I am posting this series with my usual reservations about the loose use of the word 'schism' generally ,to mean a division in the Church which is far from a genuine schism in the formal sense. In the Catholic Church, this means one faction breaking away to set up its own religious shop, as it were.
ACTUATING SCHISM
by Patrick Archbold
November 27-30, 2018
PART I
To a very small circle, Pope Francis is said to have self-critically further explained himself as follows: “It is not to be excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church.”
That quote is from
Der Spiegel. But it is Spiegel’s correspondent in Italy, Walter Mayr, who characterizes that statement as self-critical. Based upon all the evidence to date and what I think may be coming, I suspect that is a misreading of the statement.
The Pope wasn’t being self-critical, he was telling you the plan.
Going back to the early days of this papacy, I spilled considerable ink trying to warn Catholics about the abuse of the Synods to further the nefarious goals of those who seek to permanently change the Church.
- I warned of the pre-ordained nature of the charade.
- I warned about how ambiguity would be used to further the ends, followed up Papal documents imposing what cannot be accepted.
- And I warned of the consequences to those bishops and priests who did not get with the program.
All that happened, and then some. It isn't that I am particularly prescient, but I knew the playbook which they were using to run the game.
But even I didn't expect the absolutely brazen way they have gamed the synod system.
At this last synod, not only did they do away with all the rules in advance and pack the synod with the pliant, but they actually published a synod document that was substantially about a topic that wasn't even discussed at the synod, synodality itself. You must hand it to these folks, they are the honey badgers of heretics,
they just don't care. We'll get back to synodality in a moment.
In the wake of this latest farce, I have been mulling some ideas about what comes next.
- First, more of the same, for sure. We can count on this process to continue.
Gamed synods producing pre-ordained results to continue to move the heretical ball down the field. But that isn't enough.
- Faithful Catholics in the Church, particularly those in certain communities, are very loud and have caused the Vatican more problems than they are willing to put up with.
They made all the rule changes and gamed the synod system in direct response to the problems they encountered in the Synod on the Family.
- The votes caused problems, let's do away with votes.
- But even with all the process changes that made the inevitable outcome inevitable, they resent having to do it.
- The problem isn't the rules, it's 'those people'.
It is commonly remarked by some, myself included, that
the Church has been in a de facto state of schism for some time, only that those who no longer hold to the Church's teachings refuse to leave.
-
Now, they are not just here but they are in charge. [That was the whole point of their persisting over the last six decades.]
- They didn't seek their own alternative church or power structure, they instead took the long view and were covetous of the name Catholic and its power structure.
-
They didn't want their own Church, they wanted ours. [Only they have no right to call the church of Bergoglio 'the Church' as in the one true Church of Christ.] Now they have the power and they use power.
So these are the questions they must be facing:
- How do you get rid of those Catholics who are fighting against your power?
- How do you get rid of faithful Catholics who, by definition, tenaciously cling to the one true church?
- How do you get the true Catholics out of the true Church?
- How do you turn a de facto schism into a real one?
As it turns out, like with all other things, these people have a playbook. They know what worked in the past and they will use that model. In fact, they are already doing it. Piece by piece, they have been putting in place mechanisms that will give faithful Catholics no quarter. Over the next days, I will explain what steps they have already taken and what we might expect.
PART II
What do I mean by “no quarter.” What I mean is they are taking a series of steps intended to give faithful Catholics, particularly traditional Catholics, no place to go other than where they want us.
In short, they are executing a series of plays from their playbook intended to put traditional Catholics in a position in which they must capitulate or be disobedient to some degree. It is the disobedience they seek.
There are parallel steps and sequential steps involved here, but the important thing to understand is the pattern. By understanding the plays in the playbook, the game plan emerges. I quoted Pope Francis yesterday saying,
“It is not to be excluded that I will enter history as the one who split the Catholic Church.” I suspect that sentence is the game plan. To separate traditional Catholics from the Church. [Correction: 'their church'.]
So, let’s start getting into the detail. Today I will cover the “no quarter” plan as it pertains to vocations.
Most people are now familiar with what Pope Francis, through his apparatchiks, did to the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate. What happened to the FFI establishes a pattern that we have seen repeated several times since.
