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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16481 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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A USG-sanctioned breakaway hierarchy might be our only shot at getting real Catholicism back.

Schisms have happened before and might happen again. However, I doubt that most of the Catholics, American or otherwise share your frustration with the Vatican.

The closest thing to what you propose might be the Anglican Church. But the British Royals made much more reliable partners than the USG. For one thing, they are not customarily replaced every four years or so by one of the opposite side of the culture wars. For another, they did not have a constitutional obligation not to interfere with religion.

While you are right that Rome is probably not essential to Catholicism -- if it were hit by a meteor, I doubt that Catholics would just declare their religion over and accept damnation -- it does make an excellent Schelling point. It is also part of their brand: there are a zillion Churches which were inspired by Jesus, but only one can credibly claim to be the church Peter founded in Rome (though five more claime to be the one he founded in Antioch).

Catholics are generally the ones who do not schism every Tuesday. This joke would just not work for them. Generally, there are Catholics who hate Vatican II but still remain in the RCC, and there are a few fringe groups who hated it enough to quit the Church and make their own, with blackjack and hookers. But the sedevacantists and conclavists are a tiny minority. There are 1.3 billon Catholics and generously a few hundred thousand sedevacantists if WP is to be believed. Sometimes a few of them have a conclave and elect this or that guy as a pope, and I don't think that simply having the blessing of Trump would convince even the other renegades to accept that claim.

What's WP? Because that's a very high estimate for sedevacantists.

Wikipedia.

The number of sedevacantists is unknown and difficult to measure; estimates range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

And yes, I was going for their high estimate (hundreds of thousands) to make my point that there are many orders of magnitude more Catholics than that without getting accused of cherry-picking the numbers to fit my argument.

For all know, they might also be less than 10k in total.

While you are right that Rome is probably not essential to Catholicism -- if it were hit by a meteor, I doubt that Catholics would just declare their religion over and accept damnation -- it does make an excellent Schelling point.

1907 novel, Lord of the World, where Rome is wiped out by the secular World Government (at the bidding of the Antichrist, though he's not known as such):

It was known at about fifteen-and-a-half o’clock that at least seventy volors had left for Rome, and half-an-hour later that Berlin had reinforced them by sixty more. At midnight, fortunately at a time when the police had succeeded in shepherding the crowds into some kind of order, the news was flashed on to cloud and placard alike that the grim work was done, and that Rome had ceased to exist. The early morning papers added a few details, pointing out, of course, the coincidence of the fall with the close of the year, relating how, by an astonishing chance, practically all the heads of the hierarchy throughout the world had been assembled in the Vatican which had been the first object of attack, and how these, in desperation, it was supposed, had refused to leave the City when the news came by wireless telegraphy that the punitive force was on its way. There was not a building left in Rome; the entire place, Leonine City, Trastevere, suburbs—everything was gone; for the volors, poised at an immense height, had parcelled out the City beneath them with extreme care, before beginning to drop the explosives; and five minutes after the first roar from beneath and the first burst of smoke and flying fragments, the thing was finished. The volors had then dispersed in every direction, pursuing the motor and rail-tracks along which the population had attempted to escape so soon as the news was known; and it was supposed that not less than thirty thousand belated fugitives had been annihilated by this foresight. It was true, remarked the Studio, that many treasures of incalculable value had been destroyed, but this was a cheap price to pay for the final and complete extermination of the Catholic pest. “There comes a point,” it remarked, “when destruction is the only cure for a vermin-infested house,” and it proceeded to observe that now that the Pope with the entire College of Cardinals, all the ex-Royalties of Europe, all the most frantic religionists from the inhabited world who had taken up their abode in the “Holy City” were gone at a stroke, a recrudescence of the superstition was scarcely to be feared elsewhere. Yet care must even now be taken against any relenting. Catholics (if any were left bold enough to attempt it) must no longer be allowed to take any kind of part in the life of any civilised country. So far as messages had come in from other countries, there was but one chorus of approval at what had been done.

And you are right that it is not the end:

There, in the next room, was a little wooden altar, and above it an iron box, and within that box a silver cup, and within that cup—Something. Outside the house, a hundred yards away, lay the domes and plaster roofs of a little village called Nazareth; Carmel was on the right, a mile or two away, Thabor on the left, the plain of Esdraelon in front; and behind, Cana and Galilee, and the quiet lake, and Hermon. And far away to the south lay Jerusalem....

