Schism is an entrenched idea within Church History.
The conclusion – that some members of the Church have stepped so far beyond the bounds of orthodoxy and propriety that the rest can no longer consider themselves in communion with them – goes back to Antiquity.
Schisms of old could be vicious and violent affairs.
Just consider the cases of the Donatists, Pelagians, Cathars, Waldensians, or Protestant Reformers.
And this is before we get into the internecine struggles within Eastern Christianities and between them and the Latin West.
Pope Francis, Viganò and today’s schism
What then to make of Pope Francis’ very modern schism: a decision by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to declare Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò guilty of ‘public statements resulting in a denial of the elements necessary to maintain communion with the Catholic Church’ and to excommunicate him?
Viganò, to be sure, had tried Francis’ patience over a number of years.
The charges against him are, on one level, quite compelling.
Viganò released a letter back in 2018 which accused the Pope and three consecutive Secretaries of State of knowingly protecting and rehabilitating American Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
They protected him even after ‘credible and substantiated’ claims that he had sexually abused a 16-year-old altar boy, Viganò wrote.
More recently, Viganò has been vigorously engaged in promoting conspiracy theories: about the Covid-19 pandemic, global elites, and the agenda of Vatican II.
Add in his support for Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine War and his ongoing hostility to Pope Francis’ attempts to strike a middle ground between Church traditionalists and liberals via the Synod on Synodality.
It was obvious a pretty toxic relationship between the Archbishop and his boss on Earth was emerging.
The Pope and his advisors have clearly decided that acting quickly and decisively was the best course of action.
Take some anguish and criticism now in order to extract the thorn in their sides as bloodlessly as possible.
Not that many have mourned Viganò’s departure from ecclesiastical respectability.
His seemingly difficult and abrasive personality have won him few friends in what remains a Church hierarchy regulated by bonhomie and consensus politics.
Viganò is, moreover, not the first bishop to have suffered this indignity on the part of the Holy See in recent times.
John Paul II famously excommunicated Marcel Lefebvre in 1988 because he consecrated four bishops without Vatican approval.
In 2006 Benedict XVI excommunicated the Zambian Bishop Emmanuel Milingo because he had consecrated married men as bishops and himself had claimed to have taken a wife.
Such cases of bishops going rogue have been another constant in ecclesiastical life.
Arguably, it is only the greater scrutiny that they attract in a media age that magnifies the scandal associated with them to a matter of global interest.
Viganò case different
And yet… And yet, the Viganò case differs from the Lefebvre and Milingo ones in several key respects.
First, the fact that Viganò is accused only of wrong words, not wrong deeds.
His criticisms of the Pope have been sharp and nasty.
They certainly transgress the respectable patterns of interpersonal exchange which are typically necessary for subordinates to retain the confidence of their managers in a normal organisation.
“Viganò might have caused less trouble for the Vatican if he’d been left quietly to discredit himself through his increasingly outlandish pronouncements about Vatican II’s evils and about his colleagues’ hidden agendas.
“Excommunicating him plays to another characterisation of Francis promoted by critics such as George Pell: that he is intolerant of opposition and negative judgments of his conduct.”
But the Church is not a normal organisation.
It claims to be, uniquely, the vehicle via which God interacts with Man and through which our souls can achieve eternal salvation.
Clearly, if Viganò had worked at Goldman Sachs or the State department of a normal bureaucracy his position would have been untenable. But should the Universal Church operate by those same rules?
Once again, it is the special, divine character of ecclesiastical activity that is undermined by such unseemly behaviour.
A second difference between Viganò’s excommunication and those earlier ones, however, is this.
The eclecticism of Viganò’s criticisms of the Holy See (and the Holy Father) also makes it rather risky to isolate him as a matter of politics.
To put it bluntly, his potential for martyrdom is much higher than that of Lefebvre or Milingo.
Sure, criticising the Pope openly and disrespectfully is bad (and even unfair), but Viganò first came to prominence – before his descent into conspiracy theorism – as an outspoken critic of Vatican corruption.
Because few Catholics believe the Vatican is not corrupt at some level, silencing the whistleblower is therefore an inherently questionable proposition, especially undertaken by self-proclaimed ‘clean hands’.
Viganò criticism of Vatican policy towards Theodore McCarrick, moreover, deserves to be taken very seriously – whatever the rebuttals that have emerged to date.
The McCarrick case has been so damaging because it has seemed to confirm an established narrative of feet-dragging under Benedict XVI and also Francis (in light of the Marko Rupnik affair).
Pontifical feet ought to step more gingerly when dealing with notorious failures of oversight and governance.
Ultimately, Viganò might have caused less trouble for the Vatican if he’d been left quietly to discredit himself through his increasingly outlandish pronouncements about Vatican II’s evils and about his colleagues’ hidden agendas.
Excommunicating him plays to another characterisation of Francis promoted by critics such as George Pell: that he is intolerant of opposition and negative judgments of his conduct.
So will Viganò’s departure change the Church? Almost certainly not.
But it will likely confirm what everyone already thinks about Francis, the Synod on Synodality, Gay Blessings, and Traditionis custodes. This is not necessarily good for Francis or for Viganò.
Welcome to the new schismatic Church, same as the old Church.
Only time will tell if Francis’ course of action has been the wiser one, but the politicking has got more intensive as both factions – traditionalists and liberals – look beyond him.
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the next conclave.
- First published in Eureka Street Republished with author’s permission.
- Dr Miles Pattenden is a researcher in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University and author of Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450–1700 (Oxford University Press, 2017).