The Catholic Church is headed for a schism. Conflict within that institution is nothing new of course, but at the current moment, its future path is rather uncertain. The two factions at hand are the “traditionalists” and the “liberal modernists”, and they both spiral down their echo chambers, losing contact with the other half of the church.
The conservative Catholics pray that the rather challenging for their faith papacy runs its course, while Pope Francis seeks new ways to dilute the catholic dogma, to be more palpable for the hostile masses. However, the death of the pope will not solve the fundamental division in the institution. The Franciscans now have an LGBT Mission. The traditionalists have Church Militant, led by the ex-gay guru Michael Voris on their mission to fight Satan incarnate in all things Hillary Clinton, who was revealed to seduce male interns at the catholic media company. …. Well, this head of traditionalist Hydra was cut off, but in its place, there are seven more, always crazier than their previous iteration. The division is obvious, and I think a major schism is coming.
It is still uncertain which faction will take charge after the next conclave. One can assume that the College of Cardinals has only gotten more woke and liberal as new members of the group were handpicked by the openly leftist pope. Still, there is quite a powerful African lobby in the Catholic Church, which is enthusiastic about reversing Church policy on whatever limited gay acceptance there has been in the last decade. The young clergy has shifted in the right-wing and dogmatic direction. One could very well see the verdict in the Sistine Chapel going either way. And the losing faction will likely make its exit out of the church. If TradCats were to be victorious in the battle for control over the Vatican, the political repercussions in some regions of the world, where the church still has plenty of power over local politics could be rather dire.
While TradCats have quite a few unhealthy obsessions, most centred around invoking Latin spells during sacred rituals instead of the English ones, they are also obsessed with condemning other religious viewpoints, often opposing any religious freedom and demanding the installation of theocracy. In the sectarian environment of the traditional Catholics, there is one particularly blasphemous slur, the e-word.
Ecumenism
Ecumenism is a notion fundamentally alien to any TradCat. The idea of seeking dialogue with different Christian denominations is seen as outright heresy. Pope John Paul II received major flak from that wing for his commitment to ecumenical efforts, seeking dialogue and unity among Christian sects. He organized historic meetings with leaders of Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican churches, and even visited a mosque. Ecumenism is the greatest sin for the traditionalists, and yet even they cannot escape it. In their case, it takes the utmost horrid form.
Schneider’s Unholy Alliance
Archbishop Athanasius Schneider is one of the leaders at the vanguard of the traditional Catholic movement and fully embraces the repulsion for interreligious dialogue. In a 2013 interview, he expressed strong opposition to ecumenism, arguing that proselytizing by “false religions and sects” should be limited in countries with a Catholic majority. He believed that, in such contexts, these groups have no right to publicly promote their beliefs.
But here comes the surreal ecumenism of Bishop Schneider. He is more than happy to ally himself to exert political pressure in Kazakhstan with Muslim religious leaders. In his book Christus Vincit Schneider recounts “To my amazement, the Muslim government officials who were presiding at the meeting quoted the Bible and even the New Testament in their interventions. We can certainly have interreligious meetings on such themes, for instance. (Issues such as family, abortion…) Exactly, and there we could do a great deal of work”.
Once political gains are in play, the hated faith somehow becomes an ally. In the darkest shadows of traditional Catholicism, a new rendition of ecumenism is born.
United by the devil himself
A similar bizarre pattern plays out in Russia. As prof. Laycock explores in his video with Genetically Modified Skeptic, in Russia, there seems to be a rise in an inter-faith dialogue between the Muslim radicals and orthodox nationalists calculated to create a coalition of the faithful to serve Putin’s agenda. How can Putin do that? He accuses the West of outright satanism. Prof. Laycock points out:
“One of the uses of demons is bringing people together against a common foe. (…) These coalitions are going to be short-lived you can’t base an alliance on just hating the same group of people. There was a story recently about a Ukrainian soldier who was captured and he turned out to be an Evangelical Christian and so they brought in a Russian Orthodox priest to exorcise him to get rid of the demon of Evangelical Christianity from this soldier. Once Putin gets what he wants all this language of “It is us the people of Faith against the devil” that is all going to go away, but for right now it is politically useful.”
Has there been a fundamental change in how Catholics perceive Muslims around Europe? Have they opened their doors to welcome immigrants swimming over the Mediterranean Sea or suddenly fell in love with Ayran? Certainly not. And yet in the political aspect, they ally with the believers in Allah, just because of their shared passion for destroying classical liberal values that Europe and US have been built upon. And thus Tradcats find themselves aligned with the Kremlin ruler, who embodies the very regress they want to see domestically.
The looming theocratic backlash
While America does not have much to worry about at the current moment from their domestic theocrats uniting, as the Muslim population on the New Continent is still minuscule, Europe has much more reason for concern in that regard.
In a couple of decades, we could see the Christian right vote together hand in hand with the Muslim minority to repeal gay marriage.
We could see the theocrats unite with Islam to protect religion from ridicule and curb freedom of speech.
We could live through an epoch of state-enforced pornography bans.
We could see the Trad Cats and fundamentalist Muslims contrive legislation that would erode the (true) gender equality that now is fundamental and unquestioned in Western societies.
Christianity will oftentimes paint itself as some sort of saviour from Islam, but that is just false. It is atheism which gives true resistance against the terror brought by Islam, not Catholics or their holier than the Pope TradCats.