Schism - chances in the next 10 years?

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FiveLinden

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I am sure there will continue to be a Church teaching what most CAF members believe. But I have been wondering about the possibility of formal splits within the Church as a result of the battles now apparently being wages between bishops and cardinals over the handling of the abuse crisis.

People are saying things about each other and their motivations that would tear most human institutions apart. Now I know that is not the way most CAFers see the Church but it has indeed been torn apart in the past and its origins in the first centuries CE were hugely fractious.

The need for apostolic succession is dealt with by having a single bishop in your leadership.

So is schism on a big scale highly likely, somewhat likely or not likely at all in the next decade? By ‘big scale’ I don’t mean something small like the SSPX but a split-off taking millions of Church members with it.
 
We have little schisms all the time, where some little local group decides to go make their own “faith community”, but you said that’s not what you were talking about.

I think the only things that would cause a big schism would be women’s ordination, allowing gays to get married in the Church, or suddenly deciding abortion is OK. I am 99.9 percent sure that the the last thing (abortion being OK) is never going to happen, and over 90 percent sure that neither women’s ordination nor gay marriage is going to be allowed within the next 10 years.

Just my 2 cents.
 
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I don’t see it. I don’t see bishops disagreeing to the point where they would try to claim that they are the true church, and split off.
 
thistle said:
Let’s hope SSPX agrees with you.
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I’m not going to post my thoughts about SSPX and schism here because the last time I did that on this forum the mods removed the post, but the SSPX has been kind of on their own little track for years. It’s not something that would be triggered by the abuse crisis in the next 10 years.

The thing about the abuse crisis and the handling thereof is that the vast majority of bishops involved with it did whatever they did in the past and now for the most part are either dead, retired, or close to retirement (or death). We also had bishops in the past (now they’re all pretty much dead) who did other very questionable things not involving the abuse crisis, such as financial irregularities or having mistresses. Clerics didn’t like what they were doing, but didn’t go schisming over it.

Clergy, especially those who are bishops or aspiring bishops, don’t have much motivation to schism because first of all, if they bought into the Church enough to become priests and get on the path to being a bishop, they likely believe in the unity of the Church and don’t want to go be the next Martin Luther. Second, they realize that in this day and age, most of the faithful are not likely to rise up en masse and follow some schismatic priest - more likely any faithful who didn’t like the Catholic church would just quit going to church altogether, or join one of the dozens of Protestant or non-denominational churches already available. The Catholics who actually bother to go to Catholic church want a big, stable, Catholic Church. Otherwise they would have already left, not sat around and waited for a bishop to lead a schism. So any clergy leading a schism would basically be wrecking their own career path for very little benefit.

Permitting more traditional practices within the Church probably already kept some devout Catholics from going off with the SSPX. Those traditionalists who stayed in the Church don’t want to schism because they see themselves as the future of the Church (because they ordain a lot more priests per capita) and also see themselves as saving Christ’s church from modernists.

All these reasons are why I think the only thing that would cause a schism would be some giant shift in a major moral teaching.
 
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I don’t see much sign of schism among the bishops. They all say sex abuse is bad. Probably all say the Church’s response should have better.

Some are annoyed that this Pope doesn’t affirm doctrine as much as they want. But he’s the best pope in office, at the moment.

There is a Solo Traditio movement now, private interpretation of Tradition, fueled by the internet. But this movement, like Call to Action, only draws individuals away from the Catholic Faith, it doesn’t lead to part of the Church splitting off as a new church.

The SSPX is still there, along with the American Catholic Church, and lots of spinoffs from the Old Catholic movements. So what? Does SSPX get any priests coming over from Rome since 1980, let alone bishops?
 
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While I could imagine some small scale schisms that come out of bishops and cardinals fighting because the sex abuse scandal, the basis of the schism would have to be someone other than the scandal itself.

The likelihood of a schism where a bishop says, “I’m separating from you because I am against sex abuse and the rest of you aren’t,” doesn’t make a lot of sense.

It would have to be more like, “The sex abuse scandal is the bad fruit of <<currently permitted Church practice(s) of which bishop disapproves>> therefore my people and I will separate from you.”
 
In addition to what @Tis_Bearself said I worry about some stuff I heard about happening while I was in Germany. Several of the German Bishops were trying to change millennia old discipline surrounding the Eucharist. The Bishop of Paterborn for example just up and decided that Protestants who were married to Catholics could just… up and take communion at his church.

AND this happened immediately after the Pope asked that the Bishops of Germany reconsider their proposal to do just that.

So… Yeah we shall see but that doesn’t look good, and I hope that situation doesn’t blow up.
 
chessnerd321 said:
The Bishop of Paterborn for example just up and decided that Protestants who were married to Catholics could just… up and take communion at his church.
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So has there been a mad rush of German Protestants to the Catholic Communion rail?

My guess is, given the state of organized religion in most of Germany in general, this allowance was met with a collective yawn, but I could be wrong.
 
Perhaps it has, and that’s it’s own, potentially even more severe problem.

