Schism?

For years now, there's been a rising level of discontent and alarm among traditionalist Catholics about the direction of the Church under Pope Francis.  His occasional hints at a reduced emphasis on the taboo against homosexuality, his suggestions of a more accepting stance toward the divorced and remarried, his recognition of the reality of global warming, and his moves toward dialogue with Protestantism and even Islam, do not sit well with them.  These reformist moves, especially as expressed in his 2016 document Amoris Laetitia, have encouraged liberal Catholic clergy (of whom there are many, at least in Western countries) to implement more tolerant stances in their own jurisdictions.  To traditionalist Catholics it all smacks of "modernism" (a seriously Bad Thing in their eyes), perhaps even heresy.

Recently their alarm has intensified further due to the "Amazon synod" a major meeting for Bishops of the Amazon region which is scheduled for October 6-27 in Rome.  Traditionalists claim that liberal Western (especially German) clergy plan to use the synod to implement various heretical innovations, such as married priests, in the Amazon region, from which they will inevitably spread throughout the Church globally.  The synod's main working document, the Instrumentum Laboris, has been accused of legitimizing indigenous paganism as equal or even superior to Christianity.  It is certainly full of annoying New-Agey woo-woo stuff.  Another preparatory document embraces a number of "heresies".  Two conservative cardinals have called the synod the greatest threat to the Church in its entire history -- and there are calls for them to go further than just talk.

If you read the comment threads at some of those links, you'll see how alarmed the traditionalists are.  As they see it, Francis and the liberal clergy are steering the Church onto a path of such profound heresy that, if they succeed, it will no longer represent true Christianity.  So far, their proposed responses mostly consist of praying and fasting and suchlike, but of course such measures will prove no more effective here than they have at stopping mass shootings or hurricanes.

If the Church eventually adopts doctrines too radical for the traditionalists to endure, what will they do?  Most of them realize they can't just wait for Francis to die and hope a more conservative Pope reverses everything -- of the 128 current Cardinals entitled to vote for a new Pope, 67 were appointed by Francis, making it likely that the next Pope will also be a reformist.  If the Church adopts doctrines the traditionalists view as heresy, they'll face an inescapable crisis.

I've seen some talk of schism.  It's hard to know what this would look like.  Catholic doctrine states that there is no salvation outside the Church, so simply leaving the Church and starting an explicitly new organization wouldn't be an option.  The traditionalists would have to be able to claim that whatever they were doing was the "true" Catholic Church, while the original (still in possession of the Vatican and the rest of the physical infrastructure) was not.  Presumably it would be possible to gin up something from among the Church's vast and labyrinthine aggregation of "teachings" to support this, especially if a few senior clergy joined the exodus.  Certainly the new "Catholic Church" and the original would denounce each other as heretics, schismatics, and all manner of other juicy epithets.

How significant such a move would be depends on how many traditionalists there are, which is hard to estimate.  In 1890, when the official Mormon Church renounced polygamy under pressure from the US government, some die-hard polygamists left the Church and established separate "fundamentalist" Mormon communities in remote areas.  Their numbers were so small, however, that this had little impact on the main-line Mormon Church.  It's hard to tell how many Catholics are so traditionalist that they could not stomach married priests or a full repudiation of the taboo on homosexuality or the various other looming innovations.  I'd guess their numbers are fairly small -- in the West.  But Christians in the Third World tend to be much more conservative, especially in Africa, where the Catholic Church has a substantial presence.  Globally, a real schism could have a serious impact.

Presumably Francis and the liberal clergy are trying to modernize the Church in order to make it more appealing in a rapidly-changing culture.  Catholicism, like most Christian sects, is hemorrhaging members in the West -- far more people are leaving than joining.  The Church seems to be reaching the limits of how far this modernization can go without driving traditionalists into open rebellion.  Ironically, it's unlikely that compromising on the taboo system will do much to stem the membership decline, most of which is driven by simple loss of belief.  But one can hope that a divided Catholic Church will prove less effective at exerting reactionary influence over our societies than it has been in the past.