In Spain, a convent of Poor Clares has broken away from the Church and considers all Popes after Pius XII (1939-1958) to be illegitimate.
In their view, the Apostolic See has been vacated.
This is commonly referred to as “sedevacantism.”
Similar to the Poor Clares in Spain, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has caused a stir in Italy: like the Poor Clares, the former nuncio to the U.S.A. does not want to recognize the authority of the current Pope.
While the Spanish Poor Clares have already been excommunicated by the responsible bishop, this is probably only a formality in the archbishop’s case. However, this will not calm the situation. Both the Poor Clares and Archbishop Viganò have the secret sympathies of quite a few Catholics. At most, however, they are perceived as actual schismatics by those modernists who themselves have long since crossed the Rubicon of schism, albeit without being excommunicated.
Schisms are something that tears the church apart. Above all, however, they say something about the state of the Church. They often arise when the Church falls into disarray, and this is just as much the case in our time as it was in the time of Martin Luther, for example.
Of course, this does not justify a schism. And yet there are always two sides to a schism: The schismatic and the Church, that is: the Pope.
In the past, the Popes stood for the purity of Church doctrine, while the schismatics rejected this doctrine. Today, however, things look different, and that is precisely the problem: today, “schismatics” insist on the traditional teachings of the Church, while Pope Francis finds himself in an ambivalent role.
Increasingly, one gets the impression that Francis condones schisms or even provokes them. Let me put it this way: this Pope has fundamentally failed in the service of unity, and that is precisely what makes the schisms of the Poor Clares or Viganòs significant: they are an exclamation mark behind the aberrations of this pontificate.
Anyone who reads the statements of Viganò or the Poor Clares does not necessarily have to adopt their position of sedevacantism. Nevertheless, every orthodox Catholic will find many positions there with which he can identify with a clear conscience and with which – strictly speaking – he even has to identify with. After all, the only thing that is Catholic is what has always been Catholic, and it is precisely from this that Francis has now moved quite far away.
The obvious promotion of the “homosexual heresy” on the one hand and the fanatical persecution of the Latin Mass on the other are just two of the main criticisms of this pontificate; the intended transformation of the Catholic Church into a “synodal” one would be just another on a list that can be continued at will: it ranges from the (justified) accusation of watering down the sacrament of marriage in the post-synodal letter Amoris laetitia to the denial of the Catholic faith in God in the Abu Dhabi document.
Ever since Francis appointed Victor Fernández, an author of pornographic texts who has little theological knowledge, as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, this pontificate has become a parody. Francis and Fernández cannot accuse either the Poor Clares or Viganò of heresy without calling their own positions into question. Outgrowths of this pontificate, such as the “blessing of homosexual couples,” are not covered by the constant magisterium of the Church, and Francis’ ideological hatred of the Latin Mass hardly places him in continuity with the Catholic Church.
What’s more, the Pope has now managed to create a multitude of schisms in the Church. The schism of the German bishops should undoubtedly be mentioned here first, which Francis only tolerates so conspicuously because it anticipates his ideas of a “synodal” church reform.
Above all, however, there is the silent schism of rejection of this Pope, which is now quietly drawing ever wider circles, as one hears, right up to the top echelons of the Curia.
At the latest, since Cardinal George Pell described this pontificate as a “disaster,” it has become clear how deep the rift Francis has torn open in the Church is. This Pope has failed to meet his own stated expectations. He has not led the Church into a time of new evangelization but has deeply divided it.
Francis will no longer be able to heal the torn body of the Church. Yet it was he, of all people, who wanted to see the Church as a “hospital” and who only brought her to the hospital himself. No Pope has inflicted deeper wounds on the Church than he did.
The schisms of the Poor Clares and the Viganos are merely symptoms of this papal wound, and therefore, one can hardly help but look upon them with sympathy.
All the more so when one thinks of Germany. Unlike the schismatic bishops there, the Poor Clares and Viganò have remained faithful to the Catholic faith. This is quite strange for “schismatics,” but we live in strange times – and in a very strange pontificate.