The Marian Movement
Witnesses of Communion and of Unity
Again, it is said in the act of consecration of the laity: "We promise you to be united with the Holy Father, with the hierarchy and with our priests, in order thus to set up a barrier to the growing confrontation directed against the Magisterium, that threatens the very foundation of the Church."
This is a characteristic commitment, which marks every member of the faithful who belongs to the Movement, and urges him to become ever an instrument of communion, of peace and of unity.
In this period of its purification, the Church is living through times of grea suffering. The M.M.P. desires above all to share fully in the sufferings of the Church, drinking together with her the chalice of much bitterness. For this reason it is never called to act by way of criticism or judgment and, much less, by way of condemnation. And therefore, it has nothing to do with, and in fact totally rejects, those means taken by many today who publicly, even through the press, criticize Holy Mother Church in a bitter and mischievous way.
We must never pour vinegar on open and bleeding wounds. The only help the Movement wants to give to the Church is that of love, a filial and merciful love.
"I will bring you to love the Church very much. Today the Church is going through times of great suffering because it is loved less and less by its own children. Many would like to renovate it and purify it solely by criticism and by violent attacks on its institution. Nothing is ever renewed or purified without love!" (November 9, 1975)
The specific commitment of the Marian Movement consists in leading the faithful to be witnesses of love for the Church today: a love which must become concrete in a faithful and passionate presence, to share in its sorrow and bear with it its great cross; a love which above all brings us to be, in every circumstance, instruments of coherence and of unity, and thus to contribute to healing the Church of its many deep and painful lacerations.