When was the schism in the Catholic Church?

Answer 1

Technically you can't have a schism IN the Catholic Church only FROM the Catholic Church. A schism is (from John Hardon, S.J.'s Modern Catholic Dictionary) "a willful separation from the unity of the Christian Church." He lists the first schism as a generation after the apostles, under Clement I, we have a record of Pope Clement's reprobation of them, but do not know who they were. We don't have a real definition of the damage done by schism until the Patristic Age when St. Augustine declared, "heretics wound the faith; by sinful dissension schismatics deviate from fraternal charity, although they believe what we believe." Thus there is a vast difference between heretics and schismatics. Recent schismatics would be those who left the Church after Vatican I: the Old Catholics and the Polish National Catholics. After Vatican II we have the Society of St. Pius X, but it is not yet gone into formal schism, and God willing, never will. At the end of the first millennium was the most famous schism which still exists to this day - that of the Eastern Orthodox from the Church. On the other hand, the protestants were of the first order that St. Augustine mentions, they were the result of heresy not schism. They no longer believe what the Christian Church believes, but have made up their own beliefs. Thus to answer the question, there have been schisms from the Church since the first century.