What sort of man creates schisms?

Archbishop François Fénelon was deeply respected by all parties in his Archdiocese of Cambrai, due to his sincere piety and great and personal dedication to every detail of diocesan life. Following the unfortunate incidents of the Quietist controversy - in which he acted, as in everything else during his life, in complete submission to higher authority -, Fénelon continued his lifelong work of gentle persuasion of non-Catholics to join the Catholic Church.

Influenced by Quietism, some had great difficulty in understanding how Fénelon could honestly accept the infallibility of the Church while submitting to the condemnation by the Apostolic See, in 1699, of his work "Maxims of the Saints" (Explications des maximes des saints sur la vie intérieure), due to some of the affirmations which it contained. Could he still be viewed as a man of integrity? Cardinal Bausset describes in his biography of Fénelon the dramatic exchange between one convert and the Archbishop of Cambrai:

"The Church has not condemned pure love in condemning my book: that doctrine is taught in every Catholic church.' [Fénelon said]. But the expressions which I employed in explaining it were not proper for a doctrinal work. My book is worth nothing; I hold it as such; it was the miscarriage of my mind, and not the fruit of the piety of my heart. I do not wish that you should read it."

We may easily conceive what weight such candor must have added to the reasonings and proofs with which Fénelon supported the authority of the decisions of the Church. He must surely have felt, from his heart, the conviction of its infallibility, since he cited his own condemnation as a proof of the submission which was due to its authority.

Fénelon abhorred schism and separation from the Roman See. In his own submission to higher authority, he showed those he wanted to bring to the Church that he wanted them to convert fully, abandoning not only the doctrines, but also the attitudes of disunity, sectarianism, rebelliousness, disobedience, subversion, and revolutionary spirit that converts often bring with them into the Church.

This is made quite clear in this remarkable letter to a Protestant correspondent:

Cambrai, September 11, 1708

I am very pleased, sir, to learn from you the effort you have dedicated in searching for the truth, despite your former predispositions. This honesty will garner you great blessings.

Nothing is as important as simplicity and sincere mistrust of one's own judgment. If each one would be occupied with prayer, recollection, charity, disregard for self, and relinquishing a vain reputation of mind and knowledge, all disputes would be soon appeased. Jesus Christ said to the Jews: "How can you believe, you who receive glory one from another, and who do not seek the glory which is from God alone?" [Jn. v, 44] He adds: "If any man do the will of him who sent me, he shall know, of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." [Jn. vii, 17] ...

What men create schisms and heresies? They are the intelligent men who are curious, critical, full of their own talents, motivated by a fierce and pharisaic zeal for reform, disdainful, unruly, and overbearing: they may possess right habits, a stern and haughty courage, a bitter zeal against abuses, a relentless dedication to study and discipline; but you will not find in them neither gentleness, nor understanding for neighbor, nor patience, nor humility, nor true prayer. "O Father, Lord of heaven and earth," Jesus Christ exclaims, "I confess to thee, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to the little ones." [Mt. xi, 25] And he also says, "if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon him." [Lk. x, 6]

I am, sir, most sincerely yours,

F. Arch. D. de Cambrai

Humble souls in unity with the Roman communion

 

The first [favor I ask of God] is that you may receive the grace of rendering to the true Church that which she is owed. ... The spirit of the Savior is a spirit of peace, of love and of union; he wished that those who were his own would be completely involved by unity: he did not satisfy himself with an interior and invisible unity, he wished to establish a complete interior and exterior unity, in a way that it would be due to this visible and remarkable sign that we would recognize his true disciples. Therefore, woe to those who separate themselves or who remain separated from the rod that takes the sap to all branches! Woe to those who divide in two, or who leave divided that which Jesus Christ wished to make one.

Notice, please, that the greatest saints, and the writers of interior life, who possessed the most touching marks of the spirit of grace, were, as Saint Francis de Sales, in the Roman communion, and more prepared to die than to leave it.

The humble and peaceful souls, who live only by virtue of meditation and love, are always small before their own eyes, and enemies of conflicts; they are very far from rising up against the body of the pastors, of judging, of condemning, of insulting, as Luther and Calvin did countless times. Their style has nothing that is bitter, prickly, or scornful. They do not work for a reform that is dry, judgmental, or haughty, that aims to sever unity and to defend that the husband has abandoned the wife. If they witness abuse or superstition, they mourn sweetly: and the mourning of the dove is always discreet and modest; it mourns only for a tender and calm love. They never raise their voice in presumptuous arguments ... their voice is but love and obedience. Their interior gifts, far from inspiring in them a proud elevation and a sentiment of independence, are used only to humiliate their own selves, to make them more pliant and less sure of themselves ...  .

Oh, how much they are horrified by bitter zeal and all battles of words! Instead of argument, they make use of guidance, patience, and edification; instead of speaking of God to men, they speak of men to God, so that he may touch, persuade, transform them in a way that none other can do. Prayer vanquishes all arguments. In true prayer, no one is overwhelmed by his own sentiment, each one silences his own mind. ...

Search as much as you want outside this holy unity, and you will find only haughty, contentious, and dry hearts; you will find doctors who are dried up and blinded by their own knowledge, who languish in endless disputes, who vaporize in their own reasoning ... . It is necessary to let the chaff and the wheat grow until the harvest, so that a reckless reformation will not carry away the wheat along with the chaff, so that it will not devastate instead of reform. The true Church is the one that nourishes the pure wheat along with the chaff, and that tolerates the chaff with the hope that the Lord will one day separate the pure wheat himself.

Once again, sir, it is only in the Catholic Church that you will find this prayer that you love so, and that gives you such an attraction for God. ... In the ancient Church, we calm down, we make ourselves small, we rejoin childhood by way of simplicity, we count for little, we renounce our own selves, we are the sacrifice of love. ... Only unity leads to such fruits.

Abp. F. Fénelon 

Lettres sur l'autorité de l'Église (Letters on the authority of the Church)

1719 (posthumous - written between 1700 and 1711)

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 Omnipotens et misericors Deus, qui ad defensionem populi christiani in beatissima Virgine Maria perpetuum auxilium mirabiliter constituisti: concede propitius; ut, tali praesidio muniti certantes in vita, victoriam de hoste maligno consequi valeamus in morte. Per D. N. ...