The
history of the Catholic Church is full of all sorts of heresies that
have assailed the truths of the faith. From the earliest days of the
Gnostics and Docetists all the way down to the Jansenists and Quietists
of later centuries, it seems there has never been a shortage of
heretical thought.
But in each age, God has brought
forth great members of the faithful to combat each one. Each one gave their life in
service to Christ and His Church in their own way, either as martyrs,
confessors, or simply as servants to others for the sake of the love of
Jesus.
The following is a list of fifteen of the major
heresies that the Church has faced, and the illustrious persons who stood
against them.
1. Pelagianism and St. Augustine of Hippo
"There is an
opinion that calls for sharp and vehement resistance - I mean the
belief that the power of the human will can of itself, without the help
of God, either achieve perfect righteousness or advance steadily towards
it."1
Pelagianism radically
corrupted the Church's teachings on grace, sin, and the Fall. Its
namesake, the British monk Pelagius (who was startled by some of the words of St. Augustine in his
Confessions), taught that the sin of Adam had no bearing on
subsequent generations; essentially, man was inherently good and
unaffected by the Fall. In practice, this meant that a man could come
to God by his own free will, no grace needed. Many saints fought
against this doctrine - St. David of Wales stands out among them
especially - but it was St. Augustine of Hippo, arguably the greatest of
the Latin Doctors and "the Church's mightiest champion against heresy"
2, who rose to fight against this inherently venomous strand of thought.
Against
Pelagius, St. Augustine upheld the truth that God's grace is entirely
necessary for any movement of ours towards God to occur at all. As he
himself puts it, "We for our part assert that the human will is so
divinely aided towards the doing of righteousness that, besides being
created with the free choice of his will, and besides the teaching which
instructs him how he ought to live, he receives also the Holy Spirit,
through which there arises in his heart a delight in and love of that
supreme and unchangeable Good which is God; and this arises even now,
while he still walks by faith and not by sight."
3
2. Gnosticism and St. Irenaeus of Lyons
"How
can they say that the flesh goes to corruption and has no share in
life, when it is nourished by the Lord's Body and Blood?"4
Gnosticism
was arguably the biggest heresy of the early Church, a Hydra-like
species of varying sects and figureheads that espoused all manner of
profane mysticism, asceticism, and produced many false gospels. Among
its central tenets was that Christ was merely a spiritual being, and not
a flesh-and-blood man, that God the Father was actually a malevolent
Demiurge, and that all matter was inherently evil.
The
chief saint who fought Gnosticism, and dismantled all aspects of it was
St. Irenaeus of Lyons. St. Irenaeus' monumental work,
Adversus Haereses,
is a systematic account and refutation of every Gnostic sect presumably
known by St. Irenaeus at the time. He tenaciously held that Christ was God
in the flesh, for if Christ was merely a phantasm, then He did not
suffer and die at all. His writing is essential for understanding the
heresies that assaulted the Church in the first two centuries of its
existence, as well as being an incredible account of apostolic tradition
up to his time.
3. Arianism and St. Athanasius
"And
thus, taking a body like to ours, because all men were liable to the
corruption of death he surrendered it to death instead of all, and
offered it to the Father..."5
Aside
from the various Gnostic sects that plagued the early Church, it is
Arianism that is arguably the most famous of all Christian heresies. It
struck at the very root and core of Christian teaching, that Jesus was
God Himself in the flesh, and relegated the person of Jesus Christ to
that of a mere created thing. It lives on today in varying forms, from
well-known sects like the Jehovah's Witnesses all the way to the bizarre
world of Apollo Quiloboy; moreover, it still lurks within the sentences
of some modern theologians who ambiguously state that Jesus is "the
Christ" but no more than an exalted man.
St. Athanasius
of Alexandria was the walking cure for this heresy. Stubborn and
unshakeable, I think it not a stretch to say at times that this great
man stood alone against wave after wave of Arian attacks on the truth of
the Christian faith. By emphasizing and stubbornly holding to the
truth of Christ as both God and man, St. Athanasius (along with others
such as St. Hilary of Poitiers) effectively ended the reign of the Arian
heresy within the Church.
4. Nestorianism and St. Cyril of Alexandria
"Truth reveals herself plain to those who love her."6
St.
