Ya Don't Have To Be Katholic To Be A Krazy

The Temple Mount also known as

The Noble Sanctuary

Kraziness of the “religious” variety is not limited to the Katholic wing-nuts as Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Teaneck New Jersey recently demonstrated in his blog.  Rabbi Pruzansky, who heads the “Orthodox” Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in the northern New Jersey town that lies just across the Hudson River from New York City, wrote in his blog last week that “There is a war for the land of Israel that is being waged, and the Arabs who dwell in the land of Israel are the enemy in that war and must be vanquished. . .Arabs have no future in the land of Israel.” I put “Orthodox” in quotation marks as Pruzansky takes his opinions far beyond where most Rabbis would agree that Torah goes and indeed—and to their credit—the Orthodox Union—an association of Orthodox Congregations to which Pruzansky’s synagogue belongs—has condemned his views saying:

“We cannot countenance a response to terror that resorts to wholesale demonization, advocates for the collective punishment of Israeli Arabs, or calls for the destruction or dismantling of Muslim holy places. Such rhetoric is anathema to the Jewish religious tradition and has no place in civil society. Such rhetoric is wrong and must be repudiated, whether it is voiced by lay leaders, community leaders or rabbis.”

Rabbi Pruzansky pulled the offensive essay and issued a “clarification” in which he claimed that he never wrote that all Arabs or all Muslims fell underneath the epithet “savages” by which he castigated the terrorists who had brutally murdered four rabbis and a Druze policeman in Jerusalem the previous week.  That may be true—one can read the original sentence with several different interpretations—but exactly whom the Rabbi called “savages” isn’t the problem, only the symptom.  The problem is the blatant racism that underlies Rabbi Pruzansky’s entry.  While they may not be “savages,” Rabbi Pruzansky does not believe that Israeli Arabs or Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as are Jewish Israelis.   The Rabbi wrote

“Measures need to be implemented that encourage Arab emigration — the payment of stipends, compensation for property, etc. They must be made to feel that that they have no future in the land of Israel — no national future and no individual future.” And Rabbi Pruzansky went far beyond this suggestion that the native Palestinian Arab population who have lived in the land long before Joshua led the descendants of Jacob into “The Promised Land” be pushed to give up their family homes and their patrimonial orchards and emigrate.  He pushed the idea that any town or village from which terrorists came should be leveled and its entire population expelled.  Moreover, he advocated that severe restrictions be placed on the civil and human rights of non-Israelis who remained in Israel.  He further said that the Israeli police should use “live ammunition” against any demonstrating for Palestinian rights and that foreign reporters or cameramen have their notes and equipment confiscated so that they could not report on atrocities against the Palestinians.  What provokes the demonstrations against the Israeli authorities is the forcible removal of Palestinians from their homes—as is currently happening in East Jerusalem—so that those homes can be destroyed and new homes be built for Jewish Israelis.  Today’s Palestinian population are no johnnies-come-lately to Jerusalem and what is today the State of Israel but can be traced back to the Syro-Canaanite peoples who have inhabited the eastern end of the Mediterranean for over five thousand years.  How can the fortunate nieces and nephews of the unfortunate Polish and Russian and Czech and German Jews who were forced from their homes and lost their businesses before being herded into work camps and death camps because their existence was not convenient to a political ideology built on racial hatred advocate this sort of State-terrorism? 

Rabbi Pruzansky, like many others of a certain Jewish Orthodoxy, believe that the land of Israel belongs by Divine Right exclusively to the Jewish people and that all others, including those who have lived there for millennia, must vacate it.  The Rabbi went so far as to demand that the Muslim Holy Places on the Temple Mount be closed and that the shrines—the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque be “uplifted intact and reset in Saudi Arabia, Syria or wherever it is wanted.”  This opinion shows the Rabbi’s contempt for religions other than his own.  The “Noble Sanctuary” is sacred to Muslims as was the Temple to Jews and for both religions its sacred character is linked to the specific site of Mount Moriah and is not interchangeable with any other place on earth for its specific religious significance. 

This was not the Rabbi’s first racist rant.  He was beside himself with fury at the 2012 re-election of President Barack Obama and attributed the President’s victory to voters “primarily from the Third World” who “do not share the traditional American values…”  He went on to write “It is a different world, and a different America. Obama is part of that different America, knows it, and knows how to tap into it.”

