Schism Quotes

“The East will tolerate any amount of schism, but no heresy. The West will tolerant any amount of heresy, but no schism. We desperately need each other.”
― Charles A. Coulombe

“A man and woman in search of something are always blown apart, but it's the same wind that blows them.”
― Frank O'Connor

“Countering this view, confessing Christians seek to maintain the unity of the church through discipline, not through division. The confessing movement is strongly committed to staying WITHIN. It is better for churches to learn to respect their own legislative processes and discipline themselves accordingly than to face the even greater problems of separation, division of property, and the anguish of divorce.

Confessing Christians seek to reform their churches, not leave them. Those who split off leave the patient in the hands of the euthanasia advocates, the Kevorkians of dying modernity. The Holy Spirit will not bless willful unnecessary divisiveness.

If classic Christians self-righteously leave, they abandon the legacy, the patrimony, the bequests, the institutions, and the resources that have been many generations in the making with much tears and sweat.

Walking away turns out to have weightier moral impediments than hanging in. IT SEEMS UNTHINKABLE TO ABANDON, WITHOUT FURTHER PRAYERS FOR SPECIAL GRACE, THOSE HISTORIC COMMUNIONS BY WHICH SO MANY HAVE BEEN BAPTIZED. The faithful have committed themselves for generations to the support of these communions which their classic doctrines and evangelical revivals have engendered. To allow these resources to be permanently taken over by those inimical to the faith cannot be an act of responsibility...

...To flee the church is not to discipline it. No one corrects a family by leaving it. Separation does not foster discipline. Discipline is fostered by patient trust, corrective love, and willingness to live with incremental change if that is what the Spirit is allowing. Discipline seeks to mend the broken church by a change of heart.”
― Thomas C. Oden, Turning Around the Mainline: How Renewal Movements Are Changing the Church

“If unity lies in the Apostolical succession, an act of schism is from the nature of the case impossible; for as no one can reverse his parentage, so no Church can undo the fact that its clergy have come by lineal descent from the Apostles. Either there is no such sin as schism, or unity does not lie in the Episcopal form or in the Episcopal ordination.”
― John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

“Satan will first attempt to destroy the power of the Papacy and bring about the downfall of the Church through heresies, schisms and persecutions that must surely follow. Failing in this, he will then attack the Church from without. For this purpose he will raise up Antichrist and his prophet to lead the faithful into error and destroy those who remain steadfast.”
― R. Gerald Culleton, The Reign of Antichrist: A Sourcebook of Catholic Prophecies about "The Man of Sin"

“It was only when Rowan brushed it with his fingertips and scattered some of the dust that she saw, to her surprise, a glint of something green. It was like a seam of moss, or a glimpse of forest through a gap in the castle stones. For some reason she couldn't fully understand, her own heart quickened to match Rowan's.
"Wish me luck," Rowan whispered to the child, whose cries had subsided into whimpers.
Rowan drew a deep breath, and pushed against the wall. Biddy felt the magic shiver under his skin and through his fingertips, and the schism in the wall glowed in response. Something was trickling through from the other side--- not quite light, not quite substance, like the glint of dust motes dancing in a sunbeam with no sunbeam and no dust. The air about them stirred, and Biddy's heart caught.
She was seeing magic. In all her life, she had only had it described to her, and felt the movement of it in the air. Now, in Rowan's memory, it shimmered the gentle green gold of sunlight through leaves.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“In the early stages of any schism, its promoters find themselves obliged to hold by outworn traditions, because they have no central authority which can initiate, and sanction, disciplinary developments. Hence they seldom fail to reproach the Catholic Church with a spirit of innovation. 'It is a common trait among the heretics and schismatics of all ages; schism and heresy have almost always, for their point of departure, a regret for the past, the claim or the dream of going back to the fountain-source of a religious idea, to the discipline or the faith of an apostolic age.”
― Ronald Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion