Persona Humana 8 (CDF, 1975); Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (CDF, 1986); CCC 2357–2359; Considerations regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons (CDF, 2003); Responsum ad dubium (CDF, 2021) and Fiducia Supplicans (DDF, 2023), which allow a blessing of persons but not of the union.

Hold instead: Persons with same-sex attraction are to be received with respect, compassion and sensitivity, and are called, like everyone, to chastity; the acts are intrinsically disordered, and no union but the marriage of a man and a woman can be blessed as such.

There is no God.

Condemned or rejected: Dei Filius canon 1.1 (1870); Gaudium et Spes 19–21 (1965).

Hold instead: The one true God, Creator and Lord, exists and can be known.

The moral law is self-legislated by reason; any law from God or nature would be heteronomy and unworthy of a free being.

Condemned or rejected: Veritatis Splendor 36–41 (1993) on “participated theonomy.”

Hold instead: Human reason participates in the eternal law; obedience to God's law is the truest freedom.

The original state of man was owed to nature; all acts without charity are sin; grace is not gratuitous.

Condemned or rejected: Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus, St. Pius V (1567), condemning 79 propositions of Michael Baius.

Hold instead: Grace is a free gift above nature's due; nature retains its own goodness and powers.

The bread and wine remain in substance; Christ is present only figuratively or spiritually.

Condemned or rejected: Roman synods of 1059 and 1079 (profession of Berengarius); Lateran IV (1215) on transubstantiation.

Hold instead: The whole substance of bread and wine is changed into Christ's Body and Blood.

Scripture is to be read in a naively literal way, without regard for literary form, history, or the Church's interpretation.

Condemned or rejected: Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, I.F (1993); Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943).

Hold instead: The literal sense is found through genre and context; the spiritual senses and the analogy of faith complete it.

The civil ruler is head of the Church, appoints its bishops and defines its doctrine.

Condemned or rejected: Opposed from St. Ambrose and Pope St. Gelasius I (494, the “two swords”); Auctorem Fidei (1794) against Josephinism.

Hold instead: The Church is a perfect society with her own authority; the state must not usurp it.

God predestines some to damnation; grace is irresistible; the saints cannot fall; the Eucharist is a spiritual presence only.

Condemned or rejected: Trent, Sessions 6 and 13 (1547–1551); Synod of Quierzy (853) on predestination to evil.

Hold instead: God predestines no one to evil; grace can be resisted; the just can fall; Christ is substantially present in the Eucharist.

Medieval dualism: matter and the body are evil, marriage and procreation sinful, the sacraments worthless.

Condemned or rejected: Lateran IV (1215), ch. 1; the mission of St. Dominic.

Hold instead: One God created spirit and matter, both good; marriage is a sacrament.

The clergy are the Church and the laity its clients; ordination places a man above accountability; holiness and mission are clerical specialties and the layman's part is to pray, pay and obey.

Condemned or rejected: Lumen Gentium 30–38 and Apostolicam Actuositatem (1965) on the laity's own apostolate; Christifideles Laici (1988); Francis, Letter to the People of God (20 August 2018): clericalism is at the root of the abuse crisis.

Hold instead: Hierarchy is service; all the baptized are called to holiness and share Christ's priesthood; the ministerial priesthood differs in essence, not in dignity, and exists for the people.

Unbelievers may be forced to accept baptism or the faith.

Condemned or rejected: St. Gregory the Great (Letters, on the Jews); Nicholas I to the Bulgars (866); ST II-II q. 10 a. 8; Dignitatis Humanae 2–3 (1965).

Hold instead: Faith is a free act; no one may be coerced into belief, though the public order may be protected.

Atheistic materialism; abolition of private property; class struggle; the collective as the only reality.

Condemned or rejected: Divini Redemptoris, Pius XI (1937): “intrinsically perverse”; Holy Office decree of 1 July 1949 excommunicating those who profess it.

Hold instead: God exists; the person has inalienable rights, including property; justice is sought by cooperation, not class war.

A general council is superior to the Pope and may depose him; his definitions need the Church's consent.

Condemned or rejected: Execrabilis, Pius II (1460); Lateran V, Pastor Aeternus (1516); Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus (1870).

Hold instead: The Pope has full and supreme power over the whole Church; his ex cathedra definitions are irreformable of themselves.

The rightness of an act depends only on its consequences.

Condemned or rejected: Veritatis Splendor 74–78 (1993); Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy” (1958).

Hold instead: Good may not be done through evil (Rom 3:8); the object of the act is the primary source of its morality.

Spouses may deliberately render the marital act sterile; openness to life is an ideal for the marriage as a whole, not a requirement of each act.

Condemned or rejected: Casti Connubii 54–56 (Pius XI, 1930); Humanae Vitae 14 (St. Paul VI, 1968); Familiaris Consortio 32 (1981); CCC 2370; Veritatis Splendor 80 lists it among intrinsically evil acts.