Cyril of Alexandria was not known for his subtlety when it came to
those who would attack the revealed truth of the Christian faith. When
Nestorius arose on the scene, Pope St. Celestine I sent St. Cyril to
quell the heresies spread by this man. Nestorius' error was essentially
(and might I say, ironically) two-fold: the Blessed Virgin Mary was
not the Mother of God but merely the
Christotokos (meaning
"Christ-bearer") and who also effectively claimed that Christ was
really two persons accidentally united in one body (one divine, one
human).
Against this, St. Cyril defended the unity of
Christ's person as both God and man with a ferocity that I have
personally not witnessed in writing since St. Jerome defended the
perpetual virginity of the Virgin Mary against Helvidius in 383 AD. St.
Cyril's brilliant defense of the person of Christ at the Council of
Ephesus forever set up an impenetrable fortress against all those who
would attack both the Incarnation and the Mother of God.
5. Monothelitism and St. Maximus the Confessor
"I have the faith of the Latins, but the language of the Greeks."7
Monothelitism
declared that Christ had only one will (divine). Much like
Monophysitism which had declared that Christ had only one nature
(divine), Monothelitism is viewed by some as a compromise aimed at
bringing Monophysites back to the Church. But by declaring that Christ
had only a divine will, it amounted to little more than essentially
stating that Jesus was not God in flesh but merely a human controlled by
a divine will - Justin Holcomb of the Reformed website
The Resurgence humorously describes it as "Jesus is controlled by Skynet"
8.
Against
this heresy arose the valiant St. Maximus the Confessor, who is to this
day one of the most revered theological minds of the Christian East.
His defense of the orthodox doctrine that Christ had both a human will
and divine will was met with fearsome resistance - he ended up having
his tongue torn out and his right hand cut off for refusing to acquiesce
to the Monothelite Emperor Constans II, before being exiled and dying
soon after.
6. Albigensianism and St. Dominic Guzman
"...his
heart was well-nigh broken by the ravages of the Albigensian heresy,
and his life was henceforth devoted to the conversion of heretics and
the defence of the faith."9
Gnosticism
again reared its ugly head in the Middle Ages, this time in the form of
what was known as Albigensianism. With its dualist worldview and
inherent dislike for the Church due to corruption within her own ranks
among the clergy, Albigensianism began to attract an incredibly large
following, divided into the "perfect" and "believers." Though often
romanticized nowadays due to the revival of interest in Gnostic ideas
and history within the New Age movement, from my point of view, it was
anything but. In fact, it was alarming in its view of all matter as
evil - suicide by starvation was encouraged among its members, in order
to free the soul from the body. In fact, when a run-of-the-mill
"believer" was given the spiritual baptism whilst seriously ill and/or
dying, and happened to recover somehow, they were "as often as not
smothered or starved to death (
endura) in order to assure [their] salvation,"
10 because only once could this ritual be performed.
Though
the Cistercian order had been enlisted to combat this heresy, its
success was minimal at best. St. Dominic instead founded the Order of
Preachers, because in all practicality "what was needed was a new policy
with missioners travelling in poverty, but well-equipped intellectually
to deal with the errors in a charitable but effective way."
11
The accounts surrounding his battles against the heresy of the Cathari
(as the Albigensians were also known) are incredible - his staying up
all night in discussion with an Albigensian innkeeper in order to save
his soul, the Virgin Mary's arming him with the Holy Rosary, his singing
hymns aloud along the roads where Cathari assassins lay in wait to
murder him (much to their astonishment!), his only book that he carried
being a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew. It is even said of the
Dominicans that "Our Lady took them under her special protection, and
whispered to St. Dominic as he preached."
12
Though
the murder of a papal legate by the Albigensians sparked a massacre in
the form of the Albigensian Crusade, "Dominic himself took no part in
the violence of the crusaders."
13 In the end, due
to his zeal for, love of, and devotion to Christ, "he revived the the
courage of the Catholic troops, led them to victory against overwhelming
numbers, and finally crushed the heresy."
14
7. Latin Averroism and St. Thomas Aquinas
"This then is what we have written to destroy the error mentioned, using the arguments and
teachings of the philosophers themselves, not the documents of faith. If anyone glorying in the
name of false science wishes to say anything in reply to what we have written, let him not speak
in corners nor to boys who cannot judge of such arduous matters, but reply to this in writing, if
he dares. He will find that not only I, who am the least of men, but many others zealous for the
truth, will resist his error and correct his ignorance."15
One
does not exactly hear of the movement known as Latin Averroism too much
these days. But it was indeed a kind of heresy, if you will, a school
of thought that attacked the truth of Christian dogma and belief at its
core. Influenced by the Islamic philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd,
labelled by the Scholastics as "the Commentator" due to his extensive
commentaries on Aristotle), the Averroist Scholastics taught a kind of
double truth. For the Averroist, something that was true in religion
and theology could be at the same time false in philosophy and
practicality. Mixed in with this paradoxical notion of "true and not
true at the same time", the Averroists also held that the world had
always existed, and that there was only one collective soul in humanity.
