The Sense and Scope of Schism: A Pre-Vatican II Canonist Speaks

What schism is and isn’t…

The Sense and Scope of Schism:
A Pre-Vatican II Canonist Speaks

Recent developments regarding the Vatican’s former nuncio to the United States, ‘Abp.’ Carlo Maria Viganò, who is being tried in the Vatican for schism, have a lot of people talking opining, or even pontificating, on schism and schismatics.

The black-and-white concept of schism doesn’t fit neatly into the prevailing communio ecclesiology of the Vatican II Modernists, who acknowledge various ‘degrees’ of communion between them and truly heretical and schismatic sects such as the Orthodox, Lutherans, Waldensians, Methodists, Old Catholics, etc.

It certainly does, however, fit neatly into the traditional Roman Catholic ecclesiology taught by the true papal magisterium all the way up to, and including, Pope Pius XII (d.… READ MORE

The Sense and the Scope of Schism (Fr. Francis Xavier Wernz and Fr. Peter Vidal)

Fr. Franz X. Wernz, S.J. (1842-1914) and Fr. Peter Vidal, S.J. (1867-1938)

The Sense and the Scope of Schism

from the Ius Canonicum (Volume 7, 1937)

Exclusive English Translation

398. The sense and the scope of schism. The requirement for determining at law the delict of pure schism is: I. that someone withdraw from the sphere of authority [obedientia] of the Roman Pontiff and separate himself from the ecclesiastical communion of the other faithful, either directly or expressly or indirectly or with implicit or tacit consent [factis concludentibus], even if he may not attach himself to a separated schismatic sect; — II.… READ MORE