Christians, Jews, Muslims all must learn mutual respect and tolerance.  Christians, in their day, certainly have been guilty of bigotry and violence towards both Muslims and Jews, and no way occupy the moral high ground to lecture anyone else.  The Crusades and the pogroms and the Inquisition are all tired chestnuts hurled accusingly against the Catholic Church—but, tragically, they are all historically accurate examples of religion gone rotten.  Given our past, we Catholics are in no position to preach the necessity of respect for those of other religious persuasions, but by our example of tolerance and truth as mandated at the Second Vatican Council in Dignitatis Humanae and Nostra Aetate, and crowned by a proactive pursuit of charity and justice as indicated by Popes John Paul, Benedict, and Francis,  we Christians must get the message out that violence and hatred are no solid ground on which to build the future.  In the process of the sort of bigotry typified by Rabbi Pruzansky not only Judaism but all religion suffers a credibility gap.  Perhaps the following quote from the Dalai Lama puts things into perspective. 

Finally I would like to point out that the purpose of religion is not to build beautiful churches or temples; it is to cultivate positive human qualities such as tolerance, generosity, and love.  Fundamental to Buddhism and Christianity, indeed to every major world religion, is the belief that we must reduce our selfishness and save others.  

Many Catholics who share the religious arrogance of Rabbi Pruzansky would shrug their shoulders and condescendingly ask what the Dalai Lama or any other teacher outside their own faith tradition could possibly have to say to us who have received the teachings of Jesus.  I suspect many Orthdox Jews would also wonder why one would look beyond the rabbinical tradition when G-d has spoken his Torah.  Maybe we need to get over our prejudices and realize that Truth has never allowed any one source to hold the monopoly on it.      

Keeping The Faithful Faithful

Pope Francis at World Youth Day

I was reading an interesting article about why people—and often entire congregations—are leaving mainline Protestant churches and either dropping out of formal religious practice altogether or affiliating with more “evangelical” groups.  The reasons given for the breakdown of the mainline churches is

Bullying tactics by denominational leaders

A perceived abandonment of foundational principles of scripture and tradition

A devaluation of personal faith

It is interesting to look at the crisis of American Catholicism and ask how and to what extent these same issues have affected Catholics in the United States and led them to make other religious commitments (or non-commitments).

Bullying tactics by denominational leaders.  The Catholic hierarchy in the United States has a long history of oppressive and even “bullying” behavior towards the faithful.  While John Carroll, in the flush of excitement of the new American Republic, tried to set a democratic tone to American Catholicism, by and large American bishops after him followed the monarchic style of their European counterparts.  With the exception of the rare bird such as John England of Charleston (bishop 1820-1842), the American bishops have more often than not been heavy-handed tyrants.  Even the liberals such as John Ireland of Minneapolis St. Paul (1875-1918) or Patrick O’Boyle of Washington  (1948-1973) were most often unabashed autocrats while the conservatives such as William O’Connell of Boston (1906-1944), James McIntyre of Los Angeles (1948-1970), or Michael Corrigan of New York (1880-1902) were ecclesiastical despots.  Pope Francis has adopted a radically more open style of leadership as pope and it can be hoped that his episcopal appointments’ for the United States will reflect this change of approach in leading the Church.  Blase Cupich of Chicago certainly seems to be of this new Francis generation.  Coadjutor Archbishop Bernard Hebda of Newark is another Francis appointee who seems to have won the confidence of the clergy and faithful.  The new bishops of Fall River (Massachusetts) and Gary (Indiana) are also signs of hopeful change in the hierarchy.  For the most part, the Catholic faithful seem enthusiastic by Pope Francis’ style of leadership.  At the same time there are loud and strident voices that lament that there are not more dictatorial prelates in the style of Raymond Burke when he was Archbishop of Saint Louis or Fabian Bruskewitz, former bishop of Lincoln Nebraska whose resistance to change in the Church is legendary.  I think the message is clear that under Pope Francis bullying will not get a bishop or priest any desired advancement in his ecclesiastical career. Hopefully the Church will be  blessed by having this Pope long enough to make a permanent change in the style of leadership not only in Rome but in local chanceries as well.