Hold instead: Each marital act must remain open to the transmission of life; the unitive and procreative meanings of the act cannot be separated by human initiative; periodic continence for serious reasons is lawful.

God made the world but does not govern it, intervene in it, or reveal Himself.

Condemned or rejected: Dei Filius ch. 1 and canon 1.5 (1870) on providence and revelation.

Hold instead: God “protects and governs by His providence all things”; miracles and revelation are possible and real.

Doctrine and discipline should be settled by majority vote of the faithful in “synodal” assemblies; bishops and the pope execute the will of the people of God, and dissent is the engine of development.

Condemned or rejected: Lumen Gentium 18–27 (1964): the hierarchy is of divine institution; Francis, address of 17 October 2015 and Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Germany (29 June 2019): a synod “is not a parliament”; Holy See Declaration on the German Synodal Way (21 July 2022).

Hold instead: The Church is hierarchical by Christ's institution; synodality is listening and discernment under the authority of the bishops in communion with Peter, not majority rule over revealed truth.

The Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and any procession from or through the Son is heresy.

Condemned or rejected: Council of Lyons II (1274); Council of Florence, Laetentur Caeli (1439).

Hold instead: The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as from one principle; “through the Son” expresses the same truth.

The Mass of Paul VI, the 1968 rite of ordination and the other reformed sacraments are invalid or intrinsically sacrilegious, so that the Church has been without true sacraments since 1969 and the new Mass must be avoided even at the cost of missing Sunday Mass.

Condemned or rejected: Paul VI, Missale Romanum (1969) and general audiences of 19 and 26 November 1969; Trent, Session 21 ch. 2 and Session 22 canon 7 on the Church's authority over the rites; Pius XII, Mediator Dei 58. Since the Church cannot universally impose a rite that is invalid or harmful, the claim implies her defection, against the dogma of indefectibility.

Hold instead: The reformed sacraments are valid; the Church has authority over her rites; preferring the older form is lawful, contempt for the new is not (Summorum Pontificum, Letter to the Bishops, 2007).

All human acts are necessitated by prior causes; moral responsibility is an illusion.

Condemned or rejected: Contrary to Trent Session 6 canon 5 and to the whole doctrine of sin and merit (CCC 1730–1748).

Hold instead: The human will is truly free, and the person answerable for his acts.

Abortion and euthanasia can be legitimate choices of the mother or the patient, and a Catholic in public life may support laws that permit them.

Condemned or rejected: Evangelium Vitae 57, 62 and 65 (St. John Paul II, 1995), each with the formula of the ordinary and universal Magisterium; Samaritanus Bonus (CDF, 2020); CCC 2270–2279; Doctrinal Note on Catholics in Political Life (CDF, 2002).

Hold instead: The direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral; a law permitting it binds no conscience; the dying are owed care, not killing, and the Church's teaching here is taught infallibly.

Sexual acts need no ordering to marriage, fidelity and openness to life; desire justifies itself.

Condemned or rejected: Casti Connubii (1930); Humanae Vitae (1968); Persona Humana (1975); Veritatis Splendor (1993).

Hold instead: The body has a nuptial meaning; the marital act is unitive and procreative by its nature.

A valid, consummated, sacramental marriage can be dissolved by adultery, desertion or civil divorce, so that the parties are free to marry again.

Condemned or rejected: Council of Trent, Session 24, canons 5 and 7 (1563); Casti Connubii (1930); Familiaris Consortio 84 (1981); CCC 1640, 1650; Amoris Laetitia 307 (2016) keeps “the full ideal of marriage.”

Hold instead: What God has joined no one may put asunder (Mk 10:9); the bond of a consummated sacramental marriage ends only with death; the divorced and civilly remarried remain members of the Church and are to be accompanied, but the first bond remains.

Sacraments administered by unworthy or sinful ministers are invalid; the true Church is the Church of the pure.

Condemned or rejected: Council of Arles (314); St. Augustine; Council of Carthage (411); Trent Session 7 canon 12.

Hold instead: The sacraments act by Christ's power, not the minister's holiness; the Church contains saints and sinners until the harvest.

The soul is not the form of the body but a separate substance using it; the body is a prison or a mere machine.

Condemned or rejected: Council of Vienne (1312) against Peter Olivi; Lateran V (1513).

Hold instead: The rational soul is “truly, per se and essentially the form of the body”; the human being is one.

The market is self-regulating and just; wages and prices are purely matters of contract; the state must never intervene.

Condemned or rejected: Rerum Novarum 3, 45 (1891); Quadragesimo Anno 88, 109 (1931); Centesimus Annus 42 (1991); CCC 2425.

Hold instead: The market serves the person; a just wage, the rights of labor and the universal destination of goods bind it.

The world flows necessarily from God's substance, as light from the sun (Gnostic and Neoplatonic cosmologies).

Condemned or rejected: Dei Filius canon 1.4 (1870); Lateran IV (1215) against the Albigensians.

