"suppose a Catholic puts such an emphasis on Christ’s mercy that he takes it to imply that someone in an adulterous second 'marriage' can be absolved and receive Holy Communion despite having no intention of refraining from adulterous acts in the future. This would manifestly be a heresy in the original sense cited by the Dictionary, and in the sense explained by Belloc. For it would both be an obvious departure from two millennia of common doctrine, and would involve a distortion of the notion of mercy, turning it into a kind of license to sin."Indeed, it would be an especially perverse distortion, since it would, in the name of Christ’s teaching on mercy, reverse Christ’s teaching against divorce and remarriage – a teaching that Christ enjoined on his disciples precisely in the name of mercy! For it was, Christ said, only because of their 'hardness of heart' that the Israelites were permitted by Moses to divorce, a permission he explicitly cancelled. So, a permissive attitude toward divorce and remarriage is the very last thing one could justify in the name of Christ’s understanding of mercy."
Edward Feser, "Popes, heresy, and papal heresy," Edward Feser, Saturday, May 25, 2019.
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