Studying any sort of Church history, whether in a basic undergraduate class or Ph.D. work, or even on one's own, and whether one be Catholic or some form of Protestant or whatever, nearly always involves learning about the heresies and conflicts affecting the Church in its first few centuries of existence. Most of the bigger ones are household names: Gnosticism, Donatism, Pelagianism, Marcionism, etc.
Awhile ago, in my Protestant days, I read a book entitled Heresies and How to Avoid Them. In a bout of extreme irony, it was penned by two Anglican clergymen - a note I did not fail to miss even at the time. The book performed the cursory look at each of the major heresies affecting the Church in her first few centuries, and explained avoiding them by presenting some bare basics of the theological doctrines in question, platitudinous exhortations to "balance" and the like, and little urgency concerning the necessity of orthodoxy. The interesting thing, though, about this book is that it even mentions heresy, and is written (at least mostly) by Protestants.
Heresy has become a rather rare term. It certainly has always been an uncomfortable one, I suppose, though nowadays it is even uncomfortable for the orthodox and not just the heterodox. Heresy is a word inadmissable to discussion now that ecumenism rules the day and now that we must focus on what we supposedly have in common rather than what divides us. Instead of orthodox and heterdox, truth and error, revealed dogma and heresy, we have multiple interpretations, different traditions, commonality, and other endlessly boring banalities. We are told and we imbue the mindset that this is all due to a rather remarkable increase in charity and mutual understanding over our more rigid predecessors, those demonically dogmatic folk, that these times are so much more enlightened and different than ages past.
Really? Is that really the case?
Or is it this:
“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us.... And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them...It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less.”
Think about that. Read it again. Really force yourself to consider it.
Interesting, at least to my mind, is who penned the above quote: Henri Cardinal de Lubac, he of the liberal, nouvelle theologie, Springtime-of-Vatican-II. I don't wish to enter a debate about Card. de Lubac, just to simply point out that even he could write such a thing as he witnessed the human element of Holy Mother Church wreak its horrendous havoc in the years following the Council.
Back to the subject at hand: Eternity must always be the reference point, the point of departure and reference, for the spiritual life. The whole point of religion is to take us to the best side of eternity. You and I each have an immortal soul intrinsic to our nature. Death is not the end. We go somewhere when we die. Heaven is not guaranteed. Hell is possible; it is a reality for many souls. Heresy compromises our place in eternity.
The ugly, opposite side of this, of course, is that heresy doesn't matter if everyone goes to Heaven, if all Christian "denominations" are equally or at least relatively equal, or even if Catholicism is even the "best form of Christianity." You do the math.
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