A Pope who fell into heresy:
John XXII and the Beatific Vision of the Just after Death
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
January 28, 2015
[Hieronymus Bosch, The Ascent of the Blessed, Palazzo Ducale (Venice)]
Among the most beautiful and mysterious truths of our faith is the dogma of the Beatific Vision of the souls in Heaven. The Beatific Vision consists in the immediate and intuitive contemplation of God reserved for souls who have passed to the after-life in a state of Grace and have been completely purified of every imperfection. This truth of faith, enunciated in Holy Scripture and confirmed over the centuries by Tradition, is an unreformable dogma of the Catholic Church. The new Catechism restates it in n.1023:”Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live forever with Christ. They are like God forever for “they see Him as He is” (1 John 3,2), “face to face” (1Corinthians 13,12).
At the beginning of the XIV century, a Pope, John XXII, contested this thesis in his ordinary magisterium and fell into heterodoxy. The most fervent Catholics of that time corrected him publically. John XXII – Cardinal Schuster wrote –“has the gravest responsibilities before the tribunal of history (…) since “he offered the entire Church, the humiliating spectacle of the princes, clergy and universities steering the Pontiff onto the right path of Catholic theological tradition, and placing him in the very difficult situation of having to contradict himself.” (Alfredo Idelfonso Schuster o.s.b. Jesus Christ in Ecclesiastical History, Benedictine Publishing House, Rome 1996, pp. 116-117).