My point meaning in all of that, I suppose, is that I do believe there’s some bishops willing to defy the Holy Father. I just hope it doesn’t go far. Plenty of bishops go wonky. I’m not sure how people are so confident that one of them, or a group of them, won’t catch on one of these days.
 
Yes, you confirmed what I suspected was probably going on. It seems like the way Communion is currently distributed, pretty much anybody who knows how to go through the proper motions can walk up and receive Communion. If nobody tells the priest “hey, that person is a Protestant” then the priest would never even know.
 
Thank you. Very interesting replies.

For my 2 cents worth, looking in from outside I have always wondered why the Church did not/has not splintered over contraception. I wonder this because 1) I have never been able to understand the objection (happy to explain this in another thread, please don’t try to help me here!) and see evidence of this in the different views of other Christian Churches. 2) There are clearly many, many people in the Church including those in leadership positions who do not accept the teaching, or do not accept it fully.

I was also impressed by the recent survey showing a significant split in opinion about whether it is possible and whether it is in any case a good idea to ordain women deacons. Seems to me to be the sort of thing that might fracture the Church, and possibly lead to further fracturing around women priests.

And finally I have been struck by the ferocity of the attacks by some bishops and Cardinals on others. I know these are relatively polite by, say, the standards of US politics, but their meaning s clear. How can these people unite to govern the Church while saying such things? (Yes I have been looking at Church Militant again. Mea culpa).
 
It seems that you think diversity of thought always must lead to a schism. As a US citizen as well as a Catholic, that seems like an odd way to think.
Schisms are like civil wars. They’re bad things, to be avoided if at all possible.
Families can still be a family even if Uncle Charlie doesn’t agree with Cousin Susie on everything.
 
FiveLinden said:
why the Church did not/has not splintered over contraception
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I always figured it’s because so many just silently do what they want. But they’re afraid to leave because they know that they can’t find what they love about the Church anywhere else.
 
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chessnerd321 said:
But they’re afraid to leave
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Speaking as a sinner who never left the Church through years of nonpracticing and sinning (although contraception wasn’t a big issue for me, other stuff was), I’m not sure why you characterize this as “afraid to leave” rather than “don’t WANT to leave just because they are having some doubt about a moral teaching that is not a major dogma of the Church”.

There is no requirement that if you disagree with the Church or have a doubt, you need to leave. Many people would rather hang around, or at least hang around on the fringes, and work on resolving their doubt or just file it away and live their lives the best they can. This is fine and is preferable to them leaving. It should not be characterized as stemming from fear in every case. There may be a percentage of people who fear they will go to Hell if they leave, but there are also people who stay out of genuine love for Jesus and his Church, and perhaps even feel - whether misguided or not - that they could change things for the better from within if they stay.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Schisms are like civil wars. They’re bad things, to be avoided if at all possible.
Families can still be a family even if Uncle Charlie doesn’t agree with Cousin Susie on everything.
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Schisms are not inherently good or bad.
There’s almost an obsession in recent years with Unity. Mainline denominations allow, even brag about having a “big tent”. They welcome prolifers over here, with pro choice over there, a Place for Everyone at the Table. Some of us love X, others of us hate X, but we come Together to worship. The more Diversity the better.

Schisms are sad, but they are not bad. We follow One who did not come to unite but to divide. Gnosticism was (is) perhaps the most dangerous heresy. It didn’t exactly refute any religion, it absorbed them. It almost absorbed Christianity, but the Church had the magisterium, with absolutes of right and wrong, true and false.

As long as the Church is faithful to the Truth, there will be schisms. It means there is still something solid here, to schism against.
 
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commenter said:
Schisms are not inherently good or bad.
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I disagree. I think when it comes to the Church, we’re supposed to be all one body in Jesus Christ. This is repeated over and over again in Scripture, Catechism, and every other teaching. Unity is what we seek, and when we reach Heaven, we’ll have attained it.

It doesn’t mean that we can’t ever have an original thought or that one group of Catholics can’t have a traditional Mass with chant while another group have a contemporary Mass with guitars, but it does mean that schisms are bad.
 
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Was it bad when the Continuum split off - schismed - from mainline Anglicanism because it abandoned Tradition on morality of homosexual actions and abortion, ordination of women, authority of scriptures, etc?

We all agree it was sad. A tragic necessity I would say.
 
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It was bad when Anglicanism schismed off from the RC Church in the first place. The fact that the Protestant denominations then just keep schisming among themselves is just a continuation of the bad.

it’s like the person who gets a divorce and then goes on to remarry and divorce three more times. Once you’ve schismed, you are less likely to bother to make anything work in the future.

It truly doesn’t matter what Anglicans do unless/ until they come and reunify with the church from which they departed in the first place, the Catholic Church.
 
It can be argued that the RCC created the Anglican schism when it refused.to expand the tent to include Anglicanism. The RCC also created the Lutheran schism the same way.

If we had compromised on doctrine, we could gave preserved unity. Allowing the schusm was the lesser evil. Where dogmas are preserved there will likely always be schisms.
 
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