Against
this school of thought, St. Thomas Aquinas rose like a mighty fortress
to protect Holy Mother Church. Instead of outright dismissing the
thought of Aristotle like some (due to its being associated with this
new movement in thought, as well as some of Aristotle's ideas
themselves), St. Thomas Aquinas answered the Averroists by using
Aristotle himself. With precision and common sense, the Angelic Doctor
pointed out the corruptions in the translations of Aristotle used by the
Arab philosophers, corrected abuses of Aristotle's thought, and
harmonized faith and reason rather than separating them into two spheres
of truth. All in a day's work for one of the greatest minds the Church
has ever known.
8. Calvinism and St. Francis de Sales
"In
fact I thought that as you will receive no other law for your belief
than that interpretation of the Scripture which seems to you the best,
you would hear also the interpretation that I should bring, viz., that
given by the Apostolic Roman Church, which hitherto you have not had
except perverted and quite disfigured and adulterated by the enemy, who
well knew that had you seen it in its purity, never would you have
abandoned it."16
In
the inital aftermath of the Reformation, the varying schools of
Protestantism had begun to take root. But none had shown themselves to
be as staunch in resisting the Catholic faith as the followers of John
Calvin. Though he makes extensive use of the thought of St. Augustine,
he does so with hardly any reference to the rest of the Fathers (even a
cursory glance at an index in a copy in the copy of his magnum opus, the
Institutes of the Christian Religion, shows this), ignoring "all that Catholic foundation on which the Doctor of Grace built."
17
Enter
St. Francis de Sales. Only 27 years old at the time, he was sent into
one of the most anti-Catholic regions of all, the Chablais, wherein
Calvinism had especially fortified itself. To do so was to invite
being despised, rejected, misunderstood, threatened, and turned away.
In many respects, St. Francis' missions to the Calvinists call to mind
the words of St. Paul himself -
"I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my
countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in
the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I
have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in
hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern?" (2 Cor. 11:26-29)
With the Calvinist population staunchly refusing to
listen to his words, St. Francis began to write and distribute pamphlets
on the truth of the Catholic faith. These writings were compiled later
on into one work, probably the greatest apologetic work against
Protestant objections ever penned - Les Controverses. Known as "the gentleman saint", St. Francis' untiring love for souls (especially seen in his other great work, Introduction to the Devout Life),
his knowledge of the faith and history, and his incredible ability to
adapt and endure all manner of obstacles and hardship sent against him
make him arguably the greatest of the Doctors who went forth against the
errors of Calvinism.
9. Monophysitism and Pope St. Leo the Great
"Keep your hearts free, my beloved, from poisonous lies inspired by the devil."18
Monophysitism
was essentially the opposite of the Nestorian heresy mentioned above;
where Nestorius emphasized that in Christ "there was both a human
hypostasis or person and a divine"
19, the
Monophysite heresy declared that Christ had only one nature, that His
humanity was absorbed into His divinity. While the heresy of Nestorius
was largely vanquished twenty years earlier by St. Cyril of Alexandria
at the Council of Ephesus, it was Pope St. Leo the Great who arose to do
battle with the heresy of Eutyches and the Monophysites.
Against
Monophysitism, he taught the truth of the two natures of Christ (human
and divine), saying of Christ that "we could not overcome the author of
sin and death, unless He had taken our nature and made it his own..."
20.
"After three years of unceasing toil, Leo brought about its solemn
condemnation by the Council of Chalcedon, the fathers all signing his
tome, and exclaiming, 'Peter hath spoken by Leo.'"
21
10. Iconoclasm and St. John of Damascus
"Conquest is not my object. I raise a hand that is fighting for the truth - a willing hand under the divine guidance."22
Iconoclasm, the rejection of the use of religious imagery in worship
(icons, statuary, and even extending to the use of candles, incense,
etc.) had a complicated history. In the early centuries, it was to be
found amongst the heretical Paulician and Nestorian camps, but it was
also espoused by some within the Church (including, very early on, St.
