Pints With Aquinas - What Exactly is SCHISM? | Fr. Gregory Pine O.P

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

Various versions and accusations of Schism and being schismatic are fairly common in the Church currently. What does Schism actually mean though? What did St. Thomas Aquinas say? Fr. Pine addresses all this. 🟣 Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work as an assistant director for the Thomistic Institute and this is Ponce of the Aquinas. In this episode we're going to talk about schism, like what is the sin of schism, but before doing so, a quick announcement, I suppose a thank you. This past week I went back to Switzerland where I had been for the past three years working on my doctorate and I had my defense and it went well I passed and

So I just wanted to thank you for your prayers. I had made mention of it in an earlier episode and in the actual defense itself, I Yeah, I rarely have experiences of prayer or intercession or like people's support in recognizable or intangible ways, but it was a very wonderful experience, a beautiful experience where I felt born on by or really helped out by the prayers of others. So thanks for praying. I am super appreciative. No more prayers for you.

Okay, schism. Back to this very different thing. I first came across the sin of schism when reading the Divine Comedy or the notion of it because when you go through the various circles of hell and the inferno you come across various types of sinners and they all suffer these terrible contrappassos so the punishment fits the sin. And I remember being very struck by the punishment of the schismatics because their very flesh is torn or like cut into ribbons by their sins.

And I just didn't know what to make of that. And then, you know, since having entered the order and being ordained a priest, you hear the word schism bandied about with some frequency as it is attributed to certain people or laid at certain people's doorstep And so I thought it's you know It's good to be precise in our language and also to be careful in our concepts So it's better to understand what's at stake so that way we can know the church and love the church Ultimately know and love the Lord who gives himself to us in the church's life, so let's get after it here we go who gives himself to us in the church's life. So let's get after it. Here we go. Alright, when St. Thomas describes schism, he describes it as a vice or a sin opposed to a

virtue. And that's actually his method for practically every sin, because St. Thomas isn't so much interested in sin as sin. He's not like, oh, let's get into the nitty-gritty details of sin. What he's really interested in is God, and then how God shares Himself in creation, and then how we return to God and the moral life, fixed on beatitude, and working through our human freedom, with which He blesses and bestows us. And then zooming in on virtue as those various ways in which God gets his grace his divine life into the nooks and crannies of our activities so that way we can be wholly healed and grown and so each time he talks about

a virtue like faith hope charity like prudence justice fortitude temperance he will then address the various sins opposed to that virtue as a way to clarify what the virtue is, but also just to see how the virtue can go off the rails or be underdeveloped or, you know, like weirdly developed, I suppose, so as to guide our discernment and then our practice of the faith and its riches. So, yeah, he's got various vices or sins opposed to various virtues. And I think that when it comes to ecclesial life, we're often thinking of sins opposed to faith, so the big category for him is infidelity, and then the more fine-grained vices would

be heresy, apostasy, and blasphemy, and I did a video recently about blasphemy and blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, or excuse me, the sin against the Holy Spirit, sometimes called blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, excuse me, the sin against the Holy Spirit sometimes called blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. So here I wanted to turn to schism. We often lump in the same kind of schema or categorization or mention the same conversation, but which is actually a sin against charity. And so it's specifically against the ecclesial unity or the ecclesial oneness born of charity. And we call it schism because it's a kind of tearing apart or a sundering of that unity. The word just comes from, you know, the Latin word which comes from the Greek word which

means to tear or to rend. So when you read the Gospels for instance in the synoptic Gospels where you read the account of our Lord's baptism and you hear the voice of the Father and see the dove descending The word for you know, the heavens are torn open is this word or variation on this word So let's talk a little bit about that ecclesial unity and then let's talk a little bit about the sin which is opposed to it So I think that when we hear like the ecclesial unity we just assume that that's metaphorical or figurative or maybe poetic it's like yeah oneness what does that even mean like I'm me you're you can we actually be together we have some experiences of unity like in family or in friendship but we don't have a thick notion of

