Does a heresy have to be condemned by the Church before a layman can call something heresy?
A viewer asks whether a heresy has to be condemned by pastors or Church authorities before a layman is entitled to call a teaching heresy.
Answer
In a way, yes, but you have to distinguish material heresy from formal heresy. Formal heresy is when the Church officially declares that a given statement is heretical, so that anyone who teaches it is a heretic. To call a person a formal heretic requires the Church's judgment, because he must know what he is saying, must persist after warnings, and must be sane; even Galileo was never convicted of formal heresy, only of being vehemently suspect of it, and that took the Church seventeen years of caution. But a layman can and must still judge, to protect himself: using his intellect, Scripture, tradition, and especially the catechism, he can recognize that a teaching is materially heretical, that is, the material being taught is contrary to what the Church has always held. What he cannot do is pronounce the person a formal heretic. So the layman may say, that teaching is a material heresy, I know that much, but he cannot declare the man a heretic; that is reserved to the Church.