It was to this tiny strip of holy land that the Pope had come—the land where a Faith had sprouted two thousand years ago, and where, unless God spoke in fire from heaven, it would presently be cut down as a cumberer of the ground. It was here on this material earth that One had walked Whom all men had thought to have been He Who would redeem Israel—in this village that He had fetched water and made boxes and chairs, on that long lake that His Feet had walked, on that high hill that He had flamed in glory, on that smooth, low mountain to the north that He had declared that the meek were blessed and should inherit the earth, that peacemakers were the children of God, that they who hungered and thirsted should be satisfied.

And now it was come to this. Christianity had smouldered away from Europe like a sunset on darkening peaks; Eternal Rome was a heap of ruins; in East and West alike a man had been set upon the throne of God, had been acclaimed as divine. The world had leaped forward; social science was supreme; men had learned consistency; they had learned, too, the social lessons of Christianity apart from a Divine Teacher, or, rather, they said, in spite of Him. There were left, perhaps, three millions, perhaps five, at the utmost ten millions—it was impossible to know—throughout the entire inhabited globe who still worshipped Jesus Christ as God. And the Vicar of Christ sat in a whitewashed room in Nazareth, dressed as simply as His master, waiting for the end.

He had done what He could. There had been a week five months ago when it had been doubtful whether anything at all could be done. There were left three Cardinals alive, Himself, Steinmann, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem; the rest lay mangled somewhere in the ruins of Rome. There was no precedent to follow; so the two Europeans had made their way out to the East, and to the one town in it where quiet still reigned. With the disappearance of Greek Christianity there had also vanished the last remnants of internecine war in Christendom; and by a kind of tacit consent of the world, Christians were allowed a moderate liberty in Palestine. Russia, which now held the country as a dependency, had sufficient sentiment left to leave it alone; it was true that the holy places had been desecrated, and remained now only as spots of antiquarian interest; the altars were gone but the sites were yet marked, and, although Mass could no longer be said there, it was understood that private oratories were not forbidden.

It was in this state that the two European Cardinals had found the Holy City; it was not thought wise to wear insignia of any description in public; and it was practically certain even now that the civilised world was unaware of their existence; for within three days of their arrival the old Patriarch had died, yet not before Percy Franklin, surely under the strangest circumstances since those of the first century, had been elected to the Supreme Pontificate. It had all been done in a few minutes by the dying man’s bedside. The two old men had insisted. The German had even recurred once more to the strange resemblance between Percy and Julian Felsenburgh, and had murmured his old half-heard remarks about the antithesis, and the Finger of God; and Percy, marvelling at his superstition, had accepted, and the election was recorded. He had taken the name of Silvester, the last saint in the year, and was the third of that title. He had then retired to Nazareth with his chaplain; Steinmann had gone back to Germany, and been hanged in a riot within a fortnight of his arrival.

The next matter was the creation of new cardinals, and to twenty persons, with infinite precautions, briefs had been conveyed. Of these, nine had declined; three more had been approached, of whom only one had accepted. There were therefore at this moment twelve persons in the world who constituted the Sacred College—two Englishmen, of whom Corkran was one; two Americans, a Frenchman, a German, an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole, a Chinaman, a Greek, and a Russian. To these were entrusted vast districts over which their control was supreme, subject only to the Holy Father Himself.

As regarded the Pope’s own life very little need be said. It resembled, He thought, in its outward circumstances that of such a man as Leo the Great, without His worldly importance or pomp. Theoretically, the Christian world was under His dominion; practically, Christian affairs were administered by local authorities. It was impossible for a hundred reasons for Him to do what He wished with regard to the exchange of communications. An elaborate cypher had been designed, and a private telegraphic station organised on His roof communicating with another in Damascus where Cardinal Corkran had fixed his residence; and from that centre messages occasionally were despatched to ecclesiastical authorities elsewhere; but, for the most part, there was little to be done. The Pope, however, had the satisfaction of knowing that, with incredible difficulty, a little progress had been made towards the reorganisation of the hierarchy in all countries. Bishops were being consecrated freely; there were not less than two thousand of them all told, and of priests an unknown number. The Order of Christ Crucified was doing excellent work, and the tales of not less than four hundred martyrdoms had reached Nazareth during the last two months, accomplished mostly at the hands of the mobs.

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