The disciplinary department of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) recently announced that Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò had committed the crime of schism and thus had excommunicated himself. The archbishop had refused to defend himself against the charges and even called them a “badge of honor.”
In the circles where Viganò is popular, there is also a lot of talk of heresy and apostasy—much of it loose and without foundation.
Consequently, people are often confused about the crimes of heresy, apostasy, and schism. The Code of Canon Law (CIC) defines them, but many people have not read the definitions or read them carefully, so we will look at them here.
Canon 751 provides that “heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the supreme pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”
The worst of the three is apostasy, since it involves “the total repudiation of the Christian faith.” In other words, an apostate is someone who used to be a Christian but no longer identifies himself as a Christian. He has rejected the entire Faith. If someone still professes to be a Christian, he is not an apostate.
The definition of heresy is a bit harder to process because it uses technical language. When it refers to “some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith,” it is referring to what is more popularly known as a dogma—that is, something that the Catholic Church has infallibly defined (requiring Catholic faith) to be divinely revealed (requiring divine faith).
With this in mind, we see that for the crime of heresy to occur, a person must (1) be baptized and (2) refuse to accept (i.e., doubt or deny) (3) a dogma and (4) do so obstinately.
Each of these elements must be present for heresy to occur. For example, merely denying a Church teaching is not enough for heresy. Even denying an infallible teaching is not enough. It must be a true dogma—something the Church has infallibly defined to be part of divine revelation.
The other three conditions also must be met. This is why some authors, like Hilaire Belloc, are incorrect to speak of Islam as a heresy. There were Jewish and Christian influences in early Islam, but, as Belloc himself admits, Muhammad was never baptized (The Great Heresies, ch. 4), and neither are Muslims in general. Islam thus is not a heresy, but a separate world religion that has some Christian influences.
Because heresy rejects individual dogmas rather than the Christian faith as a whole, heresy is, in principle, less grave than apostasy. It’s worse to reject the whole Faith than to reject only a part.
For its part, schism is—again, in principle—less grave than heresy, for it does not require the rejection of any dogma. The Greek term schisma means division or dissension, and the crime of schism requires one of two things: (1) refusal of submission to the pope or (2) refusal of communion with those who are subject to him. Either way, the schismatic has divided himself from the body of the Church.
In practice—and especially since 1870, when the dogma of papal infallibility was defined—schism often includes heresy, as people who refuse submission to the pope often deny his infallibility.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. One could accept the Church’s full teaching about the pope and yet refuse to submit to him. This is the case, for example, with sedevacantists, who believe what the Church teaches about the pope but think the papal chair is currently empty, with the result that they do not submit to the actual reigning pontiff.
Similarly, one could submit to the pontiff but refuse communion with others who submit to him. This also would qualify as schism, without any dogma of the Faith being denied.
You might wonder why refusal of communion with other Catholics is part of the definition of schism. Why doesn’t it just focus on refusal of submission to the pope? The answer is that there have been many historical cases of people separating themselves from the Church by severing ties with people other than the pope. In fact, this is how schism began.
For example, in the early Church, someone might not like his local bishop. He might accuse his bishop of being a heretic or a usurper of the office of bishop or just being a bad person and refuse ecclesiastical communion with him. Since such a person separated himself from the local church, he was regarded as a schismatic.
As the Church’s consciousness of the role of the pope as the center of Christian unity grew, it was realized that this provided a way to clarify local schisms of this type. Whether the local bishop was in communion with the pope or not was the test. If the local bishop was in communion with the pope, then you were separating yourself from the Catholic Church by refusing to be in communion with the local bishop. On the other hand, if the local bishop was not in communion with the pope—that is, if the bishop himself was a schismatic—then you weren’t separating yourself from the Catholic Church by refusing to be in ecclesiastical communion with him.
