From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
I’ve tried for many years to stay in the church but simply things get worse here, with the impositions of liberal catholics and bishops who prefer a round of applause rather than defend our faith. I have to ask you father:
under those circumstances is valid to leave the catholic church and embrace the orthodox faith; or its just another apostasy case with a fancy excuse.
It sounds like a fancy excuse to me. But let’s make some distinctions.
It’s not quite apostasy. Apostasy requires the rejection of the Christian faith. However, it certainly is schism, and it is unwarranted.
“Things are bad in the Church” is a statement that could be made by a person today, or a Catholic dealing with Communist infiltration into the Church in 1950’s Poland, or someone with a Modernist pastor in Antwerp in 1910, or someone struggling against a Gallican pastor in 19th century France, or a Catholic in Germany or England during the time of the Reformation, or a peasant in Italy in the 14th century with an absentee bishop unwilling to discipline a corrupt pastor, or a 10th century priest in Rome dealing with murderous and moral bankrupt popes, or an 8th century artist with an iconoclast pastor, or a 4th century Catholic with an Arian bishop, or a 1st century apostle dealing with an unruly Corinthian congregation.
The answer is not, nor has it ever been, to break away from the Church.
The answer is to become more holy.
