For nearly 70 years of the 14th century, the Catholic Church endured what is described as the Babylonian Captivity. Under the influence of French kings, starting with Philip IV in 1309, Pope Clement V moved the papal court from Rome to Avignon, and appointed only French cardinals.

The papal court moved back to Rome in 1377 under Gregory XI. However, a year later, the French did not recognise the election of Urban VI, and elected their own pope, Clement VII, thus leading to the Great Schism of the West, which lasted 40 years.

It seems under Pope Francis we are enduring a second Babylonian Captivity, and its consequences may be another schism.

A few months before he died, the late George Cardinal Pell described the situation in Rome as ‘the Wild West’.

His grave concerns were laid bare in the Demos document (Greek for people). In it Francis’ papacy was described as ‘catastrophic’, where the active persecution of traditionalists was encouraged, and the writing of papal documents marked an intellectual decline from the standards of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Francis’ intellectual decline was on full display during a speech to seminarians last December, where he very suddenly and bizarrely launched into a foul-mouthed tirade in his native Spanish against ‘f—ing careerists who f— up the lives of others’.

Talk about Pharisee-like hypocrisy. The widely respected German Cardinal, Gerhard Müller, gave an interview in Italy on 27 January stating that Francis ‘surrounds himself with a magic circle of people who are not prepared theologically’, adding that his reforms of the Curia were disastrous, reducing it to ‘a business that works to provide assistance to “clients”, as if it were a multinational enterprise and no longer an ecclesial body’.

Further, Cardinal Pell’s scathing Spectator Australia article, re-published a day after his passing, spoke of the ‘toxic nightmare’ of the upcoming October Synod on Synodality. In the Synod documents, which Pell stated were ‘couched in neo-Marxist jargon’, there is no mention of the Church’s fundamental mission: ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’ (St Matthew 28: 19-20). Moreover, Pell, in his Campion College lecture last August, said it was ‘largely irrelevant to the preaching of the gospel and the threat of decline, being more concerned with redistribution of power’.

The Synod doubles down on the failed experiment of aggiornamento (updating) that has taken place in the Church since the late-1960s, which has led to dwindling congregations, except in parishes and orders that are faithful to tradition and doctrine. However, these areas of the Church have been under constant attack by Francis, especially with regard to the crackdown on the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. Rather than being a source of ‘disunity’ within the Church as he claims, its wider celebration allowed a place in the Church for those who find in the traditional liturgy a sense of the sacred that is often not present in the tacky vernacular liturgies on offer in most parishes. This has had the effect of breathing life into an otherwise moribund Church, since most in attendance are young families.

As expected, despite this crackdown on when and where the Traditional Mass could be celebrated, interest and attendance has actually increased.

Now Francis and his chief henchman, Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery of Divine Worship, have announced further restrictions, reserving the right to decide if the Latin Mass can be celebrated in a parish church by special dispensation of the Holy See.

Worse is to come apparently, with a new document mooted to be issued in April or May, the aim of which will be to restrict even further the celebration of the Latin Mass, with a view to eliminating it entirely within two years.

So much for Francis’ much-vaunted ‘inclusivity’! In fact, the validity of these actions under Canon law is extremely dubious. Further, Benedict XVI stated in Summorum Pontificum (2007) that the Traditional Latin Mass never was, and never can be, abrogated. ‘What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, it cannot be all of a sudden forbidden or even considered harmful,’ echoing Pope St Gregory the Great (540-604AD) who taught: ‘As long as the Church is of one Faith, different ritual customs do not harm her.’ Francis’ and Roche’s attacks on traditionalists are causing grave harm in more ways than one. In January the FBI criminalised them in a bombshell internal memo which stated that, ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology’ is a magnet for ‘violent extremists’.

The memo mentioned the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, an order which celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass and is in full union with the Church. Following its release, the Bishop of Richmond, Virginia, Barry Knestout, blasted the FBI in a statement, stating, ‘A preference for traditional forms of worship and holding closely to the Church’s teachings on marriage, family, human sexuality, and the dignity of the human person does not equate with extremism.’

The Demos document warned that ‘the secret of Christian and Catholic vitality comes from fidelity to the teachings of Christ… It does not come from adapting to the world or from money’. As St Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians (iii 19), the wisdom of this world is folly to God.

The greatest lay Catholic Australia has produced, B.A. Santamaria, said in an interview on the ABC’s Lateline in 1996 that if there came a moment where the Church took a direction which he believed was incompatible with its tradition of 2,000 years, he would have no hesitation in leaving.

It seems, in this second Babylonian Captivity, many Catholics may soon have to face that momentous choice. And if you think talk of schism is exaggerated, just look at what has happened in the Anglican Church over the last few years, due to its rush to adapt to the world. Unless Cardinal Pell’s admonitions are heeded, the Catholic Church under Jorge Bergoglio is heading towards the same nightmare endgame.