The second issue I think is a bit more pertinent—actually much more pertinent—to our Catholic situation.  I don’t doubt that there is a perceived—and, in fact a real—break with the best of the Catholic intellectual tradition. I am not sure, however, that the American Church was ever as strong on biblical and theological scholarship as was ancient and medieval Catholicism or pre-WWII European Catholicism.  The state of homiletics in the average Catholic parish in this country was horrendous before Vatican II and it is still poor; what is worse is that today’s poor preacher is too often speaking to the very poorly catechized Catholic.  For all its pedagogical faults, the Baltimore Catechism in its day provided a thorough survey of Catholicism 101.  That is not to say that the average Catholic of the past knew, much less understood, his or her faith.  But there was a definite curriculum of doctrinal content available.  The state of religious education in American Catholicism is abysmal and has been abysmal for two generations now.  I remember studying secondary education as an undergraduate—it was one of my minors as, at the time, I thought I might end up a high-school teacher.  We were taught to always teach just above the student’s level so that reaching for comprehension would keep their interest in the class.  I always followed that in my decades of teaching—which turned out not to be secondary school but mostly at the post-graduate level.  But these years since Vatican II Religious Education both in Catholic Schools and parish Religious Ed programs has always gone just the other way and so grossly oversimplified things as to make the doctrinal content of our faith ridiculous to anyone with a critical mind.  Today in most parishes children have yet to master “The Lord’s Prayer” by Confirmation—forget any understanding of the Scriptures or the Deposit of Faith.  What can we do?  Well we need to put an emphasis on Adult Faith Formation (as distinguished from Adult Education.)  I am not a fan of the neo-Catechetical movement as I think the doctrinal thrust of the “neo-Cat’s” has been tainted by a certain level of Gnosticism, but the methodology of developing a post-baptismal catechumenate is, I believe, brilliant.  And while saying that, let me also give a plug for Father Robert Barron’s video series on Catholicism.  It is both a thorough presentation of basic Catholic doctrine and a profound introduction to our rich Catholic culture—both historical and contemporary. 

Finally, the matter of the devaluation of personal faith is another thing that I think we Catholics need to look at.  In the pre-conciliar Church we had little access to a mature spirituality but we did have a rich piety that sustained our immigrant parents and grandparents through the struggles of an economic Depression and devastating wars.  Among the babies that went out with the bathwater over the last five decades is a healthy mature spirituality suited for modern Catholics.  The old devotionalism won’t do, but neither does it have to.  We have in our Catholic heritage a rich heritage of being introduced to the great mystics.  We have a rich sacramental/liturgical life.  We have superb biblical scholarship of the last seventy+ years.  Modern religious movements like the Community of Saint Egidio and the Monastic Community of Jerusalem as well as the Ecumenical fellowship of Taizé have developed magnificent prayer-forms.  In addition to the Classics of Catholic Spirituality we have the writers of the 20^th century like Merton and Houselander.  Today’s writers like Rohlheiser, Rohr, Keating, and Chittester are sources of spiritual guidance for those who are seekers.  We hear a lot about secularism, but people today are as anxious as ever to bridge the everyday for the Transcendent.  There is much we can do in our parishes to meet these hungers, but until and unless we do we should not be surprised that the hungry are looking elsewhere and the searchers have become disillusioned.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church XCVIII

The Hampton Court Conference

The biggest impact that King James had on the Church of England—and perhaps even of English culture way beyond the Established Church—is the edition of the Bible which he commissioned and which was first printed in 1611 and which is popularly known as “The King James.” 

This was not the first English language bible.  Bits and fragments of the Scriptures had been put into the various vernaculars of Anglo-Saxon England as far back as Bishop Aldhelm (d. 709) and the Veneable Bede (d.735).  Alfred the Great, King of Wessex (d. 899) had portions of the Pentateuch, including the Ten Commandments put in Old English.  He also had about fifty of the psalms translated from the Latin Vulgate.  England’s Protoprotestant, John Wycliffe, produced an English translation of the Vulgate in the late fourteenth-century.  It is slavishly faithful to the Latin text even when, much like Pope Benedict’s current Missal, the borrowed syntax makes the English unintelligible.  Because it was translated from the Vulgate and not the original languages (Hebrew and Greek), later Protestant authors such as Tyndale and Coverdale ignored Wycliffe’s work, but Catholic translators preparing the Rheims Douai translation (1582) however borrowed considerably from it. 

The English reformer and Protestant martyr, William Tyndale, published an English version of the New Testament in 1525-26 and the Pentateuch in 1530.  When Tyndale died in 1536—execution by strangling at the hands of the (Catholic) Emperor’s executioner to whom he had been betrayed by agents of Henry VIII who, though he broke from Rome, had no use for Protestants—the work was not yet complete.  Tyndale’s translation betrayed several strong Protestant biases.  For example the Greek εκκλεσια was translated as “congregation” rather than “Church” to de-emphasize the scriptural roots of the Church as institution.  Similarly the word πρεσβγτερ (presbyter from which we get the English word “priest”) became “senior,” and the phrases “to do penance” became “repent.” 

