If one were to catalogue heresies marking the whole long story of Christendom the list would seem almost endless. They divide and subdivide, they are on every scale, they vary from the local to the general. Their lives extend from less than a generation to centuries. The best way of understanding the subject is to select a few prominent examples, and by the study of these to understand of what vast import heresy may be.
Such a study is the easier from the fact that our fathers recognized heresy for what it was, gave it in each case a particular name, subjected it to a definition and therefore to limits, and made its analysis the easier by such definition. Unfortunately, in the modern world the habit of such a definition has been lost; the word "heresy" having come to connote something odd and old-fashioned, is no longer applied to cases which are clearly cases of heresy and ought to be treated as such.
For instance, there is abroad today a denial of what theologians call "dominion"-that is the right to own property. It is widely affirmed that laws permitting the private ownership of land and capital are immoral; that the soil of all goods which are productive should be communal and that any system leaving their control to individuals or families is wrong and therefore to be attacked and destroyed.
That doctrine, already very strong among us and increasing in strength and the number of its adherents [*COUGH* DEMOCRATS *COUGH*], we do not call a heresy. We think of it only as a political or economic system, and when we speak of Communism our vocabulary does not suggest anything theological. But this is only because we have forgotten what the word theological means. Communism is as much a heresy as Manichaeism. It is the taking away from the moral scheme by which we have lived of a particular part, the denial of that part and the attempt to replace it by an innovation. The Communist retains much of the Christian scheme- human equality, the right to live, and so forth-he denies a part of it only.
Cheers!
THX for the ping.