Pope Francis’ progressive statements and projects make headlines across the globe and his restriction of the Tridentine Mass continues causing a stir in Catholic circles. Both have made clear the dual threat facing the Catholic Church at present: heresy and schism. The Church has weathered these twin dangers throughout history, but the present age introduces a novel factor. In the past, these threats have always come from without, battering against the Church as breakers against a ship’s prow. Now, both heresy and schism have infiltrated the Church’s own ranks. The resulting chaos has been disastrous, breeding what the late Cardinal George Pell called “a toxic nightmare,” presided over by Pope Francis and his cabal of ambiguous confreres.

The lack of clarity from the Pontiff and the Vatican’s continued dabbling in progressive ideology, coupled with the growing hostility amongst Catholic hierarchs towards Catholics enamored of the Church’s traditions, has led to the advent of the Personal Catechism. This phenomenon plagues both progressive Catholics (who veer dangerously close to heresy, and sometimes plunge in headlong) and more traditional Catholics (who, when they err, err on the side of schism).

Heresy is, according to Catholic canon law, “the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith.” That is to say, heresy is an assault on the essence of the Church, on her teachings. Schism, on the other hand, is a rebellion “against legitimate authority, without going as far as the rejection of Christianity as a whole, which constitutes the crime of apostasy.” Schism, then, is an assault on the form of the Church. Both heresy and schism grievously damage one’s soul and place either the heretic or the schismatic outside the Church.

The affairs of the Francis pontificate help elucidate these two evils. Heresy — or at least borderline heresy — has run rampant under the present Pope. Priests and prelates, including high-ranking Vatican officials, endorse homosexuality, abolition of priestly celibacy, and female ordinations to the priesthood. These men don’t reject the authorities over them, and in many cases are themselves figures of ecclesial authority. But they abrogate, dilute, and warp the Church’s teachings. A prime example of this trend is that of Cardinal Arthur Roche, head of the Vatican’s liturgy office and one of the driving forces behind the repression of the Tridentine Mass. Roche recently explained to the BBC that the Mass codified by Pope St. Pius V and the Council of Trent could be done away with after over 1,000 years because “the theology of the Church has changed,” contradicting the late Pope Benedict XVI, who wrote of the Old Mass, “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.”

One of the chief justifications given for restricting celebration of the Tridentine Mass in the 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes is, in fact, alleged schism. The papal document claims that those who, like Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal George Pell, find beauty and sacred solace in the Tridentine Mass actually “deny the validity and the legitimacy of the liturgical reform, dictated by Vatican Council II and the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs.”

The majority of those faithful to the Tridentine Mass are sincere, devout, and faithful Catholics no more in danger of denying the legitimacy or authority of the Pope than of converting to Islam — I speak as a Tridentine Mass devotee myself. But a select few have advanced schismatic ideology. While in no way denying or even questioning the teachings of the Church, the likes of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Francis Schuckardt, and more recently Patrick Coffin, Taylor Marshall, and even Mel Gibson have all embraced varying degrees of schismatic views on the post-conciliar papacy — from labeling Pope Francis a heretic to outright rejecting his authority or even disregarding the validity of the Second Vatican Council.

Ironically, in seeking to silence or punish a minute handful of actual or pseudo-schismatics, Pope Francis is pushing otherwise faithful Catholics devoted to the Tridentine Mass closer to schism, and sometimes outright over the line. Like Pope Benedict XVI, Latin Mass attendees cannot understand how the Mass which “earlier generations held as sacred” can now “be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.” Drawn to the undeniable beauty of the Tridentine Mass, some choose the pre-conciliar rite over unity with the Pope, the Head of the Church.

Both today’s rampant progressive heresy and today’s increasing danger of schism are due to the advent of the Personal Catechism. As the moral authority of Church leaders collapses amidst sex scandals, corrupt autocracy, and heterodox theology, and as the Vatican fails to deliver clarity, only platitudes on climate hysteria and open borders immigration, Catholics find themselves writing their own catechisms in their heads. The progressives either don’t study what the Church teaches — or else, not liking the teachings they do study, reject them — and so teach error; the traditionalists study the Church’s teachings and consider themselves, though perhaps without ever realizing it, the arbiters of the Church’s teachings, on a par with the Pope. The Personal Catechism will only serve to worsen the extreme confusion in which Catholics already find themselves. The Church alone offers clarity, and has done for 2,000 years.