Myles Coverdale was authorized by Henry VIII (after the break with Rome) to produce an English language bible.  This book was published in 1538 and is often called “The Great Bible.”  Coverdale drew heavily on Tyndale’s work, but avoided the problematic vocabulary choices that did not fit Henry’s Catholic (though not Roman) biases. While in exile in Geneva under Queen Mary (Bloody Mary) Coverdale collaborated on a more Protestant translation in English, the Geneva Bible.  This is the translation used by John Knox, William Shakespeare, John Bunyan and John Donne and it served the Church of England well for over fifty years.  It would continue to be used by the Puritan party—because of its Calvinist bias in translation—and would be the first English language bible brought to America first to Jamestown and later to Massachusetts Bay on the Mayflower.

The Geneva Bible pleased the Puritans, but the High-Church party was not overly happy with its Reformed bias and neither was King James.  Remember James did not like the Puritan approach to the Church as James saw the link between episcopacy and kingship: “No Bishops, no King.”  Within six months of his coronation,  James summoned a conference at Hampton Court where it was agreed that a new translation, freed of the Puritan bias against “The Church” and its bishops, be prepared. 

This decision marks a very important development in the Church of England.  In Elizabeth’s day Calvinism and the Puritan faction within the Church of England that held rigidly to Puritan doctrines were allowed pretty free rein in determining the direction of the Church of England.  A “High-Church” party, more minded towards both Armenianism and a more Sacramental worship had smoldered beneath the surface of the Church of England but could not make much progress in balancing the rabidly Protestant direction of the Puritan controlled Church.    (Armenianism taught the doctrine of free will as opposed to Calvinism’s double pre-destination by which a person had been determined by God from all eternity either to salvation in heaven or damnation in hell.)  Elizabeth was no Calvinist but to achieve her political goals she needed the support of the House of Commons in which the Puritan faction long held power.   James set on a different course than Elizabeth’s religion-by-political-convenience.  Under James the Crown would take the theological lead.  This policy would, in the long run, be disastrous but we will get to that story in time.  

At James’ invitation, forty-seven scholars—all but one, clergy—divided into six committees (two each for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and one for Westminster) divided up the work.  The committees included members of both the Puritan and the High Church parties, though the King made his wish clear that the Bible not be slanted towards the Presbyterian/Puritan ecclesiology.  The scholars were commissioned to work from the ancient languages (Hebrew for the Old Testament, Greek for the New and for the Apocrypha), though they drew on existing English Translations (Tyndale, Coverdale, the Bishop’s Bible, and even the Rheims-Douai) for guidance.  In 1611 they finished their work and printed their Bible.

The King James has served well not only the Church of England or the Anglican Communion, but most Protestant denominations.  Only the mid-twentieth century did other translations become popular among Protestant groups and even today there are various religious groups that will not accept any other translation as the revealed Word of God.   But in the King James were planted the seeds of a religious division that would eventually bring down the monarchy and tear England—and its Church—apart.  

A Response to Summorum Pontificum and the Road to Schism

My previous post elicited the following comment and I want to respond to it, not in the comments section, but as a posting of its own because the questioner raises some important points that I had intended to expand on as a follow-up to the posting “Summorum Pontificum and the Road to Schism.”  The correspondent writes:

Weren't these people around pre-SP anyway? Is the objection that they are now able to have TLM more freely and openly rather than going to the SSPX or being hidden away in a side-chapel once a month at 4pm on a Sunday? If one was to substitute "Orthodox" for traditionalist, and "Byzantine rite" for TLM in this kind of analysis, wouldn't one be inclined to note that the "authority structures" in the Church were being used in a way inimical to ecumenism... that the tendency to see schism purely as the other side's lack of submission to a particular council betrayed an authoritarian totalitarianism? And that this attitude might be part of the problem?

