With 6 Bishops and One Cardinal, is it Really “Schism Rising?”

I certainly admire Michael Matt very much, and almost always agree with him, but I think he may have gotten a bit ahead of himself when he advances, at least to a degree, the idea that the fact that 3 bishops and one cardinal (including some emeriti), as of about 10 days ago, had signed onto the statement of the 3 bishops of Kazakhstan, led by the redoubtable Bishop Athanasius Schneider, which asserted their rejection of Francis’ attempt to gut Catholic moral belief by permitting constant, regularized sacrilege through reception of the Blessed Sacrament by the divorced and civilly remarried.

Whew……..that was a run on.  Anyway, I’m all for Schneider’s statement, I’m all for the reaction, but what I am is doubtful that this will be even the beginning of some kind of generalized reaction among the hierarchy, or even the priesthood, against the apparent errors of the Franciscan porntificate (see what I did there?).

This is not the first such reaction. We’ve had the statement by priests that they would continue to teach the Church’s constant belief regarding marriage. That topped out at under 1000 priests, last time I looked, in spite of the over 400,000 active priests in ministry today.  So, about 0.25% of priests took even this minimal stand.  Likewise, the few hundred priests and theologians who signed the statement led by Dr. Joseph Shaw similarly accusing Francis of promoting heresy, probably constituting much less than one tenth of one percent of all the priests and theologians in the world today.  And there was the Dubia, which only 4 Cardinals out of well nearly 200 endorsed.

There are over 4000 active bishops in the Church today.  The fact that 7 have endorsed this effort, again, indicates a support of less than 0.2% of the hierarchy for this very necessary rebuttal toward the Bishop of Rome.

Look, once again, I personally endorse and support all these efforts, but I have been discouraged by the lack of support they receive from those with formal roles within the ecclesiastical structure.  Just as the entire traditional movement is purported to consist of perhaps 1-1.5 million people worldwide, and thus constitutes barely a tenth of one percent of the supposed 1.2 billion Catholics in the world today (but since the number of actual, active, believing Catholics might be 1/10th that number, we do make up a much larger percentage of the “practical Church”), and the hierarchy has managed to, at most, successfully pigeonhole us off, I think they can just as easily keep ignoring that 0.1% or 0.2% of bishops, priests, theologians, or whatever as troublemakers, miscreants, neo-Pelagians, or whatever.  Our numbers are simply too small, on the human level, to have any kind of impact.  I think it would take something more like 60 or 70,  maybe even 150-200, bishops signing onto the Kazakhstan statement before it would start to really make waves.  Even 200 would not constitute even 5% of the episcopate, and note that this ratio does not include the number of emerati that are around today.

Realistically, traditional Catholics are about the same in number, and about as relevant, humanly speaking, as the “Old Catholics” were at the time of Vatican I.  How much influence did the Old Catholics have on the Church at Vatican I, and how much have they had since (as they have fallen into neo-liberal, pseudo-protestant heresy and even blasphemy, aping the worst of the most extreme progressive sects)?  God forbid the same should happen to traditional Catholics. I don’t believe it will.

I bring all this up not to be a pessimist but to inject some realism into the discussion.  I have promoted every one of these actions – the priest’s statement of adherence to the Church’s moral doctrine, the filial correction, the dubia, and now this statement from Kazakhstan.  I am happy to do so.  Indeed, nothing would make me happier – in a sense – than to wake up tomorrow and read that 500 bishops had signed onto this new “Athanasian Creed.”  At the same time, however, I think we need to be realistic, and not develop unfounded hopes.  In addition, while the Truth and justice, I think, demand such firm correction from bishops and cardinals against any error taught in the Church from any source, I also recognize that the process of exposing the error and excising it from the Church could be incredibly painful – though surely, in every respect, the right, just, and necessary thing to do (like a painful and difficult operation, necessary to save a life, but something no one looks forward to).

I also know we need things to talk about, and that folks need encouragement from time to time.  So I don’t take too much issue with the argument forwarded by Matt, I just wouldn’t stake a great deal of hope on it.