By Fr. Jeremy Miller, OP

I think many of us have personally experienced schism. Do you know of a family, perhaps even your own, when a breach between grown brothers and sisters, or between elderly parents and a grown son or daughter has become so wide and embittered that no one talks to each other? Perhaps it is even more than cold silence. Perhaps there are hostile accusations.

There are few things more painful than a wedding situation drawing relatives together, but blood relatives sit on opposite sides of the banquet room, refusing to break years of silence and suspicion. This is the simple meaning of this strange word from theology -- schism! The bond of family communion is split and distorted and turned upside down. It hurts, and many of us have been hurt by it.

My first instinct to the editor's invitation to write something on Church schism was to draft something theological. But that does not really get at the pain of schism. Something more personal is required even when we are thinking about schism in the church.

I suppose we first met the word "schism" in a Church History book describing the breakdown in family unity of Eastern and Western Christians. 1054 A.D. is the usual date people use but the break was coming for some time before that. The Protestant Reformation in the 16^th Century was a splitting off from the one "Western Christian family" but Roman Catholics always called that a "heresy" and not a schism. The difference was supposed to be that a group in schism broke from the unity of the Church but still retained orthodox beliefs while a group in heresy denied articles of the faith. I have never been able to appreciate that difference because when divisions occur in the Church there is always some point of doctrine at issue, along with political considerations.

The pain of these things is that both sides think the other is wrong and is being unfaithful to Christ. The Eastern Orthodox think Roman Catholics are in schism and are "unorthodox." Protestants through Catholics had slipped into heresy and hence they "protested." Family feuds are the most bitter. Arguments go back and forth, suspicions increase, and often there is violence. It is not my purpose here to analyze the doctrinal differences, the arguments as it were. The one family of Christ is split, and there is pain in that.

Schism is happening today. The Episcopal Church in the United States has felt it within the last year, as laity and clergy has split from the larger family over issues like the ordination of women to the Episcopal priesthood. Roman Catholics have been reading about French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and his traditionalist movement. Lefebvre thought the recent Vatican Council was heretical, and he is training his own seminarians in Econe, Switzerland, to perpetuate some more-ancient form of Catholic life. The Lefebvre church of Queen of Angels in Dickinson, TX, is in schism; but then Lefebvre thinks that we are all in schism. The Church says to Lefebvre, "You are acting outside of the one universal Church," but he says in return, "You are acting beyond the one ancient Church."

In a more theological essay I would write about growth and development, and that if a living body is to remain the same and remain faithful to Christ, it has to change and adapt or it will become a fossil, and probably quote that famous saying of Cardinal Newman, "Here below, to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." I think Lefebvre is seriously wrong on what it means to be a living, faithful Church. But I want to keep this as a more personalized reflection.

I had the rich experience of living almost four years in Belgium and doing a lot of research, coincidentally, on the fascinating Cardinal Newman. I learned many things from that experience, but two things stand out, and they had nothing to do with books and research. They do have a lot to do with this idea of schism in a reverse sort of way.

I was a real foreigner at first, in their language, a "buiten-lander." It took me about a year to become comfortable in their language and customs. But there was never any doubt, from the first day, that I was part of their Church. They gave me the sign of peace, of fellowship. I prayed with them. I communicated in the Eucharist with them.

In fact, after a while when I was able to read Dutch in a fractured accent, I celebrated Mass for Flemish friends. I had the sense, as never before, that I was a member of a great family. We shared the same Lord, the same faith, the same Baptism, the same Eucharist. To be sure, they saw things from slightly different angles than I did (but this anticipates my second experience). There was a sense of being in-communion-with that was very rich and very warming. As I learned their language and ways more deeply, it was clear that their Church was my Church.

This experience brought home to me, in a painful way, what schism in the Church means. It means that the hand of fellowship is not fully extended, that the faith is not fully shared, that others are your brothers and sisters in Christ, but there is still family disunity. With Belgian Catholics, the Eucharist was an immediate meal of unity for me, but for Catholics and Orthodox and Anglicans and Protestants, it is the constant reminder that the family is still split. My image is of the wedding banquet room, and folks are in different corners.

My second rich recollection from Belgian days was their different point of view on things. This is hard to explain. We shared the same faith, and to a great extent, the same devotions. But they brought to their understanding of it a perspective which made mine richer. Maybe it was their sense of history. Charlemagne's ancient headquarters were not far away. The last non-Italian Pope had been a professor in the same building in which I attended lectures. Whether it was this sense of history, or whatever, I knew that my American Catholicism needed their Belgian Catholicism. And we both needed African Catholicism, which in turn needed Asian Catholicism.

And this is the second pain of schism. When a group splits off from the wider family, it runs the danger of "tunnel vision," of becoming limited by a narrowed nationalistic or cultural vision. Rarely does a schismatic group become a universal Church. I do not use "universal Church" in a triumphalistic way, although it has been used that way. I use it in the rich sense of a diversified family, each contributing to and sharing from, the one Lord, the one faith, the one Baptism.

No one really wins a family feud. And no one really wins a schism. But before you can talk about the doctrinal issues, the arguments as it were, you first have to feel the pain of it. I have experienced the healing of a personal family schism, and the first step was the recognition that everyone is suffering by the silence. I think that is why Paul VI has not excommunicated Lefebvre yet. He is trying to keep channels of brotherly communication open. Oh yes, the opposite of "schism" in New Testament Greek is "philadelphia" (brotherly love).