I was thinking about the concept of schism recently.

Even though I was a post Vatican II child, most of my teachers were trained in the pre-Vatican II Church.

And while almost all of the good sisters embraced the reforms, I experienced the pre-Vatican II mindset from one of the oldest sisters that taught me.

One of the prejudices I imbibed at the time was that schismatics were not much above Lucifer himself!

Discovering reformers

I was a mature adult before I discovered that Martin Luther had been a Catholic Augustinian priest and had good reason to want reform.

When you think about it, schism is a facet of Church from the beginning.

The earliest schism was the separation of Jewish Christianity from Judaism, necessitated by the conquest of Jerusalem by the Roman empire.

Major historical schisms

We have had the Great East-West schism, the Western Schism where up to three popes claimed legitimacy and of course, the Protestant Reformation.

There were also many minor schisms also in the first four hundred years of the Church.

All these were noisy, argumentative and, at times, vitriolic affairs.

A silent schism today

However, there is another schism of our time that is infinitely more damaging – the silent schism – where people have given up on the Catholic Church and are walking away.

I first encountered the term silent schism in the title of Owen O’Sullivan’s book (The silent schism: renewal of Catholic spirit and structures).

This was published in 1997 and it says much about the author and content that the book is as relevant today as when it was published.

Reading the signs

In this book, O’Sullivan certainly read the ‘sign of the times.’

The sad thing is, the people who should have listened didn’t and we find ourselves in a very predictable situation, especially when one takes into account clerical sexual abuse and its cover-up, which came into the public domain after O’Sullivan’s book was published.

He noted that if the Church leadership blocked “avenues to creative change” the result will either be explosion (such as the Reformation) or implosion, where people become disillusioned, and decided staying within the Church is not worth the heartache.

Implosion and censure

I think it’s fair to say we have seen the implosion that a refusal to reform has caused.

It will come as no surprise to hear that the CDF (now DDF) censured Owen O’Sullivan for writing on homosexuality in a non-condemnatory way.

Our obtuse Church leadership continued to punish its prophets while protecting its criminals.

Concerns today

While there is a somewhat more benign leadership in Rome recently – the strong fundamentalist leanings of the Catholic Church remain a cause for concern and Owen O Sullivan’s book ought to be required reading for anyone professing to lead the Church.

• Angela Hanley studied theology as a mature student, graduating in 2010. In 2015 she completed a research MA on Catholic same-sex relationships. She is currently undertaking PhD studies. She has published many articles and two books, Whose a la Carte Menu?: Exploring Catholic Themes in Context and What happened to Fr Sean Fagan?