Good willed non-trads and the crime of heresy

[Bonaventure]

Many of us, at one time or another, were Wanderer type conservatives. We only wanted to "stick with the Holy Father," then everything would be okay. We just needed to find the most conservative local parish, the most conservative priest, the Saturday vigil Mass, etc.

The holiest man I think I know is my grandfather. He raised eleven children, married my grandmother nearly sixty years ago, and has been a third order secular franciscan for over fifty years. He never received a formal education, yet he is pretty humble and pious.

Here is what Cardinal de Lugo said on the crime of heresy:

...no-one is simply and absolutely a heretic unless he knowingly withdraws from the Church, for one who withdraws through ignorance remains in such a disposition that he can accept and most firmly believe whatever is sufficiently proposed to him as teaching of the Church, so that just as he who denies [an article of] the Faith through even culpable ignorance does not lose faith or withdraw from faith, so too one who withdraws from the doctrine of the Catholic Church through even culpable ignorance does not lose Catholicity, nor does he withdraw from the Catholic Church, and therefore is not a heretic, because notwithstanding that sin he can still sincerely say that he believes most firmly everything which the Church has proposed and taught. (Translated by John S. Daly.)