The False Accusation Of “Divisiveness”

By JAMES MONTI

For many including myself, the Gospel of St. John is a favorite Gospel for a multitude of reasons, ranging from its more mystical ethos to its deeper emphasis upon the glory of our Lord’s divinity. But John’s Gospel also possesses a highly attenuated dramatic quality that takes us on a journey of linear ascent toward the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Christ, a linear ascent of growing confrontation between Christ and the Jewish elders out of which arises the plot to put our Lord to death. This is the reason why for many centuries the Church has assigned to the two weeks of Lent preceding Palm Sunday a series of Gospels drawn from John’s narrations of these increasingly tense confrontations.
Yet by no means is St. John presenting a “different Jesus” from his three fellow Evangelists. While John may be said to have recorded in greater detail the most fiery exchanges between Christ and the Jewish elders, this particularly dramatic dimension of our Lord’s public ministry is by no means absent from the “Synoptic” Gospels of Saints Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In fact, it is in St. Matthew’s Gospel that our Lord expresses the very necessity of these confrontations He and His disciples must undertake in the cause of truth:
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother . . . and a man’s foes will be those of his own household” (Matt. 10:34-36). In recounting this same teaching of our Lord, St. Luke quotes Him as using the very word “division” to describe what preaching the hard truths of the Gospel will entail: “I came to cast fire upon the earth. . . . Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division” (Luke 2:49, 51).
Fast-forwarding to our present age, we are told incessantly that the great absolute necessity of the Church in our time is to put a stop to all “divisiveness” — that nothing that could be construed as “divisive” should ever be uttered in sermons, in the Catholic media, in catechesis, and so on. In dealing with Catholic public figures who obstinately persist in the manifest promotion of grave and depraved evils, we are told that nothing that could be perceived as “divisive” should be done to censure them or call them to repentance. In dealings with those of other religions, also, we are told that “divisiveness” must be avoided at all costs.
Yet it is obvious from both our Lord’s own words and His example that the avoidance of conflict is not a value that should take precedence over the need to bear a prophetic witness to the Commandments and the other teachings and practices of the faith, even at the risk of making lax or non-practicing Catholics and those outside the faith “uncomfortable” or even angry. So no, avoiding “divisiveness” is not the greatest Commandment, no matter what some in our age may think or say.
The argument that Holy Communion ought to be given to anyone and everyone without exception, regardless of their sometimes very public sins of obstinate depraved indifference to the sanctity of human life and of marriage and conjugal love on the premise that “Jesus never excluded anybody,” conveniently ignores the fact that our Lord Himself spoke of withholding what is most sacred from those who by their words and actions would profane it: “Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine” (Matt. 7:6). Is not the Holy Eucharist our ultimate “pearl of great price”? And is it not even worse than swinish to promulgate the destruction of children in their mother’s wombs?
Of course, the response of all too many touting the “Don’t be divisive” slogan to such incontestable words from the Sacred Scriptures is to invoke the “findings” of “higher biblical criticism,” which in this case comes down to saying that any words of our Lord from the Gospels which don’t fit into the narrative of “Jesus never excluded anyone” must somehow be a later interpolation artificially concocted and inserted into the Gospels by an anonymous team of early Christian hardliners.
The priest or prelate who insists upon continuing to give Holy Communion to a high and mighty politician who is actively and obstinately promoting the mass slaughter of innocent unborn children is in jeopardy of someday having to answer to the Supreme Judge for having turned a deaf ear to the cries of these children: “I was hungry, and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me” (Matt. 25:42-43).
Another tenet of the “Don’t be divisive” campaign is to insist that “what unites us is more important than what divides us.” Unfortunately, this carries with it the implication that what divides us isn’t that important. Can I genuinely say of a person who says he believes in Christ but denies the right to life of an unborn child that “what unites us is more important than what divides us”? Yes, Christ comes before all else, but did not St. John say that he who says he loves God but hates his brother is a liar (1 John 4:20)? To speak of “common ground” and a shared aspiration for peace becomes virtually meaningless when the most fundamental rights and truths concerning the sanctity of human life and the God-given distinction between man and woman are denied and rejected.
Sometimes the buzz word of “divisiveness” is taken even further to attack people who are not even engaged in a confrontation, but are accused of divisiveness simply because they are not following the ways of the world or of liberal Catholicism.

