Will Pope Francis Stand Against Catholic Schism?

Courtesy of Catholic News Service

The Vatican rejects, for now, the radical reshaping of Catholic moral teaching and practice demanded by the German Synodal Path, but who will break faith first?

August 24, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

I have often said that in the Universe of Catholic life, I write from the “Oort Cloud,” that vast field of the Solar System’s castoff debris — asteroids, comets, and meteors — far out beyond the orbit of Pluto. It was named in 1950 for the astronomer who discovered it, J. H. Oort of Leiden, Holland. It’s an especially cold and exiled place from which to write, but it also offers a panoramic view of things, a perspective not always available to those entangled in the culture wars of Earth.

On August 11, 2021, I published “A House Divided: Cancel Culture and the Latin Mass.” Pope Francis had seriously wounded Traditional Catholics by imposing severe restrictions on offering the Traditional Latin Mass that had grown in popular preference among conservative Catholics in recent years. Its popularity, in part at least, is a reaction to the encroaching accommodations to secular culture that have invaded Catholicism.

For conservative and traditional Catholics, the timing of the Pope’s imposed restrictions could not have been worse. For the previous two years in America and across the Western World, Covid-19 brought invasive government restrictions on offering any Mass at all. Even when courts declared some restrictions unconstitutional, a number of Catholic bishops re-imposed the same restrictions. This gave rise to a concern about the proper and expected role of bishops, a concern given voice in my post, “The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass.”

The last two years have been a rough time for faithful Catholics and more so for priests who openly support Catholic fidelity. The appointment of progressive bishops has created an appearance of forced compliance with their ideology among priests. The sexual abuse crisis opened pathways for bishops to discipline and even remove priests for virtually any reason or none at all. This gave rise to an initiative of the laity who in response in the U.S. created the “Coalition for Canceled Priests.”

Nowhere in Catholic life, however, has the modern wave of cancel culture been more visible or vocal than in Germany. For many months, some of the bishops of Germany have responded to the Pope’s emphasis on “synodality,” a term from the Greek meaning an ecclesiastical assembly, to promote a ‘woke’ agenda.

The agenda of the German Synodal Path includes a radical revision of Catholic moral teaching and sacramental life. It demands the ordination of women priests, a reconsideration of priestly celibacy, an accommodation for a married priesthood, sacramental recognition for same-sex unions, and the promotion of homosexuality and LGBTQ+ lifestyles as normative expressions of human sexuality.

It is interesting that more recently in the United States, parents have sought to limit some of these same influences in the education and indoctrination of children. While the bishops of Germany promote their demanded revisions as expressions of the “Census Fidelium,” the sense of the faithful, parents in America have been mobilizing to vote the proponents of LGBTQ+ education out of office on public school boards across the land.

On July 21, 2022, in a surprising and hopeful gesture of support for Catholic unity, Pope Francis took a step to rein in the fractious “German Synodal Way” that for the last year has moved ever closer to the precipice of Catholic schism. The Vatican Declaration, which was unsigned, stated that the German Synodal Path has no authority to oblige bishops or the faithful to assume new ways of governing or new approaches to doctrine or morals. This clarification was made “in order to protect the freedom of the people of God and the exercise of episcopal ministry.”

Courtesy of Catholic News Service

George Cardinal Pell and a Patron Saint for Germany

It feels ironic beyond measure that I first decided to write this post on August 9, 2022 the day the Church remembers Edith Stein, better known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. On the day before deciding to write this, I asked our editor to republish on social media a post I wrote several years ago: “Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz.”

To write this current post, as I now feel I must, I also need an extended excerpt from one that I wrote many months ago entitled, “Benedict XVI Faced the Cruelty of a German Inquisition.” The following excerpt is a necessary prequel for this post:

“While reading from Cardinal George Pell’s book, Prison Journal Volume 2, Cardinal Pell wrote candidly about his concerns for the direction of the Church in Germany. In an entry from his prison cell on August 9, 2019, he wrote of Edith Stein, now known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross who, like St. Maximilian Kolbe a year earlier, was murdered in Auschwitz by the Nazi regime in 1942.

“Cardinal Pell wrote that Edith Stein was German by birth, and he asked readers to pray for her intercession for the Catholic Church in Germany. He quoted German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a position once held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger:

“‘The Catholic Church in Germany is going down. Leaders there are not aware of the real problems. They are self-centered and concerned primarily with sexual morality, celibacy, and women priests. They do not speak about God, Jesus Christ, grace, the Sacraments, faith, hope, or love.’ (Prison Journal 2, p.75)

“Later in the book, Cardinal Pell wrote about Vatican concerns for the growing possibility of a German Catholic schism over the very issues identified by Cardinal Müller. If such a progressive schism were to occur, it would sweep much of the European Union where (with the exception of Poland) Mass attendance is at its historically lowest point. Cardinal Pell cited a September 17, 2019 Catholic Culture article by Phillip Lawler, ‘Who Benefits from All This Talk of Schism?’

Lawler argues that the prospect of a schism is remote, but becoming less so. He cited that Pope Francis has spoken calmly about such a prospect saying that he is not frightened by it, something that Lawler found to be frightening in and of itself. Cardinal Pell added that The New York Times has been writing about the prospect of a German Catholic schism by ‘the John Paul and Benedict followers in the United States.’ Cardinal Pell wrote that Lawler’s diagnosis is correct. Cardinal Pell added:

“‘The most aggressive online defenders of Pope Francis realize they cannot engineer the radical changes they want without precipitating a split in the Church. So they want orthodox Catholics to break away first, leaving progressives free to enact their own revolutionary agenda.’