Epiphanius of Salamis who "fell into some mistakes on certain occasions,
which proceeded from zeal and simplicity."
23).
Moreover, the heresy of Iconoclasm found much of its influence and fuel
in the rise of Islam, which was fiercely opposed to the use of imagery
in worship.
The chief heretic in this struggle was
Emperor Leo II the Isaurian, who issued an edict forbidding the use of
imagery in religious worship. St. John Damascene, considered the last
of the Greek Fathers and the first of the Scholastics, immediately set
to work defending the use of imagery by Christians since the earliest
centuries of the Church. St. John was arrested by the Emperor, and
(much like St. Maximus the Confessor) had his right hand severed as a
punishment for his resistance to the heresy by way of his writings.
Iconoclasm was eventually condemned by the Second Council of Nicaea in
787, but was resurrected again in the Protestant Reformation.
11. Jansenism and St. Alphonsus de Liguori
"He who does not acquire the love of God will scarcely persevere in the
grace of God, for it is very difficult to renounce sin merely through
fear of chastisement."24
The
errors of Calvinism were not only to be found within the Protestant
realm, but within the Church too did they take root as well. This
Catholic/Calvinist hybrid was founded by the theologian Cornelius
Jansen, who, like Calvin, took the writings of St. Augustine and ran
with them to the most extreme conclusions. A species of ridiculous
moral rigorism and religious fear spread its shadows over the Church.
It discouraged frequent Holy Communion, espoused a form of moral
perfectionism as being a
requirement to even receive the
Eucharist at all. So successful was its influence that it even found
adherents in such brilliant Catholic minds as Blaise Pascal.
Many
great men and women stood firm against the pessimistic theology and
destructive results of Jansenist doctrine, but it was St. Alphonsus de
Liguori's writings and thought which effectively sounded the death-knell
of this particular form of heresy. Against the rigorism and fear
espoused by Jansenism, St. Alphonsus encouraged frequent Holy Communion
as a remedy for sin as long as one was not in a state of
mortal
sin, and developed a finely-tuned moral theology that became the
standard textbook of all Catholic moral theology since. He is to this
day not only revered as a Doctor of the Church and founder of the
Redemptorist order, but as the most excellent of teachers on the subject
of Catholic morality.
12. Brethren of the Free Spirit and Bl. John of Ruysbroeck
"This is that Wayless Being which all fervent interior spirits have
chosen above all things, that dark stillness in which all lovers lose
their way. If we could prepare ourselves through virtue in the ways I have shown, we
would at once strip ourselves of our bodies and flow into the wild
waves of the Sea, from which no creature could ever draw us back."25
The
heresy of the Brethren of the Free Spirit is not one that much heard of
these days, but its influence is more widespread than is commonly
known. Finding its beginnings in the Beguine and Beghard movement in
the 13th and 14th centuries, this heretical movement found major
inspiration in the sermons and writings of Meister Eckhart (though he
himself denied any involvement with the movement). Emphasizing a form
of indifference to salvation (a kind of proto-quietism), union with God
in this life, and attacking the sacraments of the Church, this
mystically-charged heresy began to spread itself all about central
Europe.
Though some of the followers of Meister
Eckhart himself (especially Bl. Henry Suso) either denied involvement
with the Free Spirit movement and/or attempted to correct its teachings
and combatted its influence with that of orthodox mysticism within the
bounds of the Church, it was the greatest of the Flemish mystics, Bl.
John of Ruysbroeck, that led the charge against this particular brand of
mystical heresy.
The life of Bl. John is a
fascinating one to peruse - spending much of his time in prayer and
contemplation in the Sonian Forest near Groenendaal, his concern for the
welfare of souls being led astray by the quietistic Free Spirit
movement was such that he began to engage in open theological combat
with them. His writings are some of the best ever penned on the Holy
Trinity, as well as on the mystical life. Instead of writing
linguistically remote treatises that could never be accessed by the
average person at the time, Bl. John wrote many pamphlets in the
vernacular that defended the faith against heretical attacks by such
Free Spirit figureheads as Bloemardinne. By emphasizing the deepest
aspects of mysticism within Church orthodoxy, he effectively brought
about the end of this movement, though not without being persecuted
intensely by adherents of this heresy.
