The ninth ditch of Maleboge in Dante’s Inferno holds the schismatics. In his usual, vividly-appropriate imagery, Dante portrays the torture of the schismatics as being split in half with a demonic sword. Anthony Esolen translates Dante’s description with hellish language: “midstave split apart … so burst wide from the chin, severed down to where we fart.”

It is interesting that Dante puts Muhammad and his son Ali into the circle of schismatics. He thus follows the medieval understanding of Islam as a Christian schism. The imagery is violent because schism eventually leads to violence. Notice the violence of Islam. Notice the violence of the wars of religion and centuries of revolution and bloodshed after the Protestant Revolution in Europe. When Christendom is broken, heads must roll.

As usual, in Dante’s vision, the punishment fits the crime. Schismatics sin against unity, and so they themselves are split asunder. The violent imagery that Dante uses reflects an inner psychological and spiritual reality. Schism splits us asunder. It divides the Church. It divides families. It divides communities. It divides the individual. We cannot have unity within ourselves if we are out of unity with one another and with Christ’s Church.

Schism, in all its forms, is the simple assumption that “I know best.”

My own opinion becomes the truth. My own biblical interpretation becomes dogma. My own limited understanding becomes the benchmark for all knowledge. My own private interpretation or personal revelation is the only truth and all the truth. The kind of individualism which our society exalts is simply the sin of schism writ large: each man and each woman a law unto themselves, with no unifying factor, no unifying belief, no unifying set of morality, no unifying authority structure.

The result of this schism for the individual is modern man’s search for identity — his search for a soul. We don’t know who we are, so, consequently, we make an image for ourselves. We are “self-made men” and proud of it. We try on different personas. We re-invent ourselves. We are cut off from the source of unity, and we suffer from an inner schism, which has become a chasm of emptiness within.

Our society is split into millions of little groups, with no real connections between them. We’re a confederation of contradictions: ethnic groups, religious groups, political groups, broken families, broken lives — all the result of schism and a flight from unity. In fact, the only thing these groups seem to have in common is a shared hatred of any authority or any system that might provide unity in the midst of sectarian chaos.

This is why my Catholic faith is so vitally important. There is nothing else in modern society that can give anyone a connection with the deepest sources of unity. All other religions are themselves schismatic and sectarian. No other philosophy or culture can transcend all the divisions of the world but the Catholic faith. The Catholic faith provides the source of unity for the individual and society. We draw together around the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic faith; and this leads us to an inner unity as individuals, but as each individual approaches unity, he or she also comes closer to one another, and so societal unity begins to come about.

The United Nations or other pan-national groups, like the World Council of Churches, propose the “brotherhood of all” or “a new world order,” but the Catholic Church already unites billions of people worldwide from every nation, race, language and ethnicity.

This is difficult to articulate, but I realize that, through the unity of the Mass, through the unity of the Church, by being part of one flock, following one shepherd, my own tendency to schism and individualism is corrected. The more deeply I am immersed in the Church, the more I share unity with my fellow man, and the more the schism of sin in my own life is healed. The more I make a loving submission to the Church, the less I matter and the more I am being gathered up into a far greater cosmic unity than I could ever have imagined.

This unity obliterates my shallow individualism, but it does not obliterate my personality. Instead, it fulfills my personality. Instead of being in pieces, it brings me to a place of peace. Searching for and living in the Unity brings me at last to the place I ought to be. This is one of the greatest and unexpected blessings of becoming a Catholic — that I am called to move further up and further into the Unity. Bit by bit, I take my place within the ranks of the blessed and find, as Dante says, “my peace in his will.”

Father Dwight Longenecker is a

priest of the Diocese of

Charleston, South Carolina,

and a blogger for the Register.