- A handful of progressives within an order write a complaint letter (or some other alleged transgression) that the Vatican appoints a commissioner to oversee an Apostolic Visitation. In the case of the FFI, it was 5 men who complained of a "crypto-Lefebrvist" drift. That’s all it took.
- The founder is sent packing under a form of house arrest.
- And new vocations and formation are immediately stopped, and draconian rules imposed. Capitulate or get out.
But it is this pattern of visitation and destruction that we will see time and time again. They shortly after repeated the same process with the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate. As will see, when they want you gone, this is the play in the playbook.
We have seen this same scenario play out again and again. The visitation process was used in South America as well to remove traditional-leaning Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano. Some have claimed this was ostensibly because of his appointment of Msgr. Urrutigoity (a legitimately bad actor) as vicar general.
As we know, the list of Bishops that have shielded bad actors in their dioceses is a mile long, but the destruction of the traditional-leaning Bishop was swift. Cardinal Wuerl, I remind you, is still the Archbishop of DC and “Uncle Ted” McCarrick is still a priest. Interestingly, that is not the reason given by the Vatican. As Ed Pentin reported:
The Vatican has said Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano was removed last month not so much because he appointed a priest accused of sexual abuse as his vicar general or allegations of embezzlement – as many had thought – but because of internal disagreements.
“The important problem was the relations within the episcopacy and in the local church, which were very difficult,” Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Sept. 26.
Concerns about the former vicar general, Father Carlos Urrutigoity, were “not central, albeit have been debated,” he added. "There were serious problems with his management of the diocese, the education of clergy and relations with other bishops," Father Lombardi said.
More recently we have seen the same modus operandi used in Memphis to remove Bishop Martin Holley. I can't even tell you why he was removed. Neither can he as it turns out. He was given 24 hours notice of the visitation. He was provided no findings. He wasn't provided any report. He was offered no chance at clarification or defense. And then was told the Pope said he must resign.
Now I don't know anything about Bishop Holley or why they wanted him gone, but the message and the method is clear.
When they want you gone, they can make you gone. They aren't even going through the motions any more and any and all sense of due process or rights under canon law have been dispensed with. That should make any Bishop nervous, which is exactly the point. You can see below an interview with Bishop Holley and Raymond Arroyo. The shock and disgust at the process is clear on Arroyo's face.
The visitation and destruction method has again recently played out in France. The Petites Sœurs de Marie Mère du Rédempteur committed the double crime of being a little "too conservative" and having some assets that the local Bishop coveted. As Hilary White reports:
According to the lay organisation, (that you can find here on Facebook) following a merger of the sisters’ retirement homes with another [order] in Mayenne, Bishop Scherrer found himself an ex-officio member of the board of directors of the civil management association of these assisted nursing homes.”
He reportedly began issuing orders about the management of these homes, despite his lack of experience in the field. Naturally these decisions met with resistance, and the bishop’s response was to initiate a “canonical visitation” on the order, an action that in our current epoch has become tantamount to a declaration of war.
His two visitators, unsurprisingly, gave him a report on the life of the sisters that found them to be too traditional – accusing them of “sectarian excesses,” objecting to their return to the traditional habit and their rejection of modern media in the enclosure – which was then sent on to the Roman Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life of Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, of odious ill fame. (One has to wonder, while reading the story that follows, whatever happened to the good cardinal’s commitment to “dialogue”…)
The result of this delation was that the Congregation “suspended the Council of the Congregation and sent the Superior General and the Mistress of Novices into exile to distant monasteries for an indefinite period.” This left three apostolic commissioners, appointed by Rome, in charge of the congregation. An appeal by the sisters for a new canonical investigation was refused by the Congregation.
As a result,
34 of the 39 sisters have asked to be released from their vows. We have seen the same thing happen to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. We watched that putsch happen in real time. Sovereign, not so much.
Whether you are a traditional leaning order, moderately conservative, or even a bishop not getting with the program, the message and method is clear. When they want you gone. They can make you gone.
So that is one play from the playbook and we have and will see it play out again and again. No recourse, no rights, no justice, just gone. But that isn't enough. They also have to make sure they have no place else to go. As shocking and upsetting as is the abuse of power described above, there are things the Pope has done that I think are even worse.