Yes, right from the time that the liturgical changes began to be introduced in Lent of 1964 there were some priests who at first ignored them—keeping to the 1962 Missal—and then began a somewhat organized resistance to them.  Prominent among those who refused the changes was Father Gommar de Pauw, a Belgian born priest who was a professor and later Dean at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Emmetsburg Maryland.  Father De Pauw was named a Monsignor by Paul VI, but when the liturgical changes began, Monsignor DePauw founded the Catholic Traditionalist Movement and in 1968 established a Catholic Chapel, the Ave Maria Chapel, independent of any Episcopal authority in Westbury Long Island.  While Father DePauw and his followers rejected the Liturgical changes of the Second Vatican Council there efforts were directed beyond the liturgy; according to the website of the “Catholic Traditionalist Movement” they “worked to reverse the edicts of the 1962 - 1965 Vatican II.”   Father DePauw had made it very clear that he was opposed to the entire conciliar agenda despite the fact that he had served as one of the theological consultants to the Council.  In that role he was an aide to Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the arch-opponent of any and all of the doctrinal developments that came out of the Council and in particular an opponent of ecumenism and religious freedom. 

In some ways, DePauw’s resistance to the liturgical changes that followed the Council “jumped the gun” as the 1962 Missal remained in force—albeit with various modifications permitted—until the issuance of the 1970 Missal and the Novus Ordo Missae. While DePauw resisted from the get-go, others—and most notably Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the former Archbishop of Dakar in Africa and former Superior General of the Holy Ghost Fathers, (the Spiritans)—simply used the 1962 Rite without availing themselves of the proposed changes.  The 1970 promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae mandating of the New Missal as the exclusive manual for the liturgy made that clinging to the 1962 Missal impossible as, contrary to various stories to the contrary, the use of the old Rite was then proscribed.  In 1971 Archbishop Lefebvre opened a seminary for those who wished to follow more Traditional liturgy and theology.  He initially had permission of the local bishop-a requirement to run a seminary—but when this permission was withdrawn in 1975, he continued to run the seminary as an institution independent of Church authority. (Lefebvre was an Archbishop, but having no See—he was retired—he also had not authority.)  In 1976 Lefebvre ordained priests without the permission of the local bishop and was,  suspended a divinis, the usual punishment for this action.   He ignored the suspension and continued to function as a priest and as a bishop.  Certainly from this time, Archbishop Lefebvre can be seen to be in schism.  In 1988 he ordained four bishops without the required papal bulls, an act which brings an automatic excommunication.  The Congregation of Bishops in Rome declared this to be a formal act of schism.   Though the excommunication of Archbishop Lefebvre was posthumously lifted, as were the excommunications of the bishops whom he ordained, according to Rome’s decrees they remain in schism and to this day Catholics may not receive the Sacraments from priests of Lefebvre’s movement except in danger of death. 

Lefebvre’s schism has itself had several schisms and we have talked about them in previous postings.  Most notable among them are the movements led by Bishops Daniel Dolan, Donald Sanborn, and Clarence Kelly.  The various churches and chapels associated with these prelates offer only the pre-conciliar rites and are all in schism from the Catholic Church.  You will find in these chapels and churches that not only is the liturgy the pre-conciliar rite but the catechetical programs teach only what was held prior to the Council and do not incorporate any of the Conciliar decrees into their teaching.  Even in places where the TLM is celebrated in accordance with Church policy, one rarely finds the catechetical instruction to reflect the teachings of the Council. 

While the 1970 Missal was imposed on the entire Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, Paul VI granted several indults to individual priests or parishes to celebrate the pre-conciliar liturgy.  The former Jesuit, the late Malachi Martin, claimed to have one such indult.  At the request of a group of English and Welsh intellectuals and writers, Paul VI gave the Bishops of England and Wales permission to permit an occasional celebration of the usus antiquior (the older rite) of the Mass.  This was not meant to permit the use of the rite on a regular basis and it is often called the “Agatha Christie Indult” because it was when he saw the name of the famous author of murder mysteries (which the Pope enjoyed tremendously) among the petitioners, that Pope Paul approved the petition.  Ironically Ms. Christie, like many others who signed the petition, was a Protestant and their interests were purely aesthetic and antiquarian.  Very few of these indults were granted, and none for regular celebration of the pre-Conciliar Rite.  The fact that an indult was required—and an indult to be granted by the Pope alone—belies the frequently-made claim that that priests had always been permitted to celebrate the rite at their own discretion.

