CHAPTER III
SINS AGAINST FAITH
THE chief sins against faith are infidelity, heresy, and apostasy.
I. All who have sufficient knowledge of the Gospel are bound to embrace and believe it: " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned." [1] A grave sin, then, is committed by one who rejects the faith when it has been sufficiently made known to him with adequate grounds for believing, and this grave sin is called infidelity. This positive infidelity is distinguished from privative and negative infidelity. One who has the opportunity of knowing the faith, and recognizes the obligation of making inquiries about it, but neglects to do so, commits the sin of privative infidelity. This is also a grave sin if the degree of negligence be grave. One who has no opportunity of learning the faith, or who does not advert to the obligation of making inquiries, is in negative infidelity. This is not sinful, but St Thomas [2] teaches that it is the penalty of sin, inasmuch as if a man were faithful to the light that he has in natural reason, God would take care that he should have an opportunity of knowing the faith even if it were necessary to send him a special messenger, or an angel from heaven, to make the Gospel known to him. If, then, the Gospel is not preached to every man, not God but men are to be blamed for it.
2. Heresy is the rejection by one who has embraced the faith of some portion of revealed truth which is proposed by the Church for our belief. If the rejection is voluntary and accompanied with full knowledge that what is rejected is proposed by the Church as an article of faith, the heresy is formal. Otherwise it will only be material.
It is not heresy, though sinful, to reject what is known to have been revealed by God in a private revelation; private revelations are not proposed by the Church for our belief. Nor is it heresy, but disobedience, to reject what is proposed by the infallible authority of the Church for our acceptance, but which forms no part of divine revelation. One who