The Pope has put in place rules that are meant to make sure that not only do religious have no place to go, but that they will never have to deal with this problem again.
To understand this in its proper context, I would like to back up for a second. Yesterday I visited the topic of the abuse of the synod process. Back in the first iteration of the Synod on the Family, the Pope was embarrassed and annoyed by the push-back he received from some bishops. The rules allowed discussions, statements, voting that did not conform with the pre-ordained ends. So the rules were changed so that would never happen again.
So let's revisit what happened after they destroyed the FFI. A handful of the FFI, fed up with what had happened and determined to try and live the religious life they justly desired, sought to be incardinated in other diocese and form new groups under a local bishop. They wanted to start over. But this could not be allowed.
The Pope's hand-picked commissar for the FFI, Fr. Fidenzio Volpi, was so enraged that Bishops would welcome them and escape their clutches, that he took the unprecedented step of attending the Assembly of Italian Bishops (CEI) in Assisi in 2014. There he "warned" the Bishops there to not even consider such thing, or else. (We will come back to the CEI in a later installment.)
So you had this priest warning bishops not to use their own legitimate authority to cross the regime or give quarter to any of the recalcitrant. Truly it is shocking. But that was just the beginning. Like before,
when the rules allow things they don't like, the rules must be changed.
Canon law allows for Bishops to erect institutes of consecrated life in their diocese which Bishops have always had broad authority to do, and which some of the smashed community members sought to do. In 2016, Pope Francis issued a decree that "clarified" canon law and requires that a Bishop get permission from the Holy See first. See, they just want to make sure there are no "redundant" charisms.
"The bishop is always responsible in his diocese – but he has to evaluate the answer, the opinion, of the Congregation," Bishop Arrieta said."After [hearing] the opinion of the Congregation, he remains free to act in one sense or in the other; but he has to balance the opinion of the Congregation."
It is necessary "to avoid new institutes being erected on the diocesan level without sufficient discernment of the originality of the charism," which determines the way the members will live out the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience, the Congregation added in a statement cited by CNS.
So you Bishops who want to do something like that, you need to check with us first, but just keep in mind that you don't accidentally trigger a visitation. That is a nice diocese you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.
When I say, no quarter, I mean NO quarter.
But trust me, that is just the beginnings of the sorrows. In my next post I will detail the changes directed at nuns, changes that will utterly destroy any chance at authentic traditional Catholic life. After that, I will detail how they will use these changes to come after you, Joe traditional Catholic.
PART III
And now we come to the nuns. As angry and as pessimistic as what I have already recounted might make you, what is being done to the nuns boggles the mind.
While the above actions are targeted at individuals and groups, individual missiles, these rule changes are nuclear. This change "signals the end of the contemplative monastic life."
The Pope has rightly identified cloistered monasticism as the lifeblood of the Church. Hilary White has done the most comprehensive investigation into what is happening here. Her work is crucial and will be cited throughout the rest of this article. Go read every link in full. Anyway, Hilary says of the cloistered religious:
Once they’re inside, the world forgets about them. But contemplative religious life is like the mitochondria of the Church. The power source of the cell that makes all the other systems function. The mitochondria are the most unobtrusive and hidden of the organelles of the body, and for a very long time their purpose was not fully understood. But now we know our lives depend on the health of this tiny, secret and hidden little thing. And mitochondrial disease – when the mitochondria fail to function – is devastating.
It has been clear for years that Pope Francis clearly dislikes contemplative orders and he has made numerous unkind remarks about them in the first few years of papacy. In 2016, Pope Francis issued the Apostolic Constitution
Vultum Dei quaerere which contains new "guidelines" that showed clearly that the eye of Sauron had spied the contemplatives.
The first thing it did was set a minimum time of formation to nine years. Nine Years. Different orders had traditionally been left to do things there own way and some had long formation period and some shorter. But to now impose a minimum 9 year formation across the board. Especially in this time of later vocations, this change could be a back-breaker for certain communities.
