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S i d e b a r
What Is Heresy?
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This Rock
Volume 17, Number 2
 February 2006 
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The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth that must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same" (CCC 2089).
To commit heresy, one must refuse to be corrected. A person who is ready to be corrected or who is unaware that what he has been saying is against Church teaching is not a heretic.
A person must be baptized to commit heresy. Movements that have split off from or been influenced by Christianity but do not practice baptism (or do not practice valid baptism) are not heresies but separate religions.
Finally, the doubt or denial involved in heresy must concern a matter that has been revealed by God and solemnly defined by the Church (for example, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, the pope’s infallibility, or the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary).
—Catholic Answers staff
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