Is the Crisis in the Church Real?

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I've been disappointed in Cardinal Sarah's statements criticizing the consecraton of the bishops without a papal mandate. It's not the first time in Church history that a bishop disobeyed the pope. In fact, Pope John Paul II, when he was bishop of Krakow, under the policy of Ostpolitik, was  forbidden to ordain priests. He disobeyed Pope Paul VI's order that no above ground or underground ordinations should take place. He disobeyed and suffered no consequences and, in fact, became pope. 

Obedience: Sometimes it's Wrong

A fella commenting on my posts criticizing the Knights of Columbus and calling for reform got highly incensed and shook the dust off his feet when I had the temerity to suggest that Catholics are not obliged to obey their bishops in all things. Now, don't get me wrong, I think obedience is an important virtue. In fact, obedience is closely connected to the virtue of humility. And, as Fr. John Hardon often said, "Only humble people get into heaven." So I take the virtue of obedience seriously. But there is virtuous obedience, blind obedience, and evil obedience. The wise and the prudent need to make distinctions between them.

Clearly, obedience is evil when the order being obeyed involves committing sin. Soldiers who deliberately murder noncombatant civilians because they were "following orders" are guilty of wartime atrocities. No one may obey an evil order. That's the basis for war crime tribunals. Additionally, no one has an obligation to obey evil laws so those who operated the Underground Railroad or ignored the Jim Crow laws or the Nuremburg laws were morally justified. The Chinese who defy the one-child policy are completely right to disobey their evil government. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, an evil law that defies the law of God is no law at all.

Even lawful authority has limits. Children owe obedience to parents and those who serve in place of parents, like teachers, but a parent may not order a child to marry a particular person or follow a particular path in life, and teachers have no right to assign immoral books or films as required material. St. Clare certainly was not guilty of disobedience when she defied her parents and ran away to become a nun.

Bishops have authority and the duty to teach, govern, and sanctify their flocks in the faith. Their authority is intrinsically linked to the authority of the Pope and the Church. When they teach according to the mind of the Church, the flock is bound to obey. But when a bishop steps outside the deposit of the faith to make up his own rules, the laity, and even his priests, do not owe him obedience. Certainly, the priests under Arian bishops had not only the right, but the duty to disobey. Every heresy in the Church that I can think of originated with a cleric. Nestorius was a bishop. Martin Luther was a priest/monk. Arius was a priest. Not much is known about Pelagius, but he is commonly referred to as a British monk. Should the flock have followed these men because they wore Roman collars?

Of course not! And to suggest that blindly obeying clerics is virtuous is clericalism, the attitude that a Roman collar sets a man above all others and he should be obeyed in all matters both religious and secular. What nonsense when bishops throughout history have been responsible for so much evil. It was a bishop who conspired with the English to burn Joan of Arc at the stake. It was the entire bench of bishops in England minus one, John Fisher, who went along with Henry VIII's evil plan to set aside Catherine, marry Ann Boleyn, and declare himself head of the Church. Bishops used clericalism when they browbeat parents of sexually abused children into silence assuring them the matter would be taken care of and then moving the abusers again and again. They accused parents of wanting to destroy the Church. Sadly, the parents' silence enabled the evil to continue for decades. Failing to sound the alarm multiplied the problem exponentially.

To suggest that bishops should be obeyed in all things is just plain absurd.

As for the Knights of Columbus, they have a constitution and by-laws that require all members to be "practical," i.e., practicing Catholics. Those members who commit public scandal by supporting positions that openly defy Church teaching are not eligible to be Knights according to the Knights' own documents. To allow pro-abortion politicians to maintain membership and use it as they politic for reelection is scandalous and scandal is a serious sin. No bishop or pastor has the authority to order a council to admit or maintain the membership of such a knight. Supreme has no right to order councils to retain such members.

The Knights remove those who do not pay their dues. It is ridiculous to assert that they cannot remove a man who publicly advocates the murder of unborn children. I don't, however, suggest that men should quit the Knights in protest. I think they should stay and try to get Supreme and the state councils to change. If they won't, local councils who love the least of God's little ones waiting to be born would do well to vote to leave the Knights as a group and reestablish themselves as independent men's service groups within their parishes. In most cases, the groups would hardly know the difference except for having a lot less paperwork and keeping all their dues money locally.

And think of the impact of many councils leaving with the promise to return when the Knights begin to honor their own constitution and by-laws. The Knights do great good, but they poison the well when they violate their own rules and allow those who publicly defy the Church to remain Knights in good standing. Abortion laws and same sex marriage laws have, in some cases, only passed because of pro-abortion, pro-homosexual knights. That reality is so shameful as to cast a pall on the good the knights do. It must end!

