Speaking at the Cathedral Ministry Conference in Chicago, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark said that “my favorite definition of heresy is a refusal to deal with complexity.”

“If you look at the heresies of the Church, the great heresies, they couldn’t accept one thing or the other, and they didn’t want to live with the tension,” he continued. “There is an essential tension and a necessary tension in so much of our life.”

“If you destroy that tension, then the Church, the sacraments, the Word of God becomes something else. It is no longer the Word of God.”