The Joy of Schism

'Once again, one hears charges of schism bandied about, over and over. What is the simple Catholic to do?' Mr Coulombe looks at the history of schism and the effects accusations of it have today.

From Crisis

By Charles Coulombe, STM, KSS

Throughout Church history, Christians have frequently been happy to expel each other from the Church. That is no less true today, but what is the proper attitude of the Christian when it comes to schism?

With the excommunication of Archbishop Viganò, the rumors of further crackdowns against the Traditional Mass, the renewed accusations against Traditionalists of being “schismatically-minded,” and, further afield, the rift between Constantinople and Moscow, the word “schism” seems to be extremely popular today. Folk who have no authority to do so happily excommunicate each other—and some take delight in such treatment, as a sort of badge of honor (depending upon who has supposedly expelled them from the Church). There is—and we shall see, has always been—a certain sick joy on either side of schism.

One of the first grounds for schism can be seen as early as A.D. 200, when the antipope Novatian intruded himself into the Roman See because the immediate successor of Pope Fabian, Cornelius I, allowed the lapsi—those who had succumbed to pagan blandishments—to return to the Communion of the Church with minimal penances. The first antipope, Novatian did raise some really important questions; and, for a time, no less than St. Cyprian of Carthage took a similar view. From that day to this, one cause of schism has been a perception that the Church hierarchy—including the pope—are simply not strict enough with regard to erring Catholics; and history would repeat itself with the Donatists and the Luciferians.

This tendency generally arises after a period of persecution of the Church. When things settle down a bit, some of those who have suffered the most for the Church deeply resent those who did not, or even temporarily left. There is a huge temptation to think about one’s own sacrifices in difficult times and become resentful that some should “skate.” It is, in a sense, a bit like the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. 

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Many centuries later, the “Petite Église” would emerge in France when Pius VII signed the concordat with Napoleon. By the stroke of a papal pen, ecclesiastical privileges (including pontifical rulership of Avignon and environs) that faithful laity had died for were signed away. This did not sit well with a number of survivors of revolutionary violence. A number of laity, a handful of priests, and a trio of bishops refused to accept it—and were rewarded with heavy legal and ecclesiastical penalties by Church and State. 

As the early 19th century wore on, the bishops and then the priests died out; but the Petite Église has continued here and there as an entirely lay organization. They gather to read the Missal together; leaders of each community baptize newborns, and as they grow, they are prepared for first (spiritual) communion—thus anticipating the Covid Communion theology so popular among many bishops by almost two centuries. But under Pius XII, the elaborate renunciations required from members of the PE to rejoin the Church were done away with; confession and communion were henceforth deemed sufficient to reconcile one. 

Vatican I was the occasion of an important schism—that of the Old Catholics. The foundation was laid by a group of Dutch clergy and laity (the chapter of the canons of the Archdiocese of Utrecht) who refused to accept the condemnation of Jansenism. Receiving the Apostolic Succession from a Papal Nuncio returning to Europe in 1723 from the Near East, they continued in isolation in 1870. After rejecting the definition of Papal Infallibility, small groups of Germans, Austrians, and Swiss came to the Dutch, and the result was the formation of what was called the Old Catholic Church. 

The name was held to be a sign of their rejection of the supposed innovations of Vatican I. But what was supposed to be a conservative body rapidly abandoned clerical celibacy, the use of Latin in the Mass, the definitions of the Council of Trent, and the Filioque in the Creed. Moreover, where they saw opportunities to cause difficulties for the Catholic Church, they happily bestowed episcopal orders.

One place the Old Catholics intervened was in the United States. Archbishop John Ireland, late-19th-century bishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, has the rare distinction of having sparked not one but two schisms in the United States. Through his brusque insistence on what he considered the proper American manner of doing things, he was able to drive a great many Ruthenian Byzantine Catholics into the hands of the Orthodox. He was also able to do the same with a great many Latin-Rite Poles, whose priest-leader Francis Hodur would be consecrated a bishop by the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht. In recent years, the Polish National Catholic Church has broken with Utrecht since the majority of Old Catholics accepted the ordination of women. A similar situation erupted with the French-Canadians in the 1920s in New England; fortunately, the timely intervention of stigmatic “Little Rose” Ferron brought about a schism-free solution.

The schism of the 1300s broke out when, after a prolonged stay in Avignon, the pope returned to Rome.  He shortly thereafter died. The Roman mob demanded a Roman pope. They got one, but the French cardinals declared that they had been forced into voting for a candidate they did not want. They fled back to Avignon, held another conclave, and elected an antipope. The two pontiffs excommunicated each other. 

This sorry spectacle went on for decades. At last, a group of cardinals gathered at Pisa, called upon both popes to resign, and elected a third. The other two refused, and now there was a trio of popes. This would not end until—as his predecessor, Otto the Great, had tired of the pornocracy—the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund convened the Council of Constance, deposed the incumbents, and arranged for the election of a single pontiff in 1415.