On Blind Obedience

It never fails to amaze me how many pious Catholics think they should blindly obey anyone wearing a roman collar. Obedience is a virtue; blind obedience is not. This morning I was re-reading a back issue of Christifidelis, the newsletter of the St. Joseph Foundation. (If you are unfamiliar with this wonderful organization, you need to remedy the situation and meet them. They provide canonical advice to those in need and their website is a real education in Church law.) 

The article on obedience begins with a description of virtue and what it is. For a moral act to be virtuous the individual must make the decision with an "adequate knowledge of the situation, the options available, and the consequences of each option."  In other words, obeying a lawful authority is not a virtue. To obey because the authority "said so" may, in fact, be a sin. Think of all the men throughout history who committed heinous acts because they were "following orders." Obeying China's forced abortion/sterilization law is a modern example of abusive authority of a tyrannical government that may not be obeyed. To obey an order that conflicts with God's law is always objectively sinful.

Nancy Pelosi recently lectured the bishops that they should order their priests to preach the Democrats' immigration policy from the pulpit. This paragon of Catholic knowledge who thinks it's perfectly okay to disobey God's law, "Thou shalt not kill." would misuse the bishops' authority to brainwash the faithful on amnesty. And some of the bishops are doing it even without her marching orders. Cardinal Mahony, who regularly disobeys Holy Mother Church on the rubrics of the Mass and fills his catechetical conference with heretics every year, has no problem preaching his socialistic views on immigration as doctrine.

Which makes it pretty clear that the sheep in the pew need to understand the nature of obedience. As I told my children when they were attending less than faithful Catholic high schools, "Just because someone is wearing a roman collar, doesn't mean he's telling you the truth." We need the VIRTUE of obedience, not its evil twin, blind obedience. Otherwise those in authority may lead us down the primrose path of dalliance to the very mouth of hell.

The Legionaries of Christ: an example of blind obedience

Chiesa News has an interview with Fr. Thomas Berg, a former member of the Legionaries of Christ. The Vatican investigation of the order begins this week and Fr. Berg, who is now incardinated in the Archdiocese of New York, addresses some of the problems in the Legion. He gave an extensive commentary on the Legion's practice of "unquestioning submission" to superiors:

At the core of serious problems in the internal culture of the congregation is a mistaken understanding and living of the theological principle - in itself valid - that God's will is made manifest to the religious through his superior. The Legionary seminarian is erroneously led to foster a hyper-focusing on internal "dependence" on the superior for virtually every one of his intentional acts (either explicitly or in virtue of some norm or permission received, or presumed or habitual permissions). This is not in harmony with the tradition of religious life in the Church, nor is it theologically or psychologically sound. It entails rather an unhealthy suppression of personal freedom (which is a far cry from the reasoned, discerned and freely exercised oblation of mind and will that the Holy Spirit genuinely inspires in the institution of religious obedience) and occasions unholy and unhealthy restrictions on personal conscience.

Furthermore, Legionary norms regarding "reporting to," "informing," "communication with," and "dependence on" superiors constitute a system of control and conformity which now must be considered highly suspect given what we know about Fr. Maciel. They furthermore engender a simplistic, and humanly and theologically impoverished notion of God's will (its discernment and manifestation) that breeds personal immaturity.

More seriously, the lived manner in which Legionaries practice obedience is laced with the kind of unquestioning submission which allowed the cult of personality to emerge around the figure of Maciel in the first place and covered for his misdeeds. Legionary seminarians are essentially trained to suspend reason in their obedience and to seek a total internal conformity with all the norms, and to withstand any internal impulse to examine or critique the norms or the indications of superiors.

Granted, the primary motivation behind such living of obedience is the ideal of total "immolation" of oneself for the love of Christ as embodied in the relentless living of all norms and indications of the superiors. This "immolation" of intellect and will is at the heart of the "holocaust" that the Legionary is invited to live for love of Christ and the Church. While the motivation is valid, and generations of Legionaries have pursued this in good faith, in the long run it not only proves profoundly problematic, but also explains the negative personality change which many, if not most, Legionaries undergo over time: the shallowness of their emotional expression, the lack of empathy and inability to relate normally to others in so many contexts, the general sense of their being "out of touch," etc. Only exceptionally do Legionary priests move beyond this, but only thanks to the multiple talents and human gifts they brought with them to the Legion.

It is more important than ever for Catholics to understand what constitutes legitimate authority and obedience to God's will. Those exercising authority may never infringe on the legitimate exercise of free will by those under them. Pray for the discernment of the Legionaries and their openness to God's will.

Blind Obedience is not a Virtue

The latest issue of Christifidelis, from the St. Joseph Foundation, is out and it's a corker! The lead article by Philip Gray, J.C.L. is a great discussion on what obedience is and when a person is required to obey a lawful authority. Obedience is a subset of the cardinal virtue of justice