One need not be a Catholic to understand that the world’s largest religion is in crisis – like just about every other institution from medicine, education, government, unions, political parties, private organizations, etc. Whether you love, hate or are indifferent to Catholicism, this crisis will affect every person on the planet.

The word “schism” has a double pronunciation but a single meaning: a split in authority. This differs from “heresy” which means a split in agreed dogma or teaching. Heresies are automatically schismatic, while schisms usually – but not always – lead to heresy.

Here in the United States, there are conflicting opinions about what bishops and priests are to do with the likes of self-identified “Catholic” politicians who flaunt church teaching and promote abortion, homosexuality, transgender ideology and the rest of the socialist liberal agenda. It is one thing for a private citizen to hold beliefs in disagreement with the church regarding the sanctity of human life, and quite another to enact policies that become law.

Another bone of contention is the fact that any priest anywhere in the world has the right to say a Latin Mass. Some bishops, however, many of whom are the first to demand obedience from their priests, apparently believe that this virtue does not apply to them, and have defied this standing policy of the church. Then we have the strange control many bishops have exercised during the alleged COVID pandemic, forbidding Holy Communion on the tongue, in utter defiance of the church’s own canon law, halting Mass because of unmasked congregants, even calling the police to remove them, and not allowing congregants to even sing to the Lord.

There are approximately two billion Christians in the world, of which over one billion are at least nominally Catholic.

This is a de facto schism.

On the international scene, the Vatican has thrown under the bus the underground and independent Catholic Church in China. The government-sponsored “Patriotic Catholic Church” was rife with obedience to communist orders. All Chinese priests and bishops who had belonged to the “Patriotic” church had been automatically excommunicated before the advent of Pope Francis. Now, the reverse is true.

Because the now disgraced and de-frocked homosexual predator Cardinal Theodore McCarrick negotiated this situation years ago, it is the now underground church that has been separated from the Vatican. McCarrick, now in his 90s but still wielding unknown influence, is likely a deliberate and conscious communist agent. In the early 1950s, Stalin ordered the Catholic Church to be infiltrated. McCarrick received his career path after spending two years in a communist training school in Switzerland.

It is no conspiracy theory that the church was infiltrated, but given in direct testimony by reformed ex-communist spy Bella Dodd before a congressional committee in the 1950s. She stated that she herself recruited over 1,100 homosexuals into the seminaries, let alone what other spies might have done.

The cardinal of Hong Kong has denounced all this, yet has been ignored not only by the secular but even the mainstream Catholic press, fully under the control of compromised bishops.

Now we go to Germany. Here, the vast majority of Catholic bishops are tending towards interfaith Holy Communion, women’s ordination and the entire panoply of the “Rainbow Coalition.” Even Pope Francis has shown some mild resistance, which makes serious Catholics wonder if it is merely “too much, too soon” that motivates him. His inconsistencies, mindless rambling interviews that flirt with heresy and equivocal press conferences, have been on display for the entire world to see for years now.

Many Protestants have long admired the Catholic consistency of its moral teachings. There are approximately two billion Christians in the world, of which over one billion are at least nominally Catholic. Add to that well over 35,000 Protestant denominations that cannot agree among themselves what all the Christian teachings from the past 2,000 years ought to be, and a Catholic schism may turn western culture into a Hydra-headed cacophony of confusion.

With persecution of Christians now happening in even the western world, such a schism would be everybody’s business, even for those not concerned over religious dogma, but care about the basic liberties we have enjoyed – and abused – for too long.

The views expressed here are those of the author.

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