What is schism? A primer.

mer­i­can fac­tion­al­ist Car­di­nal Burke, who false­ly accus­es Joe Biden of being an “apos­tate,” and who (despite the pre­pos­ter­ous hopes of Pope Fran­cis haters) is not papa­bile, says that Pope Fran­cis may go into schism. You doubt me? Here’s the link. Ross Douthat was inter­view­ing him in 2019 about the Ama­zon­ian Syn­od. Burke insist­ed that the work­ing doc­u­ment was full of here­sies. Here’s the exchange with Douthat:

Burke: While the final doc­u­ment is less explic­it in the embrace of pan­the­ism, it does not repu­di­ate the state­ments in the work­ing doc­u­ment which con­sti­tute an apos­ta­sy from the Catholic faith.

The work­ing doc­u­ment doesn’t have doc­tri­nal val­ue. But what if the pope were to put his stamp on that doc­u­ment? Peo­ple say if you don’t accept that, you’ll be in schism—and I main­tain that I would not be in schism because the doc­u­ment con­tains ele­ments that defect from the apos­tolic tra­di­tion. So my point would be the doc­u­ment is schis­mat­ic. I’m not.

Douthat: But how can that be pos­si­ble? You’re effec­tive­ly imply­ing that the pope would be lead­ing a schism.

Burke: Yes.

Here is where canon law, which Burke pre­sum­ably knows so well, does­n’t do his reput­ed sagac­i­ty any favors. Schism, says Canon 751, is “the refusal of sub­mis­sion to the Supreme Pon­tiff or of com­mu­nion with the mem­bers of the Church sub­ject to him.” (The Cat­e­chism repeats that ver­ba­tim.)

How is it that Pope Fran­cis could refuse to sub­mit to him­self? Burke’s mean­ing is that Pope Fran­cis would go into schism if he refused to sub­mit to Burke’s idea of what “apos­tolic tra­di­tion” is. But canon law and the Cat­e­chism do not say that schism is “the refusal of sub­mis­sion to apos­tolic tra­di­tion” (that would be clos­er to heresy). Rather, it is “the refusal of sub­mis­sion to the Supreme Pon­tiff. Unless Pope Fran­cis can some­how refuse to sub­mit to him­self, it is impos­si­ble for him to be in schism. Rather he is the stan­dard against which schism is judged.

Even Burke under­stood that his wild wor­ries were a “con­tra­dic­tion.”

Douthat: Isn’t that a deep con­tra­dic­tion of how Catholics think about the office of the papa­cy?

Burke: Of course. Exact­ly. It’s a total con­tra­dic­tion. And I pray that this wouldn’t hap­pen. And to be hon­est with you, I don’t know how to address such a sit­u­a­tion. As far as I can see, there’s no mech­a­nism in the uni­ver­sal law of the church to deal with such a sit­u­a­tion.

I’m afraid poor Car­di­nal Burke is deeply con­fused. The rea­son why “there’s no mech­a­nism in the uni­ver­sal law” is because, by def­i­n­i­tion, the pope can’t be in schism. The pope him­self is what a per­son is or is not in schism against. It’s not as though Car­di­nal Burke has to sit trem­bling in a cor­ner in severe prayer for fear the pope might go into schism. Imag­ine work­ing your­self into a both­er because you wor­ry that tomor­row the sun might reverse course and rise in the west.

•••

But let’s look more deeply at the def­i­n­i­tion, because there are actu­al­ly two ways a per­son could be in schism.

• Refusal of sub­mis­sion to the Roman Pon­tiff; or
• [refusal] of com­mu­nion with the mem­bers of the Church sub­ject to him.

That “or” is impor­tant. Many peo­ple think of schism in terms of aban­don­ing the Church alto­geth­er and start­ing a new one, as in 1054 or 1517. But no. Accord­ing to canon law, you can remain in com­mu­nion with the Church and be in schism. Refus­ing to sub­mit to the pope is enough.

The Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia explains how dan­ger­ous schism is:

[I]t is con­trary to char­i­ty and obe­di­ence; to the for­mer, because it sev­ers the ties of fra­ter­nal char­i­ty, to the lat­ter, because the schis­mat­ic rebels against the Divine­ly con­sti­tut­ed hier­ar­chy. How­ev­er, not every dis­obe­di­ence is a schism; in order to pos­sess this char­ac­ter it must include besides the trans­gres­sion of the com­mands of supe­ri­ors, denial of their Divine right to com­mand. On the oth­er hand, schism does not nec­es­sar­i­ly imply adhe­sion, either pub­lic or pri­vate, to a dis­sent­ing group or a dis­tinct sect, much less the cre­ation of such a group. Any­one becomes a schis­mat­ic who, though desir­ing to remain a Chris­t­ian, rebels against legit­i­mate author­i­ty.

And that includes the pope’s teach­ing author­i­ty. The very next canon fol­low­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of heresy, apos­ta­sy, and schism—i.e., Canon 752—states that clear­ly:

[R]eligious sub­mis­sion of the intel­lect and will must be giv­en to a doc­trine which the Supreme Pon­tiff or the col­lege of bish­ops declares con­cern­ing faith or morals when they exer­cise the authen­tic mag­is­teri­um, even if they do not intend to pro­claim it by defin­i­tive act; there­fore, the Chris­t­ian faith­ful are to take care to avoid those things which do not agree with it.

“Even if they don’t intend a defin­i­tive act”; in oth­er words, it does­n’t mat­ter whether it’s infal­li­ble or not. All that mat­ters is that it is an authen­tic exer­cise of the Mag­is­teri­um.

The pas­sage above is known as the obse­quium reli­gio­sum, and can be found also in the Cat­e­chism (§892), Vat­i­can II (Lumen Gen­tium 25), and the Pro­fes­sion of Faith.

•••

That is why Car­di­nal Burke is in such a pre­car­i­ous posi­tion when he claims he can’t accept the pope’s teach­ing author­i­ty when it seems to run counter to (his idea of) apos­tolic tra­di­tion. Appar­ent­ly he nev­er asks whether he under­stands the pope wrong­ly, or apos­tolic tra­di­tion. Self-cer­tain­ty is a com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tic of schis­mat­ics.

St. Jerome believed that schism always ends in a defi­cient view of papal pri­ma­cy, and I’ve already shown how that is true with Car­di­nal Burke.

His repeat­ed denials to Douthat—What, me in schism? no, I’m not in schism, cer­tain­ly not! the pope, the pope! he’s the one in schism!—are sil­ly and hol­low. Car­di­nal Burke seems more con­cerned to avoid the word than the thing itself.

Schism, ulti­mate­ly, is where intel­lec­tu­al pride leads. You are so con­vinced you are right that you’ll accept no teacher, not even the supreme teacher, who tells you you are wrong. It is a rejec­tion of the teach­ing author­i­ty giv­en to the Church by Christ—for that’s what the papal office is, a teach­ing office—because you are con­vinced you know bet­ter.

It is a griev­ous sin.

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Update: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post rep­re­sent­ed Car­di­nal Burke as hav­ing said Pope Fran­cis is “in” schism, when the actu­al tran­script, right­ly read, showed that he feared the pope might go into schism if he signed off on the final doc­u­ment of the Ama­zon Syn­od. An alert read­er (see com­ments below) caught this error.