Something I wrote last September, on reasons not to expect a Catholic schism, which needs to be amended now that we have the official Amazonian exhortation:
nytimes.com/2019/09/14/opi…
nytimes.com/2019/09/14/opi…
Then I argued that as yet there's no institutional movement among conservatives that could lead to schism, and that Francis has "consistently avoided pushing conservatives into a theologically-untenable position, choosing ambiguity over a clarity that might cleave his church."
Meanwhile there is an institutional force among progressives, the German bishops conference, pushing changes that could split the church - but Germans believe time + Rome are on their side, "so their incentives are to push and then pull back, advance but then accept correction."
When I wrote that, I expected the Amazonian process to produce a cautious opening to "married priests in special circumstances," which would give progressives a useful permission slip but maintain enough ambiguity to keep conservatives in line.
Instead we have something that appears not to even go as far as Amoris Laetitia's ambiguous shift on remarriage and communion; there is nothing here to trouble conservatives, and no permission slip for liberal bishops.
So obviously this reduces the schismatic temptation on the Catholic right. But the more-uncertain Q is what it means for the Germans: Does disappointment chasten them, or make them push harder - and does Rome give them ambiguous permissions, or push back hard?
One could say that the implication of Amoris for liberalizers was that "in practice, time may be on your side," while the implication of Querida Amazonia is "actually, maybe you're out over your skis."
And since everything has to be about decadence for me these days, I think in the path from Amoris to Querida you can see the power of theological-institutional stalemate reasserting itself in Roman Catholicism, after the turbulence of Francis's first few years.
