Content area
Full Text
ANALYSIS
During a recent appearance on the PBS NewsHour, correspondent William Brangham quizzed me about the accusations in a letter Archbishop Carlo vigano had released a couple days earlier. "Do you see this as a demonstration of a schism within the Catholic Church right now?" he asked.
I hoped that panic didn't show in my eyes. I was having flashbacks to church history classes I had taken. Are we in a time comparable to the Great Schism of 1054 that split the Continued on Page 8 Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Churches? Are we headed to something like the Western Schism of 1378 with its three rival popes?
"Schism is a technical word. I wouldn't want to use :hat word," I responded. "But there is definitely in-fighting going on, a power struggle going on. Pope Francis has met a lot resistance since his election because of his reform agenda and what he represents."
I was taken aback by Brangham's question, and yet if he had been reading the same reports, reactions and statements that I had been reading over the last two days, I could understand why he was asking it.
As Massimo Faggioli, church historian from Villanova University told NCR (See Page 14): An archbishop publicly accusing a sitting pope of malfeasance and calling for his resignation, "This is something I don't remember in the last four, five, six centuries."
Viganô's major claims are that Pope Benedict XVI imposed sanctions on then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick because McCarrick had abused minors and had inappropriate relations with seminarians, and that certain officials in the Vatican bureaucracy and the U.S. hierarchy either blocked those sanctions or refused to act on them.
McCarrick's abusive behavior became public in June, when he withdrew from public ministry and eventually resigned from the College of Cardinals. According to Viganö, though, Pope Francis knew about McCarrick's crimes for years, and instead of punishing him, let him play kingmaker for U.S. episcopal appointments. For that, Viganö said, Francis must resign.
Competing statements issued by U.S. prelates following Viganô's bombshell advanced the impression of internecine combat.
Infighting, in real time
Just hours after Viganô's testimony was made public, Bishop Joseph Strickland sent a statement to his parishes in the Diocese of Tyler, Texas,...