It’s no secret the Roman Catholic Church has some divisions within it. There are just over a billion Catholics in the world, so it almost goes without saying there will be disagreements among them as to the details of what it means to be “Roman Catholic.” Still, there are some notable rifts among Catholics, even among its hierarchs and other “leading lights,” and within the Vatican itself. These have festered mostly since the Second Vatican Council, which changed the Church in some rather fundamental ways, such as advocating mass to be said in the local vernacular rather than in Latin and with priests facing their congregations. It also allowed Catholics to attend weddings that weren’t held in Catholic churches. Other, less everyday, wider-scope changes included an explicit denunciation of anti-Semitism, which in turn led to a thaw in Catholic-Jewish relations.
Due to the changes invoked by II Vatican, since the mid-60s, “conservative” and “liberal” (or “progressive”) Catholics have tried to push the Church in their own desired directions. There’s been a bit of seesawing, as different Popes ruled the Church. John XXIII, who convoked II Vatican, and his successor Paul VI who implemented it, both leaned “progressive,” while John Paul II and Benedict XVI leaned “conservative.” (Yes, I’m leaving out John Paul I; he reigned only a month.)
That John Paul and Benedict ran the show from 1978 to 2013 — three and a half decades — meant that “conservative” Catholicism had the upper hand for more than a generation. Differences among Catholics largely simmered below the surface for much of that time. A lot of the contention that did exist, erupted from inside the ranks of “conservative” Catholicism … particularly the emergence of the sedevacantist movement, which holds that there has been no Pope since Pius XII (the sedevacantists, you see, think that John XXIII had been “too progressive” as Pope, and that his election contaminated the office, or something like that). Fierce “conservative” Catholics like the Society of St Pius X broke away, despite “conservative” Popes being in charge.
The election of the “progressive”-leaning Francis has unsettled things, though, and certainly has inflamed the “conservatives.” The more “progressive” faction of Catholicism has emerged into view, having been eclipsed for 35 years or so. So tussling within the Church has gone from infighting within “conservative” Catholicism, to a wider conflict between “conservative” and “progressive” Catholicism.
I bring up this little history lesson, because according to the Associated Press via Religion News Service, Pope Francis has blamed these divisions on “the Devil” (Archive.Is cached article):
Pope Francis called Tuesday for unity in the Catholic Church and blamed its divisions on the devil.
It was the second time in as many days that Francis has warned about the destructive work of the devil after making headlines recently by seeming to deny the existence of hell.
Francis made the comments during a Mass he celebrated along with 550 “missionaries of mercy,” the army of priests he formed during his 2015-2016 Jubilee of Mercy to highlight the sacrament of reconciliation around the globe.
In his homily, Francis said the church and the world need mercy today “so that the unity desired by God in Christ prevails over the negative action of the devil, who takes advantage of all means which can divide rather than unite if used badly.”
Let’s set aside all of this “devil” bullshit and understand what really fuels divisions within the R.C. Church. And that is, the vast complexity of its bureaucracy, practices, rites, doctrines, and dogmas. It’s a very old Church with a lot of teachings and tenets that intersect with one another in various ways, forcing Catholics to have to navigate it all in varying ways. What’s more, the complexity of it all inevitably leads to even more complexity, and additional cogs in its machinery, which just add more, etc. Along the way, Catholics must always be careful not to contradict older precedents.
The fear of running afoul of an older precedent can create all sorts of dysfunction. One of these arises from how the R.C. Church responded to the Donatist controversy (which began in the early 4th century), and affects how it operates, even now, a whopping seventeen centuries later. You see, the Donatists were purists who — after the persecution of Diocletian ended — claimed that any clergy who’d cooperated with Roman persecutors, by handing over their Christian texts, had effectively nullified their ordinations, and moreover could never become priests again. The Donatists’ “heresy,” which mostly was found only in north-central Africa, was the minority view within Christendom, and the church of Rome certainly wasn’t alone in opposing the Donatists. This “heresy” lasted for quite some time: For the next couple centuries, northern Africa essentially had two different Christian churches, one Donatist and the other not, with rival churches sometimes standing side-by-side in some towns. It was wiped out, along with “orthodox” or “catholic” Christianity, by the Muslim invasion.
But the fact that the wicked Donatist “heresy” had been eliminated, set a precedent that Roman Catholicism still has not let go of. By contrast with those wicked Donatist “heretics” who taught that ordinations could be invalidated by a cleric’s actions, Roman Catholicism has, instead, taught that there is nothing a cleric can do which can, all by itself, nullify his ordination. This is why the R.C. Church has so fiercely resisted jettisoning abusive clergy, and has even worked to protect them from being prosecuted (and, assuming they’re convicted, effectively terminating their priestly careers by sending them to prison). Having to involuntarily defrock a priest because he abused children would, effectively, confirm the Donatists’ view — and the R.C. Church cannot, and will never, permit this to happen.
Other areas of Catholicism require a delicate dance, balancing precedent with dogma and doctrine. Being enslaved to what amounts to a whirlwind of many different notions and teachings, basically forces different Catholics to reach different conclusions. Some, of the more “progressive” variety (like Pope Francis) believe the lives of living, breathing humans are as important as those of the unborn, and thus teach (as Francis has) that caring for the needy is as much a mandate for Catholics as preventing abortions. Others, of the more “conservative” variety, believe the needy chose to be needy and should be forced to wallow in misery, and that women of childbearing age should be forced to give birth as often as is possible — and if any of them should die in the process, oh well, that’s just how the cookie crumbles. This is a wide gulf in belief, and it’s brought about mostly by varying interpretations of all the many aspects of Catholicism.
In short, the R.C. Church is a vast, unnavigable mess. It’s vast and complicated enough that anyone can pretty much decide almost anything s/he wants, and conjure up some kind of apparent Catholic backing for it. So yes, of course, there will be divisions between Catholics. It can hardly work out any other way! And no one needs to posit a devil’s involvement — as Pope Francis did — to explain it. Moreover, an educated Catholic hierarch like Francis certainly knows this, so he has no valid reason for having trotted out such a laughable excuse.
I will end this longer-than-usual post by pointing out that excuse-making is a common R.C. pastime. Catholicism has spewed no small number of ridiculous, asinine, even childish excuses for the worldwide “priestly pedophilia” scandal. The Pope’s excuse for differences among those within his own Church, isn’t much different. What he needs to do, as the leader of Roman Catholicism, is to stop with the fucking excuses already, grow the fuck up, put an end to the practice of spewing them, and hold both himself, and the rest of his Church, accountable for what it has done and for any divisions within it. He has the power to heal those divisions, if he wishes to. Will he? I doubt it.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.