Polarization

When light passes through a polarizer, only photons vibrating in one particular plane are allowed through. Thus the emerging light is dimmer, some of the original light has been lost. This is how Polaroid sunglasses work, especially to filter out glaring light reflecting off water for instance.

There is no way to de-polarize light after it has been polarized, except by going back in time to when it was unpolarized!

The same applies to the polarization of human ideas, which sadly happens all too often. Of its limited nature, the human mind cannot naturally admit the full light of Truth without rejecting some of it. The mind acts like a polarizer, and each one of us has our polarizer set at a different angle to  everyone else’s. If we are at right angles to our neighbour, then no light can pass between us at all. This is cross-polarization.

No light gets past the second polarizer

We see such cross-polarization in human thinking as left/right-wing, liberal/conservative, Catholic/Protestant/Jew/Gentile/Moslem/Hindu/Buddhist/agnostic/atheist etc. Polarization of human thinking leads to tribes. Each tribe sees only a fraction of the whole light. The best tribe for seeing and transmitting the full light of Truth is the one least polarized in its thinking.

Of course, another thing that reduces light transmission is opacity or darkness. Sinfulness darkens our minds. Mortal sin darkens them completely. Only a perfectly sinless person, like Our Lady, can honestly say

My soul magnifies the Lord…

The job of the Church is to remove opacity and train its members to be less polarizing and more transmissive of the whole light of Truth. She will be at this work of making Saints of us until Judgement Day.