The first step towards a more general use of the older liturgical books came in 1984 with Pope John Paul’s motu proprio, Ecclesia Dei.  Even here, however, the permission was quite restricted as the priest needed the permission of the local bishop, a permission granted rather selectively by most bishops.  It was only with Summorum Pontificum that the individual priest was granted the right to celebrate the usus antiquior at his own discretion.  Even that is somewhat debated as Pope Benedict wrote the bishops that their prerogative in assuring that the pastoral needs of the faithful were not compromised, that is that the bishop, to fulfill the pastoral need of the faithful, could instruct a priest as to which rite he may use.  There are still occasional conflicts between local ordinaries who want the clergy to celebrate the Novus Ordo in their parishes and individual priests who assert their personal ritght to celebrate according to the 1962 Missal.  One of the criticisms of Jorge Bergoglio when he was elected as Pope Francis is that during his tenure as Archbishop of Buenos Aires there was no TLM in his Archdiocese.  Pope Francis has shown himself notably disinterested in the TLM but no priest from Buenos Aires has come forward with the claim that he was prohibited from celebrating in the old rite.  Archbishop Bergoglio certainly did not encourage the TLM but neither can it be shown—at least from any evidence that I have seen—that he blocked its use.  Colleagues of mine in Argentina and other South American Countries have said that there is not the same interest in reviving the pre-conciliar rites that we have in North America. 

So to respond to your first question, yes there were those who attended the TLM before Summorum Pontificum, but except in rare cases to attend the TLM before the 1984 Ecclesia Dei,  one would have had to resort to groups who were in formal schism.  Today Catholics can attend the TLM in Churches that are in full communion with the Holy See.  But the question remains: in those churches are they professing and practicing the same faith as in churches that follow the Novus Ordo?  Are the Church’s teachings and practices as set forth in the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican being faithful presented to the faithful and are those teachings being put into practice? Have Catholics who attend these churches and chapels been instructed in the decrees Nostra Aetate, Unitatis Reintegratio, Dignitas Humanae, Dei Verbum, etc.  and do they submit to these teachings?  Do Catholics who attend these chapels and churches recognize the validity of the Sacraments as administered in the contemporary Roman Rite?  Do they give assent to the ordinary magisterium as it has been presented in the Encyclicals of the last six Popes?  Very frankly, my contacts with many (not all) “traditionalist” Catholics show that they are for the greater part ignorant of the teachings of the Council and do not agree with them when those teachings are explained even by such moderate voices as Father Robert Barron. 

As for how “schism” is used polemically, I agree with you that this term is bandied about on both the right and the left as a threat by those who disagree with what those on the opposite end of the spectrum are proposing as authentic Catholicism.  But that is not how I am using it.  I am using the term schism as a rejection of the authority of the sitting Pope.  I would say that those who formally rejected the authority of Pope Benedict found themselves in schism.  Those individuals or groups, for example, who supported the various ordinations or episcopal ordinations of women priests or bishops or attended liturgies presided over by illicitly ordained (we will pass over the issued of validity at this point, illicit is sufficient for schism) priests or bishops are in the same sort of schismatic raft as those who participate in the liturgies of Archbishops Lefebvre’s SSPX.  In the same way those who participate in the liturgies of various independent Catholic chapels—even though their clergy are validly ordained—are in schism.  I would think that the Benedictine Women of Holy Wisdom Monastery in Madison WS, once a formal congregation of Roman Catholic religious, have crossed the line into schism.  I think the various independent groups that identify themselves as part of the “Old Catholic Church” are in formal schism.   

The shoe is on the other foot nowadays, however, with Pope Francis.   There are many among the neo-traditionalists who seriously question his teaching, his policies, and his decisions.  That alone doesn’t put them into schism but if he comes out with teachings in the ordinary magisterium (encyclicals) which they publicly reject, that would be a different issue.  If the 2015 Synod does not work out to their satisfaction and they refuse to accept the Pope’s ratification of the synod documents, that could be another issue.  If they start—and this is the more likely scenario—rejecting the authority of the local bishops who support Pope Francis, that too could be another issue.  I don’t think it is far fetched that individual groups, and not all necessarily followers of the TLM, with their priests will begin to turn against Pope Francis and publicly reject his leadership.  That would place them in schism.

Moreover, and a second reading of your question makes this further point pertinent, a refusal to accept the teachings of an Ecumenical Council also places one in schism.  One can certainly disagree with a Conciliar teaching just as one can disagree with a papal statement without finding oneself in schism, but any sort of public or formal rejection of a Council would place one outside the Communion of the Church.  The teachings of the Councils, just like papal teachings, are not optional.  Indeed the teachings of a Council would be even more obligatory that the ordinary papal magisterium as Conciliar decrees are historically considered, like infallible papal pronouncements, to be part of the extraordinary magisterium.  Of course one is only bound to a Conciliar teaching to the extent and in the sense that the Church teaches it but acceptance of the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council are not optional.  Pope Benedict made this very clear in his dealings with the SSPX and it continues to be the main block to their return to the Unity of the Church.