But that isn't all,
VDQ also promoted the use of Federations of Monasteries as the universal governance model. These federations are universally progressive institutions, think the Leadership Conference of Women's Religious, that take over all the administrative functions of the associated monasteries. This governance model along with the progressives in the Church has been the death knell of any traditional Catholic orders and we have seen the complete collapse of these groups over the last 50 years.
But that Apostolic Constitution was just the opening salvo in a bombing run determined to wipe traditional Catholic monasticism off the planet.
In April of 2018, the Pope issued "Cor Orans" which is the instructions on how to implement VDQ. It makes impossible the continuation of traditional Catholic monstasticism.
In addition to imposing the minimum 9 years of formation, it imposes upon every order that they must belong to a federation. These federations effectively take over the formation of all the nuns. No longer can individual monasteries form those that live with them. No, those seeking the cloister will be forced to ongoing travel to these conferences in which they will be formed by the progressive federations.
One nun said: “In the past, each Community has been free to implement whatever type of ongoing formation program that they see fit. We were not required to implement some one size fits all (liberal re-education) program into our daily lives. I cannot imagine how this is all going to play out.”
Well, we know exactly how this is all going to play out. But for clarity's sake, this report on the words of José Rodríguez Carballo, responsible for this document's implementation, and secretary (#2 man of the Congregation.
[He was Superior-General of the Franciscan Orders when Bergoglio called him to the Vatican, and it was subsequently disclosed that under his management, he had brought the Order to utter bankuptcy.] He is reported as saying:
“With this explicit reference to the Second Vatican Council, we point to our profound conviction that the council is the point of reference, non-negotiable, in the formation to the consecrated life.”
Not the charism of the order, nor the rule, nor the Patristic tradition, nor the Doctors, nor the mystics, nor any of the 2000-year-old tradition of religious life, from the Desert Fathers to the giants of the Tridentine period; just Vatican II.
And only, apparently, a single “interpretation” of it, if we are to judge by the soap and oil Braz de Aviz poured on the ruffled feathers of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious – the most virulently anti-Catholic organisation of “Catholic” religious in the world – and by his vicious persecution of the Franciscans of the Immaculate.
Carballo continues his remarks, giving us a clue as to his feelings towards strictly cloistered, contemplative religious life:
“A consecrated life, a life in God but inserted in the ecclesial family, in the church – inserted in the world. Not in conflict with the world, but inserted in continuity,” he said.
In another speech,
Carballo "called “some forms” of religious life “antiquated” and claimed that they “say hardly anything to people today.” These, he said “will not remain even though they have [had] a certain success.”
To this end they have also made sure that they can kill off any holdouts. Under these rules the Congregation can evaluate the "autonomy" of any monastery and if they don't like what they see. You. Are. Gone.
Someone else pointed out that
under this document none of the currently flourishing conservative or “traditionalist” monasteries or communities could have been founded. This includes the specifically traditionalist Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles in Missouri or more mainstream “conservative” groups like the Sisters of Life in New York.
The deadman’s switch: T
oo many oldies? Too many Trads? You’re done.
Art. 8 §1. Juridical autonomy needs to be matched by a genuine autonomy of life. This entails a certain, even minimal, number of sisters, provided that the majority are not elderly, the vitality needed to practice and spread the charism, a real capacity to provide for formation and governance, dignity and quality of liturgical, fraternal and spiritual life, sign value and participation in life of the local Church, self-sufficiency and a suitably appointed monastery building. These criteria ought to be considered comprehensively and in an overall perspective.
§2. Whenever the requirements for a monastery’s genuine autonomy are lacking, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life will study the possibility of establishing an ad hoc commission made up of the ordinary, the president of the federation, a representative of the federation and the abbess or prioress of the monastery. In every case, the purpose of this intervention is to initiate a process of guidance for the revitalisation of the monastery, or to effect its closure.
And no sneakily recruiting from other countries either…
§6. Even though the establishment of international and multicultural communities is a sign of the universality of the charism, the recruitment of candidates from other countries solely for the sake of ensuring the survival of a monastery is to be absolutely avoided. To ensure that this is the case, certain criteria are to be determined.
I will paraphrase Hilary in her summation of the above.
Too many oldies? Too many Trads? You’re done. And you may not recruit from other countries.
