Several bishops and cardinals have publicly declared that the Church is undergoing a great interior crisis that may lead to a schism in the Church. Cardinal Gerhard Muller, Prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith, recently warned German Cardinals who are behind the progressive, liberal push in the Synod that they are leading the Church to schism.
Now, in a newly-released video by the Polish publication Polonia Christiana called Crisis in the Church, Cardinal Raymond Burke, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, and Archbishop Jan Pawel Lenga likewise warned of a looming schism in the Church.
Cardinal Burke said, “We’re in a time of crisis in the Church, a critical moment where we may have to give our all to safeguard and promote the truth of faith not only for our own salvation, but for the salvation of the generations to come.”
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, said that “no further proof is needed to know that we are really living in a deep crisis – an interior crisis – of the Church, of the Faith…In the last few years, it has become more manifest as even some bishops, in their public pronouncements, contradict some aspects of Catholic doctrine, especially on moral issues.”
Dmir Skiba, Editor in Chief of Polonia Christiana, the Polish Publication which released the video, said: “Undoubtedly, we are living in a time of one of the greatest – if not the greatest – crises in the history of the Church. A crisis which is made manifest in the fact that pastors of the Church, many among the clergy, would rather obey the world than the teaching of Jesus Christ.”
Erring Bishops Go Undisciplined
Many bishops, who have publicly supported positions contrary to the Magisterium, go completely undisciplined. In fact, many of them are even given prominent platforms to push their views. Cardinal Walter Kasper, leader of the progressive wing, was even given by Pope Francis the privilege to address the College of Cardinals prior to the First Synod on the Family. It was in that address that Kasper advanced his controversial position to allow divorced and re-married Catholics to receive communion.
From the highest levels of the Church, we see a prevailing focus on “mercy” and “compassion”, without emphasis on the pre-requisite to receiving mercy from God: genuine, sorrowful repentance from sin, and confession. Archbishop Lenga said: “In the churches, Christ is no longer proclaimed, one does not speak anymore like Christ…and this causes a silence to arise around sin, a quieting down of the tone. Sin is what you want it to be.”
Speaking on the idea proposed in the mid-term report of the 2014 Extraordinary Synod on the Family and repeated by various bishops’ conferences, Cardinal Burke says, “It is heresy to teach that homosexual relations are not disordinate or are not disordered, or have positive elements.”
The Pope Will Show Which Side He is On
“The Pope during the Synod will show whose side he is on,” said Archbishop Lenga. “If he accepts the statement of those who want to distribute Holy Communion to the divorced, there would be a heresy in the Church, and if he does not accept, there could be a schism in the Church.”
Lenga concluded, “Either we are on the side of Christ, or on the side of the devil. There is no third option. The common people are sometimes closer to Christ than priests.”
Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, who has been a spokesman for orthodoxy during the Synod crisis like few others in the hierarchy, says we are “already living in the time of schism” and points directly at Cardinal Walter Kasper as one of the main culprits. “These false words will be revealed,” he says. “Christ said all that is hidden will be revealed and these strategies of Cardinal Kasper and his group will be revealed as a lie, a strategy that is against the spirit of Christ and the apostles.”
Burke is blunt about the current state of the Church confronting heretical positions coming from those high up in its leadership. “If this means that Cardinals will be opposed to Cardinals then we simply have to accept the fact that that’s the situation in which we find ourselves,” he said. “Certainly for my part I don’t look for this kind of conflict but in defending the truth of the faith I end up in a disagreement or conflict with another conflict. What has to be primary to me is the truth of the faith.” ∎