Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. I am puzzled by the concept of a "schism" within the Anglican Communion. Many Anglicans, both the ultra-modernists and the conservatives, worry about the unity of the Anglican Communion, and accuse each other of destroying it. This really mystifies me. To a Catholic or Orthodox, the concept of schism is well-defined: there is meant to be one visible and hierarchically ordered body, and to be severed from it is to be in schism. But no Anglicans have ever claimed that the Anglican Communion is the one true Church. At most it has been claimed to be a "branch" on an equal footing with the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches. But if one can be truly catholic while being just a "branch" that is not in visible communion with other branches, then why would it not be legitimate for those three branches to further "branch"? That is, could one not have a "twig theory"? To put it bluntly, what is so bad about breaking off from an entity that is itself just a fragment? Is there something sacred about the unity of a fragment? Or to put it bluntly, can one be in schism from a schism? If schism is bad then Anglicanism is all wrong to begin with.