Hold instead: Creation is a free act of God's will, not a necessary overflow of His nature.

Moral statements merely express feelings or preferences and are neither true nor false.

Condemned or rejected: Contrary to Veritatis Splendor 32–34 (1993); cf. Fides et Ratio 98.

Hold instead: Moral judgments are true or false; the natural law is objective.

Marriage, meat and wine are forbidden to Christians; continence is required for salvation.

Condemned or rejected: Condemned by St. Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria; Council of Gangra (c. 340); 1 Tim 4:1–5.

Hold instead: Celibacy is a higher counsel, but marriage is holy and no food is unclean.

The universe is atoms and void, moved by chance; the gods, if any, take no interest in us.

Condemned or rejected: Not a Christian heresy but the standing pagan alternative to providence.

Hold instead: Nothing escapes divine providence; chance is the name for causes we do not see.

Grace and the supernatural are a foreign layer on top of a self-sufficient nature; salvation changes God's attitude but not us.

Condemned or rejected: A theological caution, not a condemnation; criticized by de Lubac, Ratzinger and the Catechism's teaching on grace as participation.

Hold instead: Grace heals and elevates nature from within; sanctifying grace is a real participation in the divine nature.

The Pope is first among equals with mere primacy of honor; the state regulates church life, seminaries and religious orders.

Condemned or rejected: Febronius's work condemned (1764); Auctorem Fidei (1794) against the Josephinist Synod of Pistoia.

Hold instead: The Pope's primacy is of jurisdiction; the Church governs herself.

Only formal, baptized members of the visible Church can be saved; baptism of desire and blood do not exist.

Condemned or rejected: Holy Office letter Suprema Haec Sacra to the Archbishop of Boston (8 August 1949); Fr. Leonard Feeney excommunicated 1953 (reconciled 1972).

Hold instead: Outside the Church no salvation, as the Church herself interprets it: one may belong to her by desire, even implicit, with faith and charity.

Reason cannot reach God or any religious truth; faith rests on feeling or authority alone.

Condemned or rejected: Censured in the theses imposed on Louis Bautain (1840) and in Dei Filius (1870).

Hold instead: Reason can know with certainty that God exists; faith is a reasonable assent, not a leap in the dark.

Mortal sin is only a reversal of one's basic orientation to God; particular grave acts need not be mortal sins.

Condemned or rejected: Veritatis Splendor 65–70 (1993); Reconciliatio et Paenitentia 17 (1984).

Hold instead: A single deliberate grave act with full knowledge and consent is a mortal sin.

The Pope's authority is limited by the customs of national churches and by general councils; his judgments are not irreformable without the Church's consent.

Condemned or rejected: Four Gallican Articles (1682) condemned by Alexander VIII (1690); Auctorem Fidei (1794); Pastor Aeternus (1870).

Hold instead: The primacy is of universal jurisdiction; no national church may fence it off.

Sex is assigned rather than given; a person's “gender identity” may differ from the body, and the body should be altered, surgically or chemically, to fit it.

Condemned or rejected: “Male and Female He Created Them” (Congregation for Catholic Education, 2019); Amoris Laetitia 56 (2016); Dignitas Infinita 55–60 (DDF, 2024), which also rejects sex-change interventions as threats to the dignity of the person.

Hold instead: The body, male or female, is a gift received and not raw material; sexual difference is the deepest difference between human beings and is to be accepted and lived; persons who suffer are to be accompanied with charity and never unjustly discriminated against.

Matter is evil, made by a lesser god; salvation is by secret knowledge that frees the spirit from the body.

Condemned or rejected: Condemned by St. Irenaeus (Against Heresies) and the whole early Church; see Gaudete et Exsultate 36–46 (2018) on its modern forms.

Hold instead: God made matter good; the Word became flesh; salvation is by grace through faith working in love.

Pleasure is the only thing good in itself and the measure of every choice.

Condemned or rejected: Contrary to the whole Christian doctrine of beatitude (ST I-II q. 2 a. 6; CCC 1723).

Hold instead: Pleasure accompanies the good act; it is not the end. Man's end is God.

Every truth, including dogma, is relative to its historical moment and must be constantly reconstructed.

Condemned or rejected: Humani Generis 7 (1950); Pascendi (1907) on the evolution of dogma.

Hold instead: Dogma develops “in the same sense and the same meaning” (Vatican I, quoting Vincent of Lérins).

Whatever the reigning pope says, in homilies, interviews, or disciplinary acts, binds as if it were a definition; loyalty to the man replaces adherence to the deposit of faith, and the Church's teaching is thought to change with each pontificate.

Condemned or rejected: Vatican I, Relatio of Bishop Gasser (11 July 1870): the pope is not inspired and is bound to the deposit and to the ordinary means of ascertaining it; Pastor Aeternus ch. 4: the Holy Spirit was promised to Peter's successors “not so that they might disclose new doctrine”; Lumen Gentium 25 and Donum Veritatis 23–31 (1990) distinguish grades of assent; Benedict XVI, homily of 7 May 2005: the pope “must not proclaim his own ideas.”