There is actually so much more to this story and I cannot do it justice in this short treatment. Traditional Catholic monasticism is done. It cannot and will not survive this onslaught, if nothing changes.
So now we have seen how they can and do destroy any religious group or prelate who crosses them, we have seen them change the rules to disallow any new orders to form in a diocese without their approval, and we have seen how they have changed the rule to destroy traditional contemplatives and prevent any new groups from being formed.
Step by step they have been destroying avenues for religious to practice traditional Catholicism.
- They are simply not giving traditional Catholics with a vocation anywhere to go, except where they want you to go.
- They are diligently and systematically cutting off all avenues of escape.
This is critical in understanding my thesis about how they may in the future cause the split in the Church for which Pope Francis has openly pined.
So we have covered a shocking amount of destruction, all documented, that has already occurred. We have discovered their playbook and we can see how they repeatedly use the same process. In the next installment, we are going to take a look at a recent story that didn't get much attention. But I look at it with an eye to all that they have done and extrapolate it further. This is where things get really interesting.
PART IV
...we have seen how the synod process has been twisted into something unrecognizable, something with only the ability to tell the emperor, in ways preordained, how wonderful his new clothes are.
This last synod was hijacked and produced a document that in large part was about a topic not even discussed, synodality itself.
The politburo approved Catholic media will tell you that synodality is all about decentralizing the governance of the Church closer to the people in the form of the Bishop's conference. This, obviously, could not be further from the truth.
In an incredible validation of the lie, before the ink was even dry on the synod document on synodality, the Pope personally intervened to publicly castrate the USCCB before they even thought about even discussing doing something useless about the abuse scandal. It was quite the show, even for veteran Church watchers.
In order to understand what the push for synodality is all about, you have to look at the above described pattern.
In every step, they have restricted the rights of bishops and other groups to act on their own and under their own authority in a way that conflicts with the super-dogma of Vatican Two-ism.
Synodality is not about empowering Bishop's conferences, as undeniably demonstrated in Baltimore.
- It is about restricting the ability of any single bishop to act on his own.
- It is about making sure that no stray orthodox bishop can be a bastion of tradition and a safe space for traditional Catholicism. - He can't allow new groups of religious to form in his diocese, he can't invite traditional nuns to set up shop in his diocese, and if he does anything too traditional, he will be on the receiving end of an apostolic visitation for the crime of not getting along with his Bishop's conference.
All of this has been about cutting off all escape paths for traditional Catholics.
Well, that is not entirely true. Some escape paths they will leave open. I opened this essay with a quote from Sun Tzu, "To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape." Cut off all paths of escape but one. Get your enemy all into one place by making them think they have no place else to go.
Everything up to this point is my series of essays has been about what they have already done, with minimal analysis and even less speculation. I want to be upfront that what follows is speculative, but based upon the demonstrated tactics we have already discussed. See enough plays in the playbook, you begin to discern the gameplan.
I think that the key piece of evidence for what may be coming was in a little story out of the Italian Bishops' conference (CEI) recently that had only little notice. I will note that
the CEI is a bishops's conference on which early on Pope Francis performed an uncanonical takeover and placed his hand-picked guy at the top, making the CEI a wholly owned subsidiary of Francis Inc.
A few weeks back, at a gathering of the CEI, a bishop arose (this would not happen without Bergoglian approval) to attack Pope Benedict's Motu Proprio
Summorum Pontificum.
He advocated the position, contrary to Pope Benedict, that the traditional mass HAS BEEN ABROGATED, and that Pope Benedict proceeded from false premises and that Summorum Pontificum should be retracted.
Mons. Redaelli, bishop of Gorizia (who we know how to have obtained a degree in canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University) asserted that the Old Missal of John XXIII had been abrogated by Paul VI (and this contrary to what was declared by Benedict XVI in the Motu Precisely) and therefore the Summorum Pontificum , since the legal premises from which the steps move is wrong, is ineffective in the part in which it affirms the continuity of validity of the ancient missal and recognizes its unchanged vigor today. For this reason, the motu proprio is a legal " non-sense " and the "Tridentine" liturgy has not been legitimately re-established by the motu proprio and can not be considered liberalized.