It’s worth noting that there is a relationship between heresy and schism and the theological virtues of faith and charity. By rejecting part of the Faith, heresy strikes at the former, while by rejecting communion, schism strikes at the latter. As St. Augustine said,
heretics sully the purity of the Faith itself by entertaining false notions about God, while schismatics withdraw themselves from fraternal charity by unlawful separation, though they believe the same things we do (Faith and the Creed 10[21]).
Because the Reformers rejected multiple Catholic dogmas, Protestantism has historically been classified as a heresy. On the other hand, the separation between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy did not involve rejecting dogmas that had been defined at the time it occurred, and so Eastern Orthodoxy has been historically classified as a schism.
However, there has been a shift in the terminology used for these communities due to the fact that people who have been raised in them can’t be charged with the crime of separating themselves from the Catholic Church through their own fault. The Second Vatican Council stated,
Even in the beginnings of this one and only Church of God there arose certain rifts, which the apostle strongly condemned. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions made their appearance and quite large communities came to be separated from full communion with the Catholic Church—for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame.
The children who are born into these communities and who grow up believing in Christ cannot be accused of the sin involved in the separation, and the Catholic Church embraces upon them as brothers, with respect and affection. . . .
Even in spite of [the obstacles] it remains true that all who have been justified by faith in baptism are members of Christ’s body, and have a right to be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church (Unitatis Redintegratio 3).
Thus, today, Church documents refer to Protestants and Orthodox as “separated brethren” rather than heretics because they’re not presumed to be in bad faith.
The situation is not the same when someone newly separates himself from the Church. People can and do commit the crimes of apostasy, heresy, and schism today, which is why those crimes are still on the books.
There are penalties for committing these crimes. Canon 1364 §1 provides that “an apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.” The term latae sententiae is Latin for “of the sentence having been brought.” The idea is that by committing apostasy, heresy, or schism, the person has brought the sentence of excommunication upon himself. That is, the excommunication happened automatically.
The opposite of this is an excommunication ferendae sententiae (“of the sentence which will be brought”), in which the excommunication has to be imposed by competent Church authority.
In the case of Archbishop Viganò, the case for him committing schism was fairly straightforward. Among other things, he had become a sedevacantist and did not recognize Pope Francis as a legitimate pontiff. He thus refused submission to the actual pontiff and thereby committed schism and excommunicated himself. To clear away doubt about this, the DDF made a finding of fact about what he had done and announced the result.
The situation was not as clear in the previous most famous case of excommunication for schism, which was that of the bishops involved in the 1988 episcopal consecrations by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).
Unlike Archbishop Viganò, they recognized the reigning pontiff (John Paul II) as a true pope and professed their submission to him. However, this raised the question of what it means to submit to the pope. Obviously, not every act of disobeying the pope—however slight—counted as refusing submission to him, but would mere verbal profession of submission suffice to avoid schism?
In 1988, John Paul II ruled that something more than mere verbal submission was required and that by being consecrated as bishops against his instructions, the bishops of the SSPX had committed a schismatic act, since “disobedience to the Roman pontiff in a very grave matter and of supreme importance for the unity of the Church . . . implies in practice the rejection of the Roman primacy” (Ecclesia Dei 4).
Fortunately, the excommunications of the SSPX bishops were lifted in 2009, which means that they are no longer in a state of schism (they can’t be, since schism itself triggers automatic excommunication).
It is to be hoped that Viganò’s excommunication will also be temporary. Excommunication is a medicinal penalty (CIC 1312 §1 1°) that is meant to prompt repentance. Hopefully, Viganò will repent and return to communion with the Church.
However, his case serves as a salutary warning. Viganò received attention from the DDF because of his high public profile, and by announcing his schism, the Dicastery has warned people of the kinds of attitudes that schism involves.
Chief among Viganò’s schismatic beliefs is the idea that Francis is not pope. Whatever else one thinks of him, he is the pope. To flirt with the idea he is not is to flirt with schism, and to embrace sedevacantism is to enter schism and incur automatic excommunication.