Hold instead: Definitive teaching binds absolutely; authentic ordinary teaching asks religious submission of mind and will; prudential and disciplinary acts ask obedience and may be questioned respectfully. None of these makes the pope's every word infallible.

Images of Christ and the saints are idols and must be destroyed; veneration of them is idolatry.

Condemned or rejected: Second Council of Nicaea (787); Trent, Session 25 (1563).

Hold instead: Because the Word became flesh, He may be depicted; the honor paid to the image passes to its prototype.

The nation is the highest good, to which religion and morality are instruments (“politics first”).

Condemned or rejected: Condemnation of Action Française by Pius XI (29 December 1926; lifted 1939 after submission).

Hold instead: Patriotism is a virtue under charity and justice; the nation is subject to the moral law and the Kingship of Christ.

Society must be razed and rebuilt by reason and force; the past is nothing; the revolution is its own justification.

Condemned or rejected: Quod Aliquantum, Pius VI (1791) on the French Revolution's Civil Constitution of the Clergy; Quanta Cura (1864).

Hold instead: Reform works through the inherited order; violence against the innocent and the Church is never justified.

Some commandments are impossible to the just; grace is irresistible; Christ did not die for all; nature is radically corrupt; the sacraments are to be approached with rigor and rarely.

Condemned or rejected: Cum Occasione, Innocent X (1653) condemning five propositions from Jansen's Augustinus; Unigenitus, Clement XI (1713); Auctorem Fidei (1794).

Hold instead: Grace suffices for every commandment, can be resisted, is offered to all; frequent Communion and confession are to be encouraged (St. Pius X).

The liturgy should be vernacular, simplified, stripped of “useless” ceremony and devotion by decree of a local synod.

Condemned or rejected: Auctorem Fidei, Pius VI (1794), condemning 85 propositions of the Synod of Pistoia.

Hold instead: The liturgy belongs to the whole Church; it is reformed by lawful authority, in continuity, with reverence for tradition.

The sinner is justified by faith alone, Christ's righteousness being imputed while the sinner remains intrinsically unrighteous; good works have no part.

Condemned or rejected: Trent, Session 6, canons 9–12, 24, 32 (1547).

Hold instead: Justification is a true inner renewal by infused grace and charity; faith works through love; the just truly merit by grace.

Something can be true in philosophy and false in theology; there is one intellect for all men; the world is eternal by necessity.

Condemned or rejected: Condemnations of Paris (1270, 1277); Lateran V (1513) against the unity of the intellect and the mortality of the soul.

Hold instead: Truth is one; each person has his own immortal intellectual soul.

Any opinion with even slight probability frees from obligation; the law is to be stretched in one's favor.

Condemned or rejected: Innocent XI condemned 65 laxist propositions (2 March 1679); Alexander VII, 45 propositions (1665–1666).

Hold instead: A truly and solidly probable opinion may be followed; the virtue of prudence governs doubt.

Morality is a code of minimum obligations; the question is only what is forbidden and where the line falls.

Condemned or rejected: Not condemned; criticized in Veritatis Splendor 15–18 on the rich young man, and by Pinckaers; cf. Matt 23.

Hold instead: The moral life is a call to perfection in charity: beatitude, virtue and the gifts, with the commandments as its floor.

Law is whatever the sovereign enacts; there is no higher law by which to judge it.

Condemned or rejected: Contrary to ST I-II q. 95–96; Evangelium Vitae 70–72 (1995); Benedict XVI, Bundestag address (2011).

Hold instead: An unjust law is no law; positive law derives its force from the natural law.

Society is a contract of self-interested individuals; the common good is a fiction; liberty is freedom from every bond.

Condemned or rejected: Mirari Vos (1832); Syllabus of Errors (1864); Libertas (1888); Centesimus Annus 17, 44 (1991).

Hold instead: The person is social by nature; freedom is for the good; the common good is real and binding.

The state should be separated from the Church and indifferent to religion; liberty of worship, press and conscience are absolute rights; the Church must reconcile herself with modern civilization on these terms.

Condemned or rejected: Mirari Vos (1832); Quanta Cura and the Syllabus props. 55, 77–80 (1864); Immortale Dei (1885); Libertas (1888); Vehementer Nos (1906).

Hold instead: Society as such owes worship to God; religious liberty, rightly understood (Dignitatis Humanae), is freedom from coercion, not indifference to truth.

The Bible is free from error only in matters of faith and morals, not in what it affirms about history or nature.

Condemned or rejected: Providentissimus Deus (1893); Spiritus Paraclitus (1920); Dei Verbum 11 read in continuity.

Hold instead: Whatever the sacred writers assert, the Holy Spirit asserts; inerrancy extends to all that Scripture affirms.

Only the earliest forms are authentic; later development is corruption and should be stripped away.

