Exposing the Lie that Upholding Apostolic Tradition and Sound Doctrine Causes Division and Disunity

The obvious falsehood, often used against proponents of orthodoxy during Francis' pontificate, must go if Leo XIV's stated wish to end polarisation within the Church is to be achieved.

St Peter’s Square after rain (photo by Sean Ang on Unsplash)

Now that some time has passed to calmly reflect on the Francis pontificate, one aspect urgently needing examination is the nature of the internal disunity, discord and disorder of those years.

In previous pontificates, polarisation and division were widely seen to have come from dissenters – modernist cardinals, bishops and theologians who promoted teaching that ran contrary to the Magisterium.

Popes up until Francis had corrected them, perhaps not as firmly or frequently as many would have liked, but it was always clear that the Holy Father, despite occasional questionable words or actions of his own, was the focus of unity, the custodian of sound doctrine, and that the dissenters were the protagonists of division.

But when Cardinal Bergoglio was elected, that all changed. Suddenly the dissenters were in charge as Francis quickly set about implementing the modernist revolution, unleashing great unrest and what many view as a diabolical disorientation within the institutional Church that has caused great harm to souls and the Church’s evangelical witness.

There are too many examples of this discord to mention, but Cardinal Walter Kasper’s 2014 proposal to allow, in some cases, civilly remarried divorcees to receive Holy Communion was arguably the touchpaper, igniting bitter internal and very public infighting that up until then I’d never witnessed in my time covering the Vatican.

The “Kasper Proposal” became, as many had predicted, a Trojan Horse. It led to Amoris Laetitia and the promotion of a so-called “paradigm shift” that ushered in other heterodox and heretical ideas, and sparked further acrimony and bitterness that lasted throughout Francis’ pontificate.

We can easily forget just how grave the situation was: seven filial corrections signed by bishops, priests, prominent laity and respected scholars; the famous five dubia from four cardinals followed by a second dubia eight years later; a cardinal calling for a “profession of faith on the part of the Pope;” and a leading theologian warning of what he called an “internal papal schism.”

The Church Fathers and other great theologians of the past are clear about the origin of disunity in the Church. St Augustine of Hippo identified the deliberate rejection of established doctrine as a main source of schism and division. St Irenaeus of Lyons, in his writings against the Gnostics, argued that heresies fracture the Church’s unity by introducing teachings contrary to apostolic tradition. St Vincent of Lerins famously warned that the development of doctrine must never introduce novelty or create division within the Church, but instead grow organically in continuity with apostolic tradition. Then there is Pope Leo XIII who, in his 1899 apostolic letter Testem benevolentiae nostrae, listed specific modern heterodoxies at that time as heretical tendencies jeopardising Church unity.

And yet so often during those Francis years of revolution, and even now during the pontificate of Pope Leo, it is orthodox Catholics — often traditional but not exclusively so — who continue to be accused of being the ideologues, the dividers and the dissenters. All for simply holding the line and defending apostolic tradition in the face of a prevailing storm of heterodoxy and heresy.

To be sure, vocal and highly reactionary elements who aligned themselves with tradition exacerbated those divisions, as did social media. But for those with eyes to see, the chief cause was allowing ideologies alien to the Catholic Church and her Magisterium to be imposed on the faithful, thereby engendering discord, deepening polarisation, and increasing the chance of schism.

Pope Leo has stressed that his aim is to neutralise this polarisation. If he’s serious about this and wishes to bring internal Church peace and unity, then he might wish to consider its provenance and acknowledge the great lie and false projection of the past pontificate: that it was those who faithfully stood by the established teaching of the Church in the face of heterodoxy and dissent who were the principal divisive trouble-makers and even schismatics.

Nothing could be further from the truth.