13. Modernism and Pope St. Pius X
"That We make no delay in this matter is rendered necessary especially by the
fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church's
open enemies; they lie hid, a thing to be deeply deplored and feared, in her
very bosom and heart, and are the more mischievous, the less conspicuously they
appear. We allude, Venerable Brethren, to many who belong to the Catholic laity,
nay, and this is far more lamentable, to the ranks of the priesthood itself,
who, feigning a love for the Church, lacking the firm protection of philosophy
and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by
the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, vaunt themselves as
reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack, assail
all that is most sacred in the work of Christ, not sparing even the person of
the Divine Redeemer, whom, with sacrilegious daring, they reduce to a simple,
mere man."26
Modernism is quite possibly the most
controversial heresy mentioned on this list, because we are indeed,
right up to this very moment, still in the throes of it. As for my own
view, it seems to me to be the most ambiguous and chameleon-like of all
heresies, and it can often be hard to pinpoint exactly where it is
entrenched or where it has already passed through and damaged the
faith.
Modernism seems to have had its beginnings,
somewhat officially, in the 19th century. Figures such as Maurice
Blondel, George Tyrrell, Alfred Loisy, Friedrich von Hugel and many
others are considered major figures within the movement within the
Catholic Church; in Protestantism, I would argue that much of it was to
be found initially in the thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher.
The words of the modernist thinkers themselves is especially startling -
Alfred Loisy wrote that "Christ has even less importance in my religion
than he does in that of
the liberal Protestants: for I attach little importance to the
revelation of God the Father for which they honor Jesus. If I am
anything in religion, it is more pantheist-positivist-humanitarian than
Christian."
27
Its effects are
highly destructive - central to it is the idea that the truths of the
Christian religion must be subjected to Enlightenment-style rationalism,
relativism and secularism. The truths of the ancient faith are viewed
as outmoded, and consequently subjected to rigorous demythologization.
Additionally, the notion of the evolution of dogma effectivelly brought
to bear a devastating assault on the truths of the Christian religion.
The
effects of a modernistic viewpoint are seen to this day in much
theological thought, both Protestant and Catholic, in the writings of
many major thinkers such as Hans Kung, Edward Schillebeeckx, Rudolf Bultmann, Karl Rahner, and a whole
host of others. The status of whether many theologians and writers are
actually modernistic is a hotly-debated topic.
On
the Protestant end of it, it was resisted mightily by the Reformed
theologian Karl Barth, especially in his clarion call against liberal
theology entitled
The Epistle to the Romans. Though beforehand, the
Syllabus of Errors of 1864 and the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII entitled
Providentissimus Deus had begun to defend the Church against Modernism,
it was the great Pope St. Pius X who arose as the greatest defender of
the Church by warning of modernism's threat to the faith.
Calling it the "synthesis of all heresies"
28, Pope St. Pius X released
Lamentaboli Sane (Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernist) and his monumental encyclical
Pascendi Dominici Gregis
against the modernist school of thought. Reading the work is a
frightening wake-up call to the insidious nature of the heresy itself -
unlike the dangerous yet frankly clumsy assaults of earlier heresies
upon the faith such as Arianism and Montanism, Modernism was said to
have infected the Church from the inside. One is reminded of a deadly
illness more than an attack.
Pope St. Pius X also wrote the famed
Oath Against Modernism which was required to be sworn to by clergy and others in the Church,
and sought to warn the faithful before it was too late. Much work was
done to extinguish modernist trends of thought within the Church thanks
to this most venerable and saintly Pope, and to this day, he remains the
most important saint to have ever fought against the poisonous
infections of the movement.
14. Origenism and St. Methodius of Olympus
"Shun not, man, a spiritual hymn, nor
be ill-disposed to listen to it. Death belongs not to it; a story of
salvation is our song."29
Without
a doubt, the Alexandrian theologian Origen was the greatest
mind of the early Church. Many of the great saints of the early Church
were enthralled by his brilliance and his devotion - I would make
mention of St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Nazianzen, and St. John
Cassian especially. Even St. Jerome, who became a bitter opponent of
Origen's thought later on, still held him to be one of the most
admirable and brilliant minds the Church had yet known. St. Francis de
Sales and St. Elizabeth Schonau, writing many centuries later, also
spoke of his great services to the Church.
Nevertheless,
some of the thought of Origen was exceedingly problematic. Being one of
the first theologians proper of the early Church, he was prone to
stumble when going too far deep into the truths of the faith. His
tendency to over-allegorize, his teachings on the pre-existence of
souls, amongst other things, ended up getting him into trouble later on.