Condemned or rejected: Mediator Dei 61–64, Pius XII (1947); Auctorem Fidei (1794) against Pistoia's archaeologism.

Hold instead: The liturgy develops organically under the Holy Spirit; the ancient and the later are both the Church's.

Two eternal principles, good and evil; matter, the body and procreation are works of the evil one.

Condemned or rejected: Condemned by Pope St. Leo the Great (447), the Council of Braga (561), Lateran IV (1215).

Hold instead: There is one good Creator; evil is a privation, not a substance; the body and marriage are good.

The God of the Old Testament is a lesser or evil god; the Old Testament is to be rejected.

Condemned or rejected: Condemned by the Church from the second century (Irenaeus, Tertullian); Florence, Cantate Domino (1442).

Hold instead: One God is the author of both Testaments; the Old is fulfilled, not abolished, in the New.

Theology adopts Marxist class analysis; salvation is identified with political liberation; the Church of the poor is set against the hierarchy.

Condemned or rejected: Libertatis Nuntius (1984) and Libertatis Conscientia (1986), Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Hold instead: The preferential love for the poor is Gospel; Marxist analysis and the reduction of salvation to politics are not.

Only matter exists; mind, soul and God are illusions or by-products of matter.

Condemned or rejected: Dei Filius canon 1.2 (1870); Syllabus prop. 58; Divini Redemptoris (1937) on dialectical materialism.

Hold instead: The human soul is spiritual and immortal; God is pure Spirit.

Prayer alone, not the sacraments, drives out the demon dwelling in each soul; the sensible experience of grace is the sign of salvation.

Condemned or rejected: Condemned at Side (c. 390) and the Council of Ephesus (431).

Hold instead: Grace comes through the sacraments and is often hidden; feelings are not its measure.

Reason cannot reach God; religion arises from a “religious sense” welling up from the subconscious; dogmas are symbols that evolve with human experience.

Condemned or rejected: Lamentabili Sane Exitu and Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Pope St. Pius X (1907); Oath against Modernism (1910).

Hold instead: God is knowable by reason; revelation is objective; dogma has a fixed meaning that develops only in the same sense.

After the union Christ has one nature only; His humanity is absorbed into His divinity.

Condemned or rejected: Council of Chalcedon (451); the Tome of Leo.

Hold instead: Christ is one person in two natures, divine and human, unconfused and undivided; His humanity is complete and remains His own.

The soul is mortal, or sleeps until the resurrection, or is one for all men.

Condemned or rejected: Lateran V, Apostolici Regiminis (1513); Benedictus Deus (1336).

Hold instead: Each rational soul is individual, immortal, and receives judgment at death.

Man is born good and is corrupted only by society; there is no original sin and no need of redemption.

Condemned or rejected: Contrary to Trent Session 5; cf. Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei; CCC 406–409.

Hold instead: Man is born with original sin and needs the grace of Christ.

The man Jesus and the Word are two subjects joined by favor; Mary is mother of the man, not of God.

Condemned or rejected: Council of Ephesus (431); Council of Chalcedon (451).

Hold instead: The one person of the Word is the subject of everything Jesus does and suffers; Mary is Theotokos, Mother of God.

Only individuals exist; universals are mere names; the moral law and even God's commands could be otherwise (William of Ockham).

Condemned or rejected: Not condemned as such, but rejected by Aeterni Patris (1879) and Fides et Ratio (1998), and traced by Pinckaers and Gilson to the roots of Reformation and modern errors.

Hold instead: Natures are real; the mind grasps them; the natural law is grounded in the natures God has made.

Papal infallibility and universal jurisdiction are innovations to be refused (Döllinger and the Old Catholic schism).

Condemned or rejected: Pastor Aeternus (1870); excommunication of Döllinger (1871).

Hold instead: The definitions of Vatican I are of faith.

The human mind has an immediate intuition of God's essence, which is the first object of all knowledge (Gioberti, Rosmini).

Condemned or rejected: Holy Office decree of 18 September 1861 condemning seven ontologist propositions; Post Obitum (1887) on Rosmini.

Hold instead: In this life we know God through creatures, by reason and faith; the vision of God's essence is reserved to glory.

The Church could and should ordain women to the presbyterate and episcopate; the reservation of Holy Orders to men is a changeable discipline born of patriarchy.

Condemned or rejected: Inter Insigniores (CDF, 1976); Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 4 (St. John Paul II, 1994): the Church “has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women” and this judgment “is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful”; CDF Responsum (28 October 1995): it belongs to the deposit of faith; Ad Tuendam Fidem (1998).

Hold instead: Christ freely chose the Twelve; the Church's constant practice of reserving the ministerial priesthood to men belongs to her constitution and she has no power to change it. The dignity and mission of women are no less for it (Mulieris Dignitatem, 1988).

Souls pre-existed their bodies and fell into them; in the end all, even demons, will be restored.

Condemned or rejected: Edict of Justinian and the synod of Constantinople (543); Second Council of Constantinople (553).