“In light of this, it comes as no surprise that some progressive U.S. bishops have pushed Pope Francis into divisive restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass and other traditional expressions of the faith. These efforts, and German Catholic steps taken recently to demean Pope Benedict, a stalwart of Catholic orthodoxy, may well be designed to encourage a conservative split from the Church. Embracing and promoting fidelity at this juncture has never been more urgent.

“Faithful Catholics must never accede to the desired end that German progressives seek. Handing the Church over to them would leave ‘Satan at the Last Supper’ while Jesus is removed from the room.”

(End of excerpt)

Courtesy Catholic News Service

Raymond Cardinal Burke Weighs In

Not everyone among German Catholics is in support of this path. One bold German Catholic disseminated my post above to many others in Germany, including many priests. It is interesting that at the same time this began to happen, Facebook started actively suppressing my blog, Beyond These Stone Walls to limit its being shared among various Catholic groups with a presence there to promote Catholic fidelity and unity.

In a May, 2022 interview, American Cardinal Raymond Burke spoke strongly about the direction of the Synodal Path being promoted by some of the German bishops who in the process seek to abandon traditional Catholic doctrine. Cardinal Burke responded boldly:

“The bishops doing this are abandoning the flock and they are showing themselves to be not shepherds, but hirelings who are trying to accommodate the Church’s teaching to the ways of this world, a secular way of thinking, a godless way of thinking. To hold what they are saying regarding unnatural sins against the 6th and 9th Commandments is heretical. They are leading people, to their great harm, into heresy at a time when the world needs the Church to proclaim her teaching with clarity and courage.

“[The Holy Father] must ask [the German bishops] to renounce these heresies and positions against the sound discipline of the Church. If they will not renounce their errors and correct themselves, then he would have to remove them from office. This is the situation in which we’ve arrived.”

— Statement of Raymond Cardinal Burke

In April of 2022, an open letter signed by six cardinals, 19 archbishops and 78 bishops expressed alarm over “the confusion that the Synodal Path has already caused and continues to cause, and the potential for schism that will inevitably result. In its effect the Synodal Path displays more submission and obedience to the world than to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.” Among the signatories of this letter were Joseph Cardinal Zen, George Cardinal Pell, Raymond Cardinal Burke, Francis Cardinal Arinze, and Wilfred Cardinal Napier. It should be noted that the first two names on this short list of cardinals are now considered by many to be white martyrs.

Bishop Georg Bätzing, second from left, is President of the German Catholic Bishops conference, pictured here at the opening meeting of the German Synodal Way.

The German Bishops Respond

The response of the German bishops has been largely voiced by one person, Bishop Georg Bätzing, an appointee of Pope Francis who became President of the German Bishops Conference in 2016. He showed no sign of backing down from the path he and the Synod have been on. Many found his response to be arrogant and alarming:

“Yes, the pope disappoints me. Even in the Catholic Church, even with all the right that would be his, he is not the one who could turn the Church from its head to its feet which is what we would like … He is initiating a process where all these questions are put on the table.”

Bishop Bätzing went on to describe the matter of women’s ordination as “like an iceberg,” meaning that there is more substance and clamor for it below the surface than can be seen from above. He said that he is moved by the “sensus fidelium” on this, but the sensus fidelium — the sense of the faithful — must be universal and not merely a fractious German consideration. On the day I am typing this, this blog had 850 visits from Germany alone. I wonder if Bishop Bätzing’s measure of the sensus fidelium includes them.

The state of the Church in Germany — where Catholic identity and Mass attendance are at their lowest points in history — does not reflect Catholicism in the rest of the world. It is the height of hubris to suggest that the political positions of Germany should take precedence and be imposed upon the faithful in Poland or Africa or the United States where many Catholics embrace fidelity to Sacred Tradition.

Like the American Episcopal church of the 1990’s, Bishop Bätzing would be willing to shatter the Church’s unity to satisfy the transient “woke” in Germany. Even if they had the Church that they want — one in which Christ takes a back seat to pop culture — there is no evidence that their practice of their faith would be any more faithful than it is now.

The most telling response of Bishop Bätzing was a statement that he would personally leave the Church if he had the impression that none of his agenda would be realized. He would lead the German Catholic church into a progressive schism if Traditional Catholics did not accede to it first.

Cardinal George Pell’s suggestion that Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, would be the best intercessor for Catholic Germany is prophetic. Upon her arrival in Auschwitz on August 9, 1942, she took her younger sister by the hand and said, “Come Rosa, Let us go for our people.” Then, in full Carmelite habit, she walked to the Nazi gas chamber refusing to renounce either her Jewish heritage or her Catholic faith.

Pray for her intercession for the Catholic church of Germany being led astray by its bishops. And pray for Pope Francis that the Blood of the Martyrs still speaks to him with sacrificial clarity about the faith for which they surrendered their lives.

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post.

You may also like these related posts:

The Once and Future Catholic Church

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

The Faithful Departed: Bishops Who Bar Catholics from Mass

Saints and Sacrifices: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein at Auschwitz

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