Schism: Destroyer of the Spiritual Life

(The following is an excerpt from my article “Let There Be No Schisms Among Us”, which can be found in its entirety and with all its citations at the Ecclesia Blog here).

In his Treatise on the Love of God, St. Francis de Sales eloquently expresses how unity necessarily flows from love, and how hatred leads to separation. It is interesting to note that the traditionalist and progressive factions are primarily motivated by intense aversion (hatred) toward certain people and things in the Church, whether these are conciliar reforms or the refusal to implement more radical ones. A spirit of genuine ecclesial communion, on the other hand, encourages trust, cooperation and understanding. St. Francis writes that the “unities of heart, of soul, and of spirit signify the perfection of love which joins many souls into one.” Virtue forms wholeness in men and societies, while sin causes disintegration.

St. Thomas Aquinas also categorizes schism as a sin against the virtue of charity in the Summa Theologiae. He reiterates the common teaching on the subject, stating that “the sin of schism is, properly speaking, a special sin, for the reason that the schismatic intends to sever himself from that unity which is the effect of charity: because charity unites not only one person to another with the bond of spiritual love, but also the whole Church in unity of spirit.” St. Thomas emphasizes this point immediately before offering a definition of schism identical to the one in the current Code of Canon Law. This strongly suggests the necessity of this preliminary understanding of schism as sin and its effect on the moral life of the Christian, in order to fully appreciate its true nature.

While the Fathers and Doctors have generally treated schism in its relationship to charity, the Catechism of the Catholic Church initially appears to depart from this tradition by presenting it as a sin against the first commandment in the section on the virtue of faith. However, it clarifies that this commandment “embraces faith, hope, and charity.” The Catechism thus adds a new layer of richness to our understanding of schism, in that it not only transgresses charity, but faith and hope as well. Aquinas also recognized that loss of charity is the road to losing faith, ergo schism leads to heresy. All virtues are inseparably bound to charity, as the Catechism teaches: “the practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which ‘binds everything together in perfect harmony’; it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice.” Because schism has a profoundly destructive impact on charity, it follows that will also devastate a Christian’s faith and hope.

Faith cannot survive without charity, as the apostle James declares emphatically: “Faith without works is dead” (Jas 2:26). The gift of faith is sustained by hope and love, and apart from them a person cannot be united to Christ and his Body, the Church. A person inevitably ceases to believe in what they do not cherish and act upon. Love is what breathes life into everything we know, prompting us to shape our lives according to God’s truth. The communion of the Church is where fraternal charity is exercised by the Christian, through submission to the same authority and worshiping around the same altar. In the Mass, we pray that God would “be pleased to confirm in faith and charity your pilgrim Church on earth, with your servant N. our Pope and N. our Bishop, the Order of Bishops, all the clergy, and the entire people you have gained for your own.” This prayer succinctly communicates the direct connection between the theological virtues and Christian unity, and in it we ask for God’s grace to preserve us in both, and to heal our divisions.

Hope is also ruined by schism. All sin manifests a loss of trust in God, and in this one a Christian loses his trust in the promises of Christ, and in the protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Church instructs us that in the original sin, man allowed trust to die in his heart, and that “all subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.” The schismatic disobeys God in his continuous disobedience toward the pope or his bishop (Lk 10:16), and he gradually begins to view the Church as though it were a merely human institution. As Cardinal Raymond Burke remarked to the author of this blog post: “Schism is a very understandable and natural response to problems in the Church, and therein lies the error. It is a decision made without the assistance of the supernatural virtues and divine grace.” People who fall into schism have become distrustful of anyone but themselves and people who think as they do, and this distrust extends to the Magisterium. Schismatics are those who lose all confidence that Christ is still acting in and through the authority and institutions of his Church.

From all we have examined thus far, the intimate relationship between the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity and ecclesial communion has been remarkably evident. How is it that this is so often overlooked? One possible explanation could be that many understand this sin according to what moral theologian Fr. Servais Pinckaers identifies as a “morality of obligation.” This perspective on Christian morality was a result of the manualist tradition, which began in the 17th century with the publication of conveniently condensed manuals of moral theology for seminarians, priests and confessors. Unfortunately, an artificial division was unintentionally set up between conscience, laws, and obligations on the one hand, and happiness, the Beatitudes, and virtues on the other, because of the latter being mostly absent from the manuals for the sake of brevity. This led to the development of an ethical approach with lacked the more balanced synthesis of moral theology with the rest of Christian belief and practice. Because this approach has influenced generations of modern Catholics, it is perhaps plausible that this has contributed to the perception of schism as a somewhat arbitrary legal formality, rather than as a serious offence against the theological virtues and the Beatitudes. [...]

Every Christian is called to build up the Body of Christ, because we are the “living stones” on which this holy temple is built up (1 Pet 2:5). Through our words and actions, we can aid or hinder this work of God; we have been given the power to be constructive, or destructive. How we use or abuse our freedom in this regard will determine how many souls are lost through schism from Christ’s Church, or how many more stones are added to the glory of the Lord’s Temple.

Veritas et Caritas