unity whereas st. Thomas is a far thicker notion and the church adopts a far thicker notion of unity of this sort. So we can actually be one in a real way in family and friendship sure, but also like in society and the polity and the culture more profoundly still in the church. But what would that mean? So we're not talking about a unity like of what? Like of a substance, or of a quantity, or of a quality. We're talking about a unity of relations or relationships, which involves like doing and then having done to, or which involves giving and receiving. So we have to be clear about what the unity entails,

so that way we can be clear about how it's built up, and then potentially how it's torn down. So it's, you know, you'll hear it said in the tradition, I think, especially of St. Robert Bellarmine on this point. He's like, things you need to have in place are faith, sacraments, and governance. And a lot of us, you know, hear that and think like, cool, one plus one plus one. But it's not just that. Because it's not just a unity of the theological virtues and of the sacraments because that doesn't actually constitute us as an ecclesial whole it

just makes us similar in these things like oh we all have faith hope and charity oh we all you know received from the same sacraments nor on the other hand is it just having the same head namely Christ and then his vicar the Pope on earth because that makes for a unity under one, but not a unity of one, like in the way that England and Canada are under the same sovereign, but are constituted as separate nations or commonwealths. So in order for it to be a genuine ecclesial unity, we're talking about a unity in which the members, as members, have a communion among themselves. It's a relationship of belonging, of incorporation. So it's a peculiar mode of dependence upon God and then interdependence amongst each other. And how does that work? Well, it's like, you know, we're parts of a whole, not so as to be suborned or subjected in a totalitarian mess, but so as to assume our place

beneath the Most High God, but in union with those who are also meant to assume their place beneath the Most High God. And so, like, I mean, the main image that we use to describe this in the sacred scriptures is as the body of Christ, you know, so Christ the head, and we are as members, in the sense that we constitute a kind of mystical person or moral person, whereby the divine life flows from the head to the members, and that we are thereby incorporated more perfectly, or made yet more perfectly, members by our participation in the life of faith, hope, and charity, and our participation in the life of the sacraments. So the Holy Spirit prompts us in the life of the church to believe and to hope and to love not just as individuals

but as members, not just as subjected to God but as incorporated in the life of the ecclesial body in concert within the ensemble as a member. So yeah, which makes us pertain to the whole or which binds us to the whole. And so then when we're talking about schism, we're talking about a sin against this unity, which is a real unity. Not just like a fairy tale unity, or a metaphorical, or figurative, or poetic unity, but a real unity. So the sin is directly opposed to that type of unity, to the wholeness, or to the integrity of ecclesial life and opposed to it as this great common good. So we have various experiences of the common good in our life, whether in family life or

friendship or in the polity or maybe your city sports a particular sports team. But in the church we're talking about the highest imaginable common good apart from God himself who is the common good of the whole universe where this network of relationships is meant to conduce to the end of salvation right which is which is beyond the tranquility of order to towards which the the polity is ordered itself so this ecclesial unity is expressed in two main relationships which would be among the members and then towards the head right so this and this. And then a schismatic one would be one who refuses to commune with those subjects, you know, to the Holy Roman Pontiff, or refuses to submit to the Holy Roman Pontiff himself.

So that would be like the main sense of what's at stake here with schism. And I think that, yeah, maybe just to kind of pick up a couple pieces then at the end, the way that this, you know, the way that this cashes out is it's basically like, it's a sin against our Eucharistic life because when you think about it, the Eucharist is the sacrament of communion. You've heard it said perhaps that the Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church. That has to be interpreted in a particular way.