Hold instead: Each soul is created with its body; hell is eternal; the saints are saved by grace in Christ.

God and the world are one substance; the world is God or a mode of God (Spinoza; German idealism).

Condemned or rejected: Dei Filius canons 1.3–1.4 (1870); Syllabus of Errors props. 1–2 (1864).

Hold instead: God is really and essentially distinct from the world He freely created from nothing.

In union with God the soul becomes God's essence, loses its creaturehood, or is beyond good and evil (certain propositions of Eckhart; the Beghards; Amalric of Bène).

Condemned or rejected: Council of Vienne (1312) against the Beghards; In Agro Dominico, John XXII (1329).

Hold instead: Deification is a participation by grace; the creature remains a creature, ever more itself in God.

Holiness is achieved by effort, method and works; contemplation and passivity are suspect.

Condemned or rejected: Gaudete et Exsultate 47–62 (2018); Testem Benevolentiae (1899).

Hold instead: Grace is first; methods serve, they do not produce, union with God.

There is no inherited original sin; man can keep the law and reach salvation by his natural powers; grace only makes it easier.

Condemned or rejected: Councils of Carthage (418) and Ephesus (431); Second Council of Orange (529).

Hold instead: Original sin is real; grace is necessary for every salutary act and for salvation.

Human reason is incapable of truth; all certainty about God and morals comes from a primitive revelation handed down by tradition (de Bonald, Lamennais, Bonnetty).

Condemned or rejected: Theses imposed on Augustin Bonnetty by the Congregation of the Index (1855); Dei Filius (1870).

Hold instead: Reason, though wounded, can truly know God and the natural law; revelation perfects reason rather than replacing it.

A belief is true if it works; truth is what is useful to believe.

Condemned or rejected: Pascendi (1907) §§ 13–14 rejects the Modernist criterion of “vital” truth.

Hold instead: Truth is the conformity of the mind to reality, not to our needs.

God positively predestines some to sin and damnation (Gottschalk; later Calvin).

Condemned or rejected: Synods of Quierzy (853) and Valence (855); Trent Session 6 canon 17.

Hold instead: God wills all to be saved and predestines no one to evil; reprobation follows foreseen sin.

Priests or communities may alter the liturgy to suit their creativity or felt needs.

Condemned or rejected: Sacrosanctum Concilium 22 §3 (1963); Redemptionis Sacramentum (2004).

Hold instead: “No other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.”

God is in process with the world, affected and perfected by it, and the world is in some way part of God (Whitehead, Hartshorne).

Condemned or rejected: Not formally condemned by name, but contrary to Dei Filius ch. 1 on God's immutability and distinction from the world.

Hold instead: God is immutable, infinitely perfect, and distinct from creation, which adds nothing to Him.

No act is wrong by its object alone; an act is right if its “pre-moral” goods outweigh its evils in the circumstances.

Condemned or rejected: Veritatis Splendor 74–83 (1993).

Hold instead: Some acts are intrinsically evil by their object and may never be chosen, whatever the intention or consequences.

Ceremonial, vestments, music, incense and images are human inventions to be purged from worship.

Condemned or rejected: Trent, Session 22 ch. 5 and Session 25 (1562–1563); Mediator Dei (1947).

Hold instead: The Church uses ceremonies, images and beauty to raise the mind to God; they are not idolatry.

Perfection consists in total passivity: no acts of will, no resistance to temptation, no vocal prayer or examination; the soul annihilated in God is beyond sin.

Condemned or rejected: Coelestis Pastor, Innocent XI (1687), condemning 68 propositions of Miguel de Molinos; Cum Alias (1699) against Fénelon's semi-quietism.

Hold instead: Contemplation is a gift that presupposes and crowns the active practice of virtue and vigilance.

Race or blood is the supreme value; the nation is a god; some peoples are inferior by nature.

Condemned or rejected: Holy Office decree against anti-Semitism (25 March 1928); Mit Brennender Sorge (1937); Summi Pontificatus (1939).

Hold instead: All men are of one blood and one Father; the Church is catholic and no race is excluded or exalted.

Reason is the sole judge of truth; nothing should be believed that reason cannot demonstrate; revelation is superfluous.

Condemned or rejected: Syllabus of Errors props. 3–14 (1864); Dei Filius canons 4.1–4.3 (1870).

Hold instead: Faith and reason are two orders of knowledge; mysteries exceed reason while never contradicting it.

Taking the essence–energies distinction so far that God is composed of parts, or the energies are a lesser God.

Condemned or rejected: Contrary to Lateran IV and Dei Filius: God is “absolutely simple.”

Hold instead: The distinction, as the Byzantine tradition holds it, must not imply any composition or inequality in God.

Reason is corrupt and has no place in theology; faith alone, against reason if need be.

Condemned or rejected: Answered by Trent and Dei Filius; cf. Benedict XVI's Regensburg address (2006) on the “de-Hellenization” of faith.

