I don't see it quite that way. Schism by its very nature it falling away from the truth and it can come from the leadership of the Church or the followers. I will stick with the true Magisterium of the Church when I have to choose. I realize what we are in and what we will face. I have thought about for many years and have always decided for the truth. Pope Benedict (Father Ratzinger) said it best years ago, "the church will become very small, but very holy". Much credible prophecy has been saying as much. No one in the faith wants a schism, but if/when it comes we had better know well in advance where we will stand. We may have to drive an hour to find a faithful priest and mass, but this I will do until the underground church comes to be. I have been in parishes for 30 years that have abused the liturgy. God knows, I have fought against it by writing to priests, bishops, papal nuncio and even the Pope. At least up until now, we had someone in the chain of command that cared enough to address these abuses. Had one recently that I brought to the attention of our Bishop and he handled it right away and the priest said he used bad prudence in allowing our organist to dress up like Mary and in lieu of the homily we got a 1/2 hour skit on social justice through the eye's of Mary that our priest wrote. Prepare well my friends, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
That post should have read "Pope Francis couldn't get the Kasper proposal past the Synod". The time for editing has expired so I'm correcting it here. Anyway, the reason I'm revisiting this thread is to quote an example of how the Cappadocians dealt with their Arian hierarchy. From the link supplied by Jarg (the text I have underlined has an eerily familiar ring to it): http://www.newmanreader.org/works/arians/note5.html CAPPADOCIA. St. Basil says, about the year 372: "Religious people keep silence, but every blaspheming tongue is let loose. Sacred things are profaned; those of the laity who are sound in faith avoid the places of worship as schools of impiety, and raise their hands in solitudes, with groans and tears to the Lord in heaven." Ep. 92. Four years after he writes: "Matters have come to this pass: the people have left their houses of prayer, and assemble in deserts,—a pitiable sight; women and children, old men, and men otherwise infirm, wretchedly faring in the open air, amid the most profuse rains and snow-storms and winds and frosts of winter; and again in summer under a scorching sun. To this they submit, because they will have no part in the {460} wicked Arian leaven." Ep. 242. Again: "Only one offence is now vigorously punished,—an accurate observance of our fathers' traditions. For this cause the pious are driven from their countries, and transported into deserts. The people are in lamentation, in continual tears at home and abroad. There is a cry in the city, a cry in the country, in the roads, in the deserts. Joy and spiritual cheerfulness are no more; our feasts are turned into mourning; our houses of prayer are shut up, our altars deprived of the spiritual worship."
The allegiance and loyalty of every Christian, Catholic or no, should be to The Holy Trinity, Biblical Truths and Dogma written/established Long-Ago. For almost 2K Years we have had a whole host of over-educated "Experts" try to convince us of "What Jesus really meant to say was ... or St Paul or you name him/her! The age of instant global communication has made it worse & more dangerous than ever!! Popes, Cardinals & Bishops acting, portrayed as, as popular Pop "Stars"-n-New Age cult figures rather than shepherds and preachers of The Gospel. None of it should come as a surprise as Scripture has foretold this though the terms New Age cult figures & pop stars are new. ....as I've said before ... If these Times are not The End Times it's a Dress Rehearsal. GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!
I am very thankful that we have sufficient resources/books and knowledge of the faith. Think about that Arian time, when what the faithful had was handed down from tradition and perhaps some scattered writings. I am sure our bibles, catechisms and all the other teachable writings will be banned at some point. This we must prepare for too. The thing that they can't take away is our God, our Blessed Mother the angels and the saints who will be on our side, the side of God's unchanging truths. It is a good time to recall what Father Ratzinger said of this time: Father Joseph Ratzinger Predicts the Future of the Church POPE BENEDICT XVI In 2009 Ignatius Press released Father Joseph Ratzinger's speech "What Will the Church Look Like in 2000" inLet us, therefore, be cautious in our prognostications. What St. Augustine said is still true: man is an abyss; what will rise out of these depths, no one can see in advance. And whoever believes that the Church is not only determined by the abyss that is man, but reaches down into the greater, infinite abyss that is God, will be the first to hesitate with his predictions, for this naïve desire to know for sure could only be the announcement of his own historical ineptitude.... The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are! How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the [sidelines], watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future. Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret. And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death
Thank you for posting this, it is a truly prophetic text, it was written in 1969! ...nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. -- We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. -- But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. -- But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.
