The handwriting may not yet be on the walls of the Vatican, but it's surely all over the media. Not just the Catholic or other religious media, but the secular lamestream media. They're having a field day predicting a massive schism which (they say) will divide the mainstream Roman Catholic Church into liberal and "conservative" factions.
"Conservative", in the context of the Church in the 21st century, should not be taken to mean "Traditionalist". The traditionalists have already left, gone to the Society of St. Pius X and beyond. Even the conservative and traditionalist Catholics who have remained within the "new and improved" Church of Pope Francis have become more and more disillusioned with him.
Now commentators on both sides of the Atlantic are talking of the possibility of a schism. That such a thing should even be mooted is by itself evidence of the discord sown by the policies and pronouncements [doubtless well-meaning! Ed.] of the most liberal pope of modern times. Here's a sampling of what's being said.
Andrew Brown writes in The Guardian (30/10) A Catholic church schism under Pope Francis isn’t out of the question. Walt takes responsibility for the emphasis in these excerpts.
Until this weekend, I had largely believed in the liberal narrative which holds that Pope Francis’s reforms of the Catholic church are unstoppable. But the conservative backlash has been so fierce and so far-reaching that for the first time a split looks a real, if distant, possibility.
One leading conservative, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, published over the weekend a homily he had prepared for the traditional Latin mass at which he started ruminating on papal authority. Pope Francis, he said, was the 266th pope, "and history has seen 37 false or antipopes".
Why mention them, except to raise the possibility that Francis might turn out to be the 38th false pope, rather than the 266th real one?
This is a fascinating nudge in the direction of an established strain of conservative...belief: that liberalising popes are not in fact real popes, but imposters, sent by the devil. ...if the pope is always right, as traditionalists would like to believe, and if this particular pope is clearly wrong, as traditionalists also believe, then obviously this pope is not the real pope.
I don’t think that’s what Pell meant, but it was odd and threatening to bring the subject up at all.
Less than a week previously, Ross Douthet penned (or typed) The Pope and the Precipice for the op-ed page of the New York Times. He suggests that:
If [Pope Francis] seems to be choosing the more dangerous path — if he moves to reassign potential critics in the hierarchy, if he seems to be stacking the next synod’s ranks with supporters of a sweeping change — then conservative Catholics will need a clear-eyed understanding of the situation.
They can certainly persist in the belief that God protects the church from self-contradiction. But they might want to consider the possibility that they have a role to play, and that this pope may be preserved from error only if the church itself resists him.
Hmmm... "potential critics in the hierarchy"... like whom? Like Cardinal Raymond Burke, who, as Walt told you on October 16th, is being demoted from head of the Apostolic Signatura to the largely ceremonial role as head of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
Cardinal Burke refuses to go quietly into that good exile. According to “There is a strong sense that the Church is like a ship without a helm”, the prelate told the Spanish publication Vida Nueva that "Many Catholics today have 'a strong sense that the Church is like a ship without a helm'." The report continues:
The American cardinal, who has become a focal point for the concerns of conservative Catholics, told Vida Nueva that many people have spoken to him about their fears for the direction of the Church. "They are feeling a bit seasick because they feel the Church’s ship has lost its bearings," he said.
Cardinal Burke stressed that "I do not wish it to seem like I am speaking out against the Pope." Rather, he said, he wanted to express a concern that many people now feel. The cardinal observed that Pope Francis has roused enthusiasm with his call for Catholics to go out to the peripheries to preach the faith. "But we cannot go to the peripheries empty-handed," he said.
"Faith cannot adapt to culture, but must call it to convert,” Cardinal Burke said. “We are a countercultural movement, not a popular one."
Finally (for the moment) we have commentary from Candida Moss [Really. A professor in the Theology department at Notre Dame. Ed.] who, in A Coming American Schism Over Pope Francis? compared "Bergoglio fever" to the worship of idols.
There have already been murmurings of discontent from US Catholic leaders. Bishop Thomas Tobin stated that he was slightly “disappointed” that the pope had yet to speak out about the abortion. And Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia acknowledged that some more conservative Catholics “generally have not been really happy” with Francis and that the pope will have to find a way “to care for them too.”
For a church that moves at a glacial pace, the murmurings of Bishops like Tobin are lightning fast and boldly subversive. The pro-hierarchy Catholics who criticized American nuns for not supporting the Vatican line are now attacking the hierarchy they once championed. Remarkable stuff, considering that Francis has not changed the Church’s teaching, only its emphasis and tone.
So far, those who feel disaffected by Francis’s papacy have responded by reassuring themselves that nothing has changed. But real divisions start with grumbling and there’s a subtly schismatic quality to those who have called Francis a "questionable example"....
For traditionalists..., "Is the Pope Catholic?" is a real question.
Indeed. What Walt finds significant about Prof. Moss's piece is not her credentials -- I'm not sure she's even Catholic -- but the dissenting voices she quotes. Neither Archbishop Chaput nor Bishop Tobin has ever been accused of being anything other than "mainstream". If their "murmurings" represent the sentiments of more than a few members of the Church hierarchy, a major upheaval could be imminent.
The bishops and priests who the Vatican today calls "schismatic" and those who it calls "popes" may well exchange positions, when God makes the Final Judgement.
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