The TLM Is Not Divisive

Critics of the Traditional Latin Mass claim its continued celebration is “divisive” and therefore must be brought to an end. But how is it “divisive” simply to attend this beautiful and timeless form of the Roman Rite liturgy? Pope Benedict XVI certainly didn’t think it to be so. It certainly seems that critics of Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass have not really tried to get to know them as they truly are.
Having attended a Traditional Latin Mass every Sunday for over eight years now, I can personally testify to what I have seen there. These are souls who are deeply attentive to the liturgical celebration from beginning to end, even though this typically means following a Mass considerably longer than any corresponding Novus Ordo Mass. As a sizable portion of the congregation is made up of young families with small children and infants, attending these Latin Masses means making a commitment to keep the children calm and quiet for over an hour, no easy task as any parent can attest.
The congregants are intensely focused upon what the priest is saying and doing at the altar, and making it their business to understand. With such an engaged attitude toward the liturgy, sacred silence comes naturally. Most of the attendees arrive at least a few minutes before Mass, and quite a few even earlier, so that they can prepare themselves spiritually. Many avail themselves of the opportunity to go to Confession before Mass begins, the best preparation of all.
After Mass, quite a few stay to make a fitting and unrushed thanksgiving. Often enough, Traditional Latin Mass attendees have had to make the additional sacrifice of traveling considerable distances from their own homes to get to these Masses.
As for the altar boys who serve at the Traditional Latin Masses, there is an amazing spirit of seriousness about what they are doing. The rookies learn from the veteran servers how to maintain a solemn comportment while walking in procession and while moving about in the sanctuary. Congregants arriving early will often see the altar boys carefully rehearsing, especially before Masses with more complex liturgical actions, such as those of Holy Week.
In the Traditional Latin Mass, there is a lot of “choreography” for the altar boys to keep track of, requiring them to change places, move the altar Missal, hand over the thurible and ring the bells at precisely the right moments, but they manage to rise to the occasion and carry out all these things so flawlessly as to make it seem effortless. At a certain point before Mass, the entire team of altar boys comes out of the sacristy to kneel in unison before the Tabernacle and say a preparatory prayer. After Mass, they come out together again to say a prayer of thanksgiving.
Can anyone seriously deny that what is described above constitutes an ideal fulfillment of precisely the sort of intense engagement of the laity in the sacred liturgy that the Vatican II conciliar document Sacrosanctom Concilium called for and hoped to achieve? Why would anyone want to dismantle and destroy congregations of the faithful with such a deep commitment to authentic participation in the sacred liturgy at a time when many parish communities are languishing from a lack of such engagement in the liturgy? Can anyone genuinely claim that what is described above constitutes “divisiveness”?
So, what constitutes the real vice of divisiveness? It arises from calling into doubt the timeless, settled absolute truths that Christ and His Church have always taught. It injects division into matters where there should be the absolute unity of “one Lord, one faith, one Baptism” to which we have all been bound by our baptismal promises. What is going on right now with the “Synodal Way” in Germany is a prime example of such vicious divisiveness that rends the Mystical Body of Christ.
Of course, whenever confrontation for the sake of the Gospel becomes truly necessary, it must always be done with prudence, charity, and genuine respect for the human dignity of one’s opponent. Moreover, sometimes silence speaks more eloquently than words. When the time comes for us to speak up in the face of a falsehood against our faith, the Holy Spirit will teach us what to say and give us the courage to say it. The examples of the saints and martyrs, and their prayers, will see us through as well.