Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D., in his classic work devoted to the interior life entitled Divine Intimacy, explains that, "Devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel indicates a strong call to the interior life, which, in a very special way, is Mary's life. The Blessed Virgin wants us to resemble her in heart and mind much more than in externals. If we penetrate into Mary's soul, we see that grace produced in her a very rich interior life: a life of recollection, prayer, uninterrupted giving of herself to God, and of constant contact and intimate union with Him. Mary's soul is a sanctuary reserved for God alone where no creature has ever left an imprint; here reign love and zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of men. Those who wish to live truly devoted to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, must follow Mary into the depths of the interior life...Every interior soul, even if living amid the tumult of the world, must strive to reach this peace, this interior silence, which alone makes continual contact with God possible. It is our passions and attachments that make noise within us, that disturb our peace of mind and interrupt our intimate converse with God. Only the soul that is wholly detached and in complete control of its passions can, like Mary, be a solitary, silent 'garden' where God will find His delights. This is the grace we ask of Our Lady today when we choose her to be the Queen and mistress of our interior life." (Divine Intimacy, pp. 1147-1148).
When a soul is occupied with inordinate attachments to self or creatures or the vain and passing things of this world, it is unable to love God with all its strength and finds itself divided between God and self, between God and creatures, between God and the transitory things of this dying world. But we are commanded, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength and with all thy mind." (Luke 10: 27).
It is these inordinate attachments to self or creatures which lead to dissent and ultimately polarization within the Church. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, tells us that, "The Church 'is like a sacrament, a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men' (Lumen Gentium, 1). Consequently, to pursue concord and communion is to enhance the force of her witness and credibility. To succumb to the temptation of dissent, on the other hand, is to allow the 'leaven of infidelity to the Holy Spirit' to start to work." (No. 40).
This leaven of infidelity has, for many years now, crippled the Diocese of Worcester. The dissent which has been embraced within this local Church has led to polaraization. Why? Because faithful Catholics who do not [and indeed cannot] accept the dissenting view are duty bound to resist it for the sake of the Church's authentic peace, a peace which Pope John XXIII said, "is not completely untroubled and serene; it is active, not calm and motionless. In short, this is a peace that is ever at war. It wars with every sort of error, including that which falsely wears the face of truth; it struggles against the enticements of vice, against those enemies of the soul, of whatever description, who can weaken, blemish, or destroy our innocence or Catholic faith." (Ad Petri cathedram).
There has been much dissent and subsequent polarization within the Diocese of Worcester because the leadership (and here we are being most generous in our terms) of the local Church has failed to inspire the faithful (and its own priests first and foremost) to strip themselves of all that is not of God. While St. John of the Cross assures us that, "The soul has only one will, and if it occupies itself or encumbers itself with anything, it will not remain free, solitary, and pure, as is required for divine transformation," the Worcester Diocese has encouraged an atmosphere of self-will, self-assertion, self-affirmation and self-promotion. Forgotten is the warning of the Holy Spirit that "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (James 4: 6).
We (all of us) must become more Mary-like in heart and mind and not just in externals. "In every deliberate sin," as Dr. Germain Grisez reminds us, such as dissent from Church teaching or deliberate non-assent, "freedom of self-determination is exercised contrary to what is known to be truly right and good. In sinning, sinners tend to regard moral truths legalistically, as if they were mere rules blocking them from doing as they please. Thus, deliberate sin seems to be self-affirming. Affirming the self and rejecting the limits which deny some forbidden fruit, sinners try to be autonomous, as only God really can be."
Faith demands the renunciation of the sinful self which authentic devotion to Mary necessarily involves. Pride must give way to humility. Only then can one find the truth which sets one free (John 8: 32).
The Worcester Diocese has tried dissent. The faithful remain polarized. Evangelization has suffered greatly. Parishes are emptying.
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