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The word heresy is often used improperly, at times recklessly. Some are quick to label as heretical any religious view at variance with their own.
Heresy is a technical theological term. It is the denial of a dogma of the church. A dogma, in turn, is a doctrine that has been infallibly taught, usually by an ecumenical council or by a pope acting as earthly head of the church. (I leave aside here the debatable concept of the ordinary universal magisterium, which applies to teachings that have never been formally defined but which are claimed to have been held and taught by the hierarchical magisterium over a long period of time.)
Two distinctions are in order here. Heresy can be material or formal. Material heresy is the denial of a dogma without the person's being aware of any conflict with an infallible teaching of the church. Formal heresy, on the other hand, involves a knowing and deliberate denial of a dogma.
Many Catholics, including even the most zealous of heresy-hunters, fall into material heresy from time to time. If such Catholics were asked to explain in some theological detail their understanding of the Trinity,...