Hold instead: Faith seeks understanding; reason, healed by grace, is faith's ally.

The Second Vatican Council and the Mass of Paul VI are a rupture with Tradition; a Catholic may refuse the Council's teaching on religious liberty, ecumenism and collegiality, reject the reformed rite as such, receive the sacraments from priests without faculties, and “recognize” the pope while “resisting” him by one's own reading of Tradition.

Condemned or rejected: Ecclesia Dei Adflicta (St. John Paul II, 1988) called the 1988 episcopal consecrations a schismatic act and the underlying notion of Tradition “incomplete and contradictory”; Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops (10 March 2009): the Council's magisterial authority “cannot be frozen in the year 1962”; Francis, Traditionis Custodes (2021) and Desiderio Desideravi (2022).

Hold instead: Vatican II is a valid ecumenical council to be read in continuity with the whole Tradition (Benedict XVI, 22 December 2005); the reformed Mass is valid and holy; love of the older liturgy is lawful within obedience, and difficulties with the Council's texts are to be worked through with the Church, not against her.

Truth and morality depend on the culture, era or individual; no claim is true for everyone.

Condemned or rejected: Veritatis Splendor (1993); Fides et Ratio 5, 55 (1998); Benedict XVI, “dictatorship of relativism” (2005).

Hold instead: Truth is one and knowable; the Gospel is true for every time and culture.

One religion is as good as another; salvation is attainable in any religion; the Church is one option among many.

Condemned or rejected: Mirari Vos, Gregory XVI (1832); Syllabus of Errors props. 15–18 (1864); Dominus Iesus (2000).

Hold instead: The Catholic Church is the one Church of Christ, necessary for salvation.

Other religions are, in principle, ways of salvation complementary to the Church; Christ is one mediator among many.

Condemned or rejected: Dominus Iesus (2000), esp. §§ 13–15, 20–22; Redemptoris Missio (1990).

Hold instead: Christ is the sole mediator; whatever grace reaches others comes through Him and is ordered to His Church.

One must always follow the stricter opinion, even when the lax opinion is more probable; mercy in the confessional is laxity.

Condemned or rejected: Alexander VIII condemned the rigorist proposition (7 December 1690); Jansenist rigorism condemned in Unigenitus (1713).

Hold instead: A doubtful law does not bind; St. Alphonsus's equiprobabilism is the Church's approved path.

Man is the measure of all things; human flourishing in this world is the whole of the good; religion is at best private comfort.

Condemned or rejected: Gaudium et Spes 19–21 (1965); Evangelii Nuntiandi 55 (1975); Deus Caritas Est (2005).

Hold instead: Man is made for God; a humanism without God ends in inhumanity (de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism).

The See of Peter has been vacant since Pius XII (or John XXIII, or Paul VI) because the men elected since taught heresy and so lost the office; the Second Vatican Council and the reformed rites therefore bind no one, and some groups elect popes of their own (conclavism).

Condemned or rejected: Contrary to Pastor Aeternus ch. 2 (1870), which defines that Peter has perpetual successors, and to the Church's indefectibility (Dei Filius ch. 3; Mt 16:18); the First See is judged by no one (canon 1404); refusal of communion with the Roman Pontiff is schism (canon 751). Benedict XVI's Letter to the Bishops (10 March 2009) and Traditionis Custodes (2021) reaffirm the legitimacy of the Council and the reformed rites.

Hold instead: The Church cannot be left without a visible head for generations and cannot be judged by private persons; a pope may be imprudent or even mistaken outside definitions without ceasing to be pope. The faithful owe the Roman Pontiff communion and religious submission, and may voice difficulties through legitimate means.

The beginning of faith and the desire for grace come from man; perseverance can be merited by natural effort.

Condemned or rejected: Second Council of Orange (529), confirmed by Boniface II.

Hold instead: Even the beginning of faith is a gift of prevenient grace.

Mysteries, once revealed, can be fully demonstrated and comprehended by reason (Hermes, Günther, Frohschammer).

Condemned or rejected: Condemnations of Hermes (1835), Günther (1857), Frohschammer (Gravissimas Inter, 1862); Dei Filius canon 4.1.

Hold instead: The mysteries of faith remain mysteries even after revelation; theology explores, it does not dissolve them.

All knowledge is sense data; there is no intellect that grasps natures, and hence no metaphysics.

Condemned or rejected: Rejected in Aeterni Patris (1879) and Fides et Ratio 46, 83 (1998); the Modernist agnosticism built on it was condemned in 1907.

Hold instead: Knowledge begins in the senses but the intellect abstracts and knows being itself.

There are no universal moral norms; each situation must be judged on its own by the individual's intuition.

Condemned or rejected: Pius XII, allocutions of 1952; Holy Office instruction Contra Doctrinam (2 February 1956).

Hold instead: Universal negative precepts bind always and everywhere; prudence applies them, it does not suspend them.