But,
in all fairness to Origen, there is a huge difference between the man
and what later came to be known as "Origenism". Origenism took latent
elements in the experimental and speculative thought of Origen and often
ran with it, much in the same manner, I would argue, as such men as
John Calvin and Cornelius Jansen had done with the thought of St.
Augustine.
Several saints began to criticize
Origenism as such, notably St. Jerome and St. Epiphanius of Salamis.
But the first to systematically attack the errors in Origen's thought
was one St. Methodius of Olympus. Himself well-trained in Platonist
philosophy as well as the theology of the Church, St. Methodius
vigorously critiqued the major errors in the thought of the great
Alexandrian, including the eternity of the world and certain teachings
of his on the resurrection. Though a devoted opponent of the thought of
Origen, it is interesting to note that he still recognized his service
to the Church.
The errors of Origenism were finally condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 AD, though
The New Catholic Encyclopedia
promulgated under the pontificate of Pope Pius XI says that "it is not
proved that he incurred the anathema of the Church at the Fifth General
Council."
15. Religious Indifferentism and Pope Pius XI
"For union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to
the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for
in the past they have unhappily left it. To the one true Church of
Christ, we say, which is visible to all, and which is to remain,
according to the will of its Author, exactly the same as He instituted
it."31
Religious
indifferentism is, in essence, a kind of sub-species of modernism. It
undermines the truth of the Catholic Church as the one true Church
founded by Christ, and essentially states that it is a matter of
indifference which church one belongs to. In many ways, it amounts to what might be termed "pan-Christianity".
Against this notion, Pope Pius XI wrote the encyclical entitled
Mortalium Animos,
which again underlined that the Catholic Church was the Ark of
Salvation, and attacked the idea of a kind of watered-down pan-Christian
collective of churches. All that it amounts to, in essence, is a unity
based upon false ecumenism, a kind of "whatever" pseudo-Christianity.
This religious indifferentism essentially espouses the notion that
"Controversies... and longstanding
differences of opinion which keep asunder till the present day the
members of the Christian family, must be entirely put aside, and
from the remaining doctrines a common form of faith drawn up and
proposed for belief, and in the profession of which all may not only
know but feel that they are brothers."
32
Though many had condemned religious indifferentism beforehand (Pope Leo
XIII, Pope Gregory XVI, Pope Benedict XV, as well as the 1864
Syllabus of Errors),
it was Pope Pius XI who decisively defended the Church against it,
quoting the early Church Father Lactantius: "The Catholic Church is
alone in keeping the true worship. This is the
fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God: if any
man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to
the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate
wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned, which will be lost
and entirely destroyed, unless their interests are carefully and
assiduously kept in mind."
33
1 -
The Spirit and the Letter, IV
2 -
Butler's Lives of the Saints, "St. Augustine of Hippo", 1894 edition
3 -
The Spirit and the Letter, V
4 -
Against the Heresies, IV:18:5
5 -
On the Incarnation, VIII
6 -
Second Letter to Succensus, I
7 - From
here.
8 - From
here.
9 -
Butler's Lives of the Saints, "St. Dominic", 1894 edition
10 - Rev. John Laux,
Church History, IV:1
11 - David Farmer,
Oxford Dictionary of Saints, "Dominic", pg. 146
12 -
Butler's Lives of the Saints, "St. Dominic", 1894 edition
13 - David Farmer,
Oxford Dictionary of Saints, "Dominic", pg. 146
14 - ibid.
15 -
De Unitate Intellectus Contra Averroistas, 124
16 -
The Catholic Controversy, "Author's General Introduction"
17 - William Barry,
The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Calvinism"
18 - "Sermon 28", VI
19 -
The New Catholic Dictionary, "Monophysites and Monophysitism"
20 -
Ep. xxviii, II
21 -
Butler's Lives of the Saints, "St. Leo the Great", 1894 edition
22 -
On Holy Images, I
23 -
Butler's Lives of the Saints, "St. Epiphanius of Salamis", 1894 edition
24 - From
here.
25 -
The Spiritual Espousals, found
here.
26 -
Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 2
27 - Memoires II, pg. 397
28 -
Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 39
29 -
Concerning Free Will
30 -
The New Catholic Encyclopedia, "Origenism"
31 -
Mortalium Animos, 10
32 - ibid., 7
33 - Lactantius,
Divine Institutes, IV:30:11-12,
cf. Pope Pius XI,
Mortalium Animos, 11
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