The granddaddy of all schisms, of course, is that of 1054. Now, it is—like all schisms—far more complex than normally painted. To begin with, it was actually settled (with a brief respite in 1275) in 1438, at the Council of Florence. After the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 and the death of the heroic last Eastern Emperor to date, Bl. Constantine XI, the triumphant sultan desired to renew the break. To that end, he appointed Gennadius II as Patriarch of Constantinople. An interesting man, Gennadius was a Thomist, but he differed with St. Thomas Aquinas in rejecting the papacy and accepting the Immaculate Conception (which would become anathema to most Eastern Orthodox after Rome defined it in 1854). As bade by his Turkish master, he accordingly ended the union in 1462.

This schism has indeed become a foundational fact in the Christian world. But while certainly deeply held on both sides, it has several odd factual holes in it—not least being the validity of an act ordered by a Muslim sultan. When Bl. Pius IX convoked Vatican I in 1870, he invited the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs to attend as full participants, without any preexisting conditions. Although they all refused, it is obvious that he at least did not think much of the legal status of the schism. Such as it is, in any case, the schism rested legally on the mutual excommunications between pope and patriarch in 1054—which were mutually lifted 910 years later by pope and patriarch at the Mount of Olives. 

Of course, those centuries of separation left their mark upon both sides. It has been joked that Catholics accept any amount of heresy and no schism, while Orthodox will take any amount of schism but no heresy. Similarly, it has been observed that in the West, Authority ate up Tradition; and in the East, Tradition ate up Authority. It is almost as though the two sides were intended to act in creative tension, correcting each other’s worst native impulses—breathing with two lungs in John Paul II’s memorable phrase. In any case, at the moment, both sides are living down to each other’s worst stereotypes of the other, with an apparently autocratic pope on one side and the seemingly insoluble break between Constantinople and Moscow on the other.

Our Eastern brethren aside, we Catholics since Vatican II have been rife with charges and countercharges of schism. The SSPX has been charged with it by many since 1976; prior to the 1985 indult, this writer remembers when those who simply wished for the Traditional Mass would be accused by “conservatives” of being “schismatically-minded.” The Sedevacantists charged that those who recognized Paul VI and his successors as popes were themselves outside the Church. Some traditional folk charged that the Novus Ordo might be valid but not licit. And on. And on. And on.

John Paul II brought in some sanity in this area, and Benedict XVI much more. But, as is too well known, the current pontificate has ripped all of these wounds wide open. Catholic commentators let fly at each other, and the excommunication of Archbishop Viganò in the face of this pope’s constant chatter about mercy and openness is jarring. Once again, one hears charges of schism bandied about, over and over. What is the simple Catholic to do?
To begin with, either or both sides of a schism often demonstrate some of the worst sides of human nature. Our desire to be better than anyone else, to be correct, to be superior to the unwashed is fully on display, time after time. Uncaring, unpastoral authority clashing with ignorant and proud rebellion—both assured of their own sweet perfection, both so sure they are right—is an ugly picture history shows up to us time after time. To avoid being part of this ugly patter, there are several things we can do.

The first is to concentrate on our own holiness and prayer life. Are we devoted to Our Lord and Our Lady? Do we love our fellow man as ourselves, and God above all things? Do we frequent the Sacraments? Do we practice the spiritual and temporal works of mercy? What about Adoration and the Rosary? What part does the Sacred Heart have in our lives? In a word, is our own house in order? Before we hunt the mote in our neighbor’s eye, we must look to our own.

Presumably, we believe that our position is right, and we may well be. But St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Colette backed an antipope, and who among us shall claim to be holier than they? Let us remember that being Catholic is not a matter of party loyalty, nor of labels, but of Baptism and belief. If someone can read all four creeds and accept them at face value, he is Catholic, regardless of what differences I may have with him.

Let us be reluctant to call each other names—especially since few of us have any authority to do so. If we know someone who is seeking the Sacraments from a priest whom we do not believe to be in the Church’s good graces, it is one thing to share our concerns. But canon law is quite clear that we ourselves have no ultimate right to declare them outside the Church for their choices. Paragraph 2 of Canon 1335 declares: 

If a censure prohibits the celebration of the sacraments or sacramentals or the performing of acts of the power of governance, the prohibition is suspended whenever this is necessary to provide for the faithful who are in danger of death. If a latae sententiae censure has not been declared, the prohibition is also suspended whenever one of the faithful requests a sacrament or sacramental or an act of the power of governance; for any just reason it is lawful to make such a request [emphasis added].

If the priest is definitely outside of the Church, canon 844 has something interesting to say in its paragraph 2: 

Whenever necessity requires it or true spiritual advantage suggests it, and provided that danger of error or of indifferentism is avoided, the Christian faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister are permitted to receive the sacraments of penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid.

By citing these laws, I do not mean to say that it does not matter from whence we receive the Sacraments; I do mean to say that I have no right to condemn as schismatic the prudential judgments of others who are faced with the same insane situations that face us all. Suspending judgment, attempting to offer comfort rather than condemnation, cultivating my own holiness—these are likelier to keep me sane and help me reach Heaven than shall screeching “schism” like a howler monkey. I suspect that I am not the only one for whom this may be true.