Schism, the Mute Key and Antipopes

Here are some extracts from an interesting article in Messainlatino. It was pasted from the Amici del Papa Ratzinger blog but was originally published in L'Occidentale on 21 March 2010.

The schism tearing the Catholic world apart

… it now seems that there exist, as it were, two Churches, that there is a schism in action …

…Many Catholics do not accuse the Pontiff openly, but they press the mute key on his teachings, they do not read the documents setting out his teaching, if they read them they do not take account of them or they write and speak in support of the exact opposite of what he says …

… Benedict XVI has given teachings about Vatican II which very many Catholics openly dispute, promoting forms of systematic parallel teaching guided by many “antipopes” who live inside the Church. He has given teachings on the “non-negotiable values” which very many Catholics minimize or reinterpret … He has given teachings on the primacy of the apostolic faith in the wise interpretation of events, and many continue to speak of the primacy of the situation, or of praxis, or of the evidence provided by human sciences. He has given teachings on conscience and on the dictatorship of relativism, but very many prefer democracy …

… Teachers … journalists … priests … who are in charge of liturgical centres in the various dioceses: the church which actually works against the Pope is very widespread and has now also split the clergy. I have occasion to travel a good deal in the dioceses for meetings and conferences. … I often have in front of me an audience that is divided in two. Even when the audience is composed of priests. From one side the primacy of faith, the idea that the world has need of salvation, that ecumenical and interreligious dialogue does not involve the renunciation of the uniqueness of salvation in Christ, that Tradition is one, that Christianity is the true religion, that conscience without truth is caprice; from the other side the primacy of the situation which inspires the Gospel, the idea that the world saves the Church … that dialogue does not involve any Catholic identity, that Vatican II is the start of a new phase in the life of the Church, that Christianity has nothing to do with truth which is always ideology, that personal conscience is the ultimate tribunal …

… Many bishops no longer succeed in drawing a clear line, in theological studies many strange doctrines are taught, the faithful are often confused, in the deaneries and parishes there is no life in the pastoral letters that are issued because the priests themselves are divided into two groups, the synods are often places of harsh confrontation between the two ways of thinking, the heated themes of life, the family, relations with other religions, are imposed in very diverse ways from parish to parish and from diocese to diocese.

… In reality and in daily practice there seem to be two churches here, it is a schism in process of happening or perhaps already in place, merely that the accentuated pluralism of today is not formalized.