Political authority is created by the consent of individuals and is nothing but the general will.

Condemned or rejected: Diuturnum Illud, Leo XIII (1881); Immortale Dei (1885).

Hold instead: Authority comes from God through the nature of society; consent may designate rulers but does not create authority.

Private property should be abolished or absorbed by the state; the individual exists for the collective; class struggle is the engine of history.

Condemned or rejected: Rerum Novarum (1891); Quadragesimo Anno 111–126 (1931): “no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.”

Hold instead: Private property is a natural right under the universal destination of goods; subsidiarity protects persons and families.

Scripture alone, interpreted by the individual, is the rule of faith; Tradition and the Magisterium have no authority.

Condemned or rejected: Council of Trent, Session 4 (1546); Dei Verbum 9–10 (1965).

Hold instead: Scripture and Tradition form one deposit, authentically interpreted by the Church's living Magisterium.

Apparitions, locutions and prophecies of chastisement, often unapproved, are given more weight than the Church's teaching office; popes and councils are judged by “the messages,” and the end times are read off the news.

Condemned or rejected: Trent, Session 25: new miracles and revelations are to be approved by the bishop; CCC 66–67: public revelation is complete, private revelations do not improve it; Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena (DDF, 17 May 2024).

Hold instead: Public revelation closed with the apostles; approved private revelations bind no one and are judged by the Church, never the reverse; Fatima and Lourdes call to prayer and penance, not to resistance.

After the Fall, free will is a name without reality; man is purely passive under grace.

Condemned or rejected: Trent, Session 6, canons 4–5 (1547); Exsurge Domine (1520).

Hold instead: Free will, wounded by sin, remains and cooperates with grace.

Conscience creates moral norms and may legitimately decide against the Church's definitive moral teaching.

Condemned or rejected: Veritatis Splendor 54–64 (1993); Donum Veritatis 38 (1990).

Hold instead: Conscience is a judgment that applies a law it did not make; it must be formed by truth.

The 1962 Missal was abrogated, or is no longer a true Mass, and may never licitly be celebrated, even where the Church herself permits it.

Condemned or rejected: Benedict XVI, Letter to the Bishops accompanying Summorum Pontificum (2007); Traditionis Custodes arts. 2–5 (2021), which regulate the old Missal's use rather than forbid it.

Hold instead: The old Missal “was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted” (Benedict XVI, 2007); today it is celebrated where the bishop, with the Holy See, provides for it.

The Council's texts were compromises; their real meaning is a break with the past to be pushed further, so that pre-conciliar dogma, liturgy and morals no longer bind and whatever is newest is most Catholic.

Condemned or rejected: Extraordinary Synod of Bishops (1985), Final Report I.5: the Council is to be read in continuity with the whole Tradition; Benedict XVI, Address to the Roman Curia (22 December 2005), rejecting the “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture”; Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei (1965) and his homily of 29 June 1972 on “the smoke of Satan.”

Hold instead: The Council is to be read by its texts in the light of the whole Tradition; it defined no new dogma and revoked none; renewal is reform in continuity, not a new Church.

Original sin wholly corrupted human nature; every act of the unregenerate is sin; reason is useless for truth.

Condemned or rejected: Trent, Session 5 (1546) and Session 6 canon 7; Exsurge Domine (1520).

Hold instead: Nature is wounded, not destroyed; the unbaptised can do naturally good acts; reason can know truth.

The state is the source of all rights and the highest end of man; family, Church and conscience are subordinate to it.

Condemned or rejected: Non Abbiamo Bisogno (1931) against Fascism; Mit Brennender Sorge (1937); Divini Redemptoris (1937); Summi Pontificatus (1939).

Hold instead: The state exists for the person and the common good; the family and the Church have rights prior to it.

The Father and the Son are two sources of the Spirit, or the Spirit proceeds by two spirations.

Condemned or rejected: Council of Lyons II (1274); Council of Florence (1439).

Hold instead: The Father and Son spirate the Spirit as one principle, by one spiration; the Father is the sole source without source.

All human beings will certainly be saved; hell is empty or will be emptied.

Condemned or rejected: Synod of Constantinople (543) against apokatastasis; Lateran IV (1215); Benedictus Deus (1336); CCC 1035.

Hold instead: Hell is real and eternal; the possibility of final loss is real; God wills all to be saved and offers grace to all.

The right act maximizes aggregate pleasure or preference-satisfaction; persons may be used as means to that end.

Condemned or rejected: Veritatis Splendor 74–78; Evangelium Vitae (1995) on the ends never justifying the killing of the innocent.

Hold instead: The person is never to be used merely as a means; the end does not justify the means.

The Eucharist is a bare memorial; Christ is present only in the believer's faith; the sacraments confer nothing.

Condemned or rejected: Trent, Session 7 canons 6–8 and Session 13 (1547–1551).

Hold instead: The sacraments confer grace ex opere operato; Christ is truly, really and substantially present in the Eucharist.