A conundrum. If you simply limit the federal gov’t or even move policy to favor conservative goals it can be quickly changed back in electoral politics. But the size can change back the quickest due to unforeseen circumstances; war, economic difficulty, etc.

Shake the dust of democracy off your feet. Don’t participate in that pagan Choice Ritual at all. Reject the idea that the problem can be solved technically by adopting policies of the sort assumed in the poll question; if you don’t, the technocracy-policy dragons you unleash will return to you and eat your children.

I’m curious: what would formal schism look like? The entrenched bureaucrats would likely keep the Vatican. Maintaining apostolic succession would be impossible.

So where would the conservatives go? Would they be forced to join up with protestants?

Mr. Carver: see St. Pius X, Society of; Lefevbre, Archibishop; and other stuff that comes up under those results.

Presumably the Pope would keep the Vatican—if not, whereever he was would be in effect the Vatican—and whatever cardinals are in communion with him would choose the next pope when he died.

Mr. Carver:
Society of Saint Pius X in America
http://www.sspx.org/index.htm

It would depend entirely if a man like Mahoney was elected to the papacy or if the liberals formed an opposition church. If the first happens, you’ll see all sorts of things. There might be 2 or 3 (anti)popes elected by bodies not in communion with each other, national churches might elect their own popes, and some will seek reunion with Constantinople. Presumably, some bishoprics in poverty striken countries will disband due to the confusion and lack of funding. The goverment will side with the liberal papacy on conflicting property claims following an important precedent: When the Soviets tried to liberalize the Russian Orthodox Church in the 20’s and 30’s, liberal judges in the US had churches seized that refused to submit to the communist ‘New Church’ movement, largely on directions from the FDR government, conservative judges did not. If the second happens, the damage will be not be that great because plenty of people are trying that now without any success what so ever.

It isn’t like any of this is really new or novel, which no doubt in part explains the ho-hum attitude in Rome. The Church has lived through far worse, with individual Popes having all manner of personal traits. The sort of people — liberal or conservative — who want what they want when they want it (e.g. SPX Society on the one hand or protestants on the other) always seem to be so self-important that problems have to be solved by the Holy Spirit on their terms and time table. Ho hum.

Matt, the protestants would say the the problems were never really solved, but simply manifest themselves in new ways. SSPX wants to replace the new problems with the old ones.

Many, many lay Catholics quit and became evangelicals due to the liberalism in America’s parishes. If schism actually happens, Eastern Orthodoxy — which acts as if problems only happen to other people — may be the big winner.

Jim: sure. Most of the EO’s I know are reflective ex-evangelicals; they found the hidden-church preserved bible story of protestantism intellectually untenable and the self-contradictions within _sola scriptura_ and _sola fide_ impossible to maintain; but were unable to give up the self-centric gnosticism and antiauthoritarianism/anti-Romanism that EO allows them to maintain. I think the notion that EO is likely to benefit as liberalism eats Protestantism and novus ordo Catholicism from within makes sense.