Did Strickland do a schism?

What happens after a fiery Bishop Strickland letter in Baltimore?

While the U.S. bishops met in Baltimore Wednesday, Bishop Joseph Strickland prayed outside their conference hotel, along with two dozen Catholics who had come to the city’s harbor to support him.

Supporters held flags, and Marian statues, and signs attesting to their love for the former diocesan bishop of Tyler, Texas, who was removed from office last year, after escalating criticism of Pope Francis, in which the bishop said the pontiff was responsible for “undermining the Catholic faith.” 

Bishop Joseph Strickland prays Nov. 13 outside the fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Credit: JD Flynn/Pillar Media.

After he led the rosary Nov. 13, Strickland stood at a podium, and read aloud a letter he said he had prepared for the occasion, addressed to his brother bishops inside the conference hall.

Speaking directly about his criticisms of Pope Francis, Strickland said that synodality — a key theme of the Francis pontificate — represents a new religion, and that “Pope Francis has abdicated his responsibility to serve as the primary guardian of the Deposit of Faith,” because of pontifical statements “that are unambiguous denials of the Catholic faith.”

The text was fiery, even while Strickland read it with a steady, even cadence, pronounced carefully in his East Texas drawl.

Strickland’s letter challenged bishops to “profess their own love of Our Lord” by speaking out against Pope Francis. 

For his own part, Strickland said his observation of the papacy had reached a “devastating conclusion” — “the man who occupies the Chair of St. Peter does not love the truth.”

As he challenged bishops to oppose the pope, Strickland’s assessment was direct: “Francis no longer teaches the Catholic faith,” he said.

“Souls are at stake!”

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It was that remark — that Francis “no longer teaches the faith” — which generated the most attention on social media, as video of Strickland’s reading began to surface online.

Some Catholics immediately labeled it a kind of schism, or a form of sedevacantism, and suggested it might lead to Strickland’s excommunication.

But among canon lawyers, while Strickland’s remarks were certainly beyond the ordinary rhetoric of a Catholic bishop, it is not at all clear they amount to the canonical crime of schism, which carries with it a correspondent latae sententiae excommunication. 

Schism is “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”

Because schism is a canonical crime, and thus directly related to a formal ecclesiastical penalty, canon law mandates that it be interpreted “strictly,” — this means that for something to be sanctioned as schism, it can’t be just like schism, or similar to it, it has to be clear that a person has publicly and directly refused to yield or accede to the pope’s authority, or directly refused ecclesial communion with other bishops.

Strickland, for what it’s worth, is not known to have defied in practice the governing authority of the pope, whatever his rhetoric. In fact, when he was removed from office — a moment which might have become a flash point — he accepted the pope’s decision on the matter, and vacated that office. 

If he wants to defend himself against charges of schism, it is easy enough to point to the fact that at the most crucial moment of his episcopal life, he did exactly what the pontiff told him to, whatever his feelings about it. 

And while he has offered — in incendiary rhetoric — sharp criticism of the pope, Strickland has not  denied that Francis possesses the office of the Roman pontiff, which would make him a sedevacantist, and by definition, a schismatic. 

It is possible to be excommunicated for schism. That happened to Archbishop Carlo Vigano earlier this year, after an extrajudicial process at the DDF, responding to public statements amounting to “denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis, breaking of communion with him, and rejection of the Vatican Council II.”

While schism seems not to fit the bill for Strickland, there are canonical crimes for which he might be sanctioned. It would be easy enough to argue that Strickland has committed the delict of “publicly incit[ing] hatred or animosity against the Apostolic See or the Ordinary because of some act of ecclesiastical office.” 

And while he has not himself seemed to refuse submission personally, it is also possible he could be accused of “provoking disobedience” of the pope, or of the American bishops he accused Wednesday of “patting one another on the back ... frolicking with the darkness, and blaspheming the very truth that the original apostles died to preserve.”

Further, there is a catch-all canon, 1399, which gives ecclesiastical authorities the prospect of sanctioning unspecified “violations of divine or canon law,” so long as doing so involves a proper canonical process. 

In principle, sanctioning Strickland for some canonical crime would be the result of a canonical trial. At the Vatican, the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota is competent for most trials against bishops, which means that Rota’s promoter of justice, or prosecutor, Msgr. Tomasz Kubiczek, has standing to bring most charges against Strickland.

Because Strickland is a bishop, responsibility to investigate a prospective delict in Baltimore does not lie with the local diocesan bishop, Archbishop William Lori. Instead, protocol dictates that a decision to investigate, or bring canonical charges would ordinarily be made with the involvement of the U.S. apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, and with the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops.

And if Lori did make an investigation, and forward it on to the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, officials there would likely bring in Pierre and the Dicastery for Bishops for a pow-wow about what to do next.

To some extent, that puts the prospect of an actual canonical trial for Strickland in the hands of the American members of the Dicastery for Bishops: Cardinals Blase Cupich and Joseph Tobin, along with the dicastery’s prefect, Cardinal Robert Prevost. If those men urged Kubiczek to prepare a libellus — a formal criminal complaint — against Strickland, he would likely consider it seriously, at the very least.

Of course, all of those considerations hinge on the assumption that the rule of law is the order of the day in contemporary ecclesiastical governance. In truth, as The Pillar has previously noted, Pope Francis has seen fit during his papacy to govern, especially with regard to oversight of bishops, without strident adherence to the norms of law. While the pope has created penal processes for the trial and oversight of bishops, he has proven himself as likely to make decisions and impose discipline by his own designs or processes, which are often inscrutable to ecclesiastical canonists. 

Whatever effect that has on the life of the Church, and in public confidence regarding the administration of justice, it is a pattern which also makes anticipating what might happen canonically with Strickland — if anything — all the more difficult.

Within the bishops’ conference itself, it is not clear how many bishops actually heard the message Strickland came to Baltimore to convey to them. While he is not prohibited from attending conference meetings, he did not elect to register for this one, take his seat in the assembly hall, and read aloud his missive to his brother bishops.

While Strickland addressed his brother bishops along the harbor, he didn’t actually speak to them, choosing instead to read aloud his letter to a group of supporters. He declined to tell The Pillar why.

And as Strickland aims to correct his brothers, according to his vision of the world, it remains to be seen whether any of them will offer fraternal correction of their own. A few bishops told The Pillar this week they’d reached out to Strickland in the weeks after his 2023 ouster — but it does not seem clear whether they’ve continued to engage him. 

In his missive, Strickland suggested that most U.S. bishops are traitors of their vocation, suggesting they “accepted 30 pieces of silver,” and thus “remain silent in the face of falsehood which further pierces the hands and feet of Our Lord.” 

But there may be a few who might still have some credibility with him. And it is worth at least wondering whether fraternal visits to his Texas home might bear some fruit for the former Bishop of Tyler. Both fraternal correction and sanctions are meant to suggest a course correction. 

As Strickland gets closer to the delict of schism, it is worth wondering whether either approach might have that effect.