I realize you talk about heresy with a certain sense of hyperbole, but I've been reading very serious articles in the last few days — written by very serious sexist pigs with advanced degrees and clerical collars — in which the word heresy is being flung with no irony and no hyperbole.

Many cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church are absolutely losing their shit over their fear that real doctrinal reform looks likely in the upcoming Church Synod.

These men are screaming and crying (almost literally) over the possibility that women might finally achieve small amounts of power and limited equality in Church life and leadership. The cardinals are just as incensed over the possibility that they might be forced to stop excluding LGBTQ people from their institutions and might be otherwise told to stop treating us like shit on the bottoms of their shoes.

So they're screaming "heretic," demanding that the Church's cruel, sexist practices remain the same, and demonizing the few decent men who have climbed to the highest institutional ranks.

(They aren't criticizing Catholic women even though Catholic women are loudly demanding equality, because no Catholic woman has the status or position for her opinion be relevant or even taken seriously. This is a boy's only debate.)

These Princes of the Church aren't actually talking about burning witches, but their histrionics over heresy sure sound like good old-fashioned witch-hunting rhetoric.

And this is just over minor matters. I can't even imagine how these evil men would react to women daring to claim sexual independence or to have more than one husband.