Saints on Both Sides of the Stupid

Every so often I remind myself that in St. Catherine of Siena’s day there were future saints on both sides of the Western Schism. For almost seven decades the popes had resided in Avignon, well under the thumb of the King of France—a state of affairs that was bad for the Church and probably wasn’t all that good for France either. The Avignon Papacy ended in 1376 AD when Catherine persuaded Pope Gregory XI to bring the papacy back to Rome. Gregory died not long after the move, and his immediate successor, Urban VI, was something of a belligerent so-and-so who lost no time in alienating the College of Cardinals. They returned to Avignon, and elected an anti-pope they called Clement VII; and so began the Western Schism. Catherine, not surprisingly, supported Urban VI.

So happens, there was a Dominican friar named Vincent Ferrer who was convinced that the election of Urban VI was invalid. When Clement VII was elected in Avignon, Ferrer supported him, and later supported his successor, Benedict XIII. But when the schism finally ended in 1418, Urban VI remained on the roll of valid popes and “Clement” and “Benedict” did not. The Church determined that Ferrer was wrong, the winners wrote the histories, and Vincent Ferrer is just a minor footnote to the history of the times.

Well, except that he was canonized in 1455. He has a stained glass window dedicated to him in the church in which I made my life profession as a Lay Dominican, where he can look across the aisle at St. Catherine; and the Universal Church celebrates his feast day every April 5th.

So what’s the point here?

I was motivated to ponder Saints Catherine and Vincent by a number of blog posts I’ve read over the year since Francis was elected pope. Many Catholics are concerned by Francis’ willingness to “make a mess”, and are afraid that he’s going to try to give away the doctrinal store. I’ve even heard Catholics use the phrase “the October Schism” in reference to the upcoming Synod on the family; they fear that he will attempt to change the Church’s constant teaching on marriage, and that serious schism will result because of it. (I’m afraid that some of them seem to be looking forward to it.)

Personally I rather like Pope Francis, and I don’t believe he’s going to do any such thing. I will admit to wishing that he would stop making phone calls.

But either way I am not worried, and I will not live in fear.

It’s not that schism cannot happen. With the Church, I believe in papal infallibility—but papal infallibility has a surprisingly narrow range. Urban VI, while not a libertine, wasn’t a shining star in the annals of the papacy, and his pugnacious attitude was a major contribution to the schism. Infallibility is no guarantee of personal wisdom. God has promised that the Pope cannot wreck things irretrievably, but that hasn’t prevent major schism in the past, and given time and human sinfulness it’s may well happen again in the future (though not, I hope, in my lifetime). And when it does, the Church will survive it.

But it’s not my job to watchdog the Church; that’s the Holy Spirit’s job. My job is to pursue Christ in accordance with my station in life. And the thing I need to remember, when human disagreements and intransigence and sinfulness and stupidity lead to ruptures in the Body of Christ, is that those on the other side of the issue are not my enemies (and that the stupidity isn’t one-sided, even if I truly am on the right side). I might disagree with them; I might think that their concerns are unfounded; and I might be the one who turns out to be wrong. But when all is said and done, we will find that there were saints on both sides of the stupid, just trying to do their best with what God gave them.

St. Catherine and St. Vincent, pray for us that we might be among them.