But what we're talking about is that when we celebrate the sacrament, or we offer the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, the sacrifice of Calvary, there are various kind of sign actions at work in that offering which make certain realities real for us or bring them to bear on us. So this two-fold consecration, it brings the passion to bear in which our Lord's body and blood were separated and its efficacy, its power, by virtue of the giving under the appearance of bread and wine, under the appearance of nourishment, it furnishes us with the grace and virtue, specifically the virtue of charity, to grow in

our pursuit of the Lord and our incorporation in his body. And then, by virtue of the fact, this is like St. Paul and St. Augustine, you've got many grains, one loaf, many grapes, one chalice. So too, the Eucharist makes us, many Christians, to be one church, or one body of Christ, many members, one head, all incorporated in the one. And so this is like our Eucharistic life conduces to unity. It ought to conduce to unity and we ought to testify to our unity, but schism works against that unity. And as a result of which it can be a grave scandal for those not within the bounds of the Church,

or not within the ranks of its members, because they see, yeah, see how they don't love each other, or see how they act against the love of the Church. So it's a matter of our acting against the Church's holiness, really, or the Church's sanctity. Because the Church herself is always in a state of grace, even if its members aren't necessarily in a state of grace, because the Church herself is sinless, even as she includes sinful members. And when we act against the Church in this way, we're acting against, you know, the Lord's spotless bride.

So schism, yeah, it can look, it can look in various ways, but it's not just like simple disobedience to the Pope. Like the Pope says, you know, like, go and get me subway. And you're like, I won't. No, it's, it's disobedience to the Pope's head of the church by a repudiation of his headship, or it's, you know, like a rejection of the communion which we are meant to enjoy with the members of the body. So it's like when we don't admit it intellectually, that's heresy. Like you

don't have this power, or this isn't true, or whatever else, you know, the way that you teach, yada yada. But when we refuse it effectively, or volitionally, when we refuse it at the level of the heart, when we refuse it at the level of choice, that's schism. And you might do so by trying to destroy it, or ignoring it, or acting as if it weren't. But ultimately, what's the point of highlighting all these things, so that we fear and look around every corner, lest schism creep up on us and lay us waste? No, that's not the point. The point is to say that Christ reveals himself in this way as the head of the body, the body which is his bride, which he keeps pure and spotless, unstained and undefiled.

And sometimes we get overwhelmed in ecclesial life just looking around at the many sins of the church's members, or the church's pastors, or whoever else, and we begin to think against it or love against it if such a thing can be described in that way because of bewilderment, because of being just thrown for a loop or otherwise confused. But at the end of the day, we cling fast to Christ the head, and in clinging fast to Christ the head, we cling fast to her members. And that's not to say, like, let's paper over all of our differences and pretend like we

don't actually have anything to discuss. We do have things to discuss, right? But that your your battle is not with flesh and blood It's with powers and principalities and whenever you find yourself saying this is us first them. It's probably not It's probably us first the evil one and his demons the world of flesh and the devil whatever it is That's trying to cause in us this conflict which would stir up in us Certain sentiments or even thoughts or even choices against the ecclesial unity. So believe, hope, and love, and ask the Lord for a grace to endure the difficulties which might otherwise, you know, throw you for a loop or confuse you, and so that you can persevere not just in faith, hope, and charity in the sacramental life,

not just in submission to the Holy Roman Pontiff, youiff, who is the vicar of Christ on earth, but also to this weird, strange union which Christ intends for us, His Church, as a way to conduct us further up and further into the divine life. Alright, so we take the whole of it, faith, sacraments, governance, according to the way that the Lord disposes, and we choose it. We choose all. So that's what I hope to share. I hope this is of some

service to you. This is Pines with Aquinas. If you haven't yet, please do subscribe to the channel, push the bell and get cool updates when other sweet things come out. Also I contribute to a podcast called God Splitting and we have had a couple of conversations about this theme so you might just check out God Splitting. Cool stuff. And then I wrote a book. It's called Prudence. Choose confidently, live boldly and I I think you might find it helpful for living your life right discerning your options but effectively laying hold of your Christian existence as the protagonist thereof not as the victim and so yeah no of my prayers for you please pray for me again thanks so much for your prayers

for my doctoral defense just very grateful and just very happy. So look forward to chatting with you next time on Pines with Aquinas. Cheers.