Schism and Reconciliation in the Salt Mines: Pontian & Hippolytus
There is a strong analogy to be made between our own times and the times of Pontian and Hippolytus. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Pontian was the Pope—a humble man considered to be too lax. Hippolytus was the anti-pope and a popular theologian considered to be too rigorous.
Hippolytus believed that the authentic papal magisterium of Pontian lacked rigor and was too tolerant, and therefore needed to be resisted and corrected. So he took a public stand against it and led people into schism.
And how did God providentially heal this schism in the Church? The Roman Emperor Maximinus Thrax exiled both of them to the salt mines of Sardinia, where they found themselves laboring side by side and slowly dying together.
There they reconciled and became friends. They both renounced their claims to be the Pope and allowed a new Pope (St. Anterus) to be elected.
They both died martyrs for the faith, although only Pontian was the true Pope.
The moral of the story is clear: we must never direct our rigor and our intellectual gifts against the authentic magisterium of the Pope. It is a perennial temptation within the Church, but to give in to it is to become an agent of schism.
Schism is healed by learning to suffer together. If we do not learn the lessons that the history of the Church and the lives of the saints teach us, then God will teach us these lessons again, providentially, by allowing us to suffer through them again.
The choice is ours to make. In the end, Hippolytus repented of disobedience. It is much easier simply never to abandon the authentic papal magisterium, no matter how lax it may appear to us.
Today’s Mass Collect
May the precious long-suffering of the just, O Lord, we pray, bring us a great increase of love for you and always prompt in our hearts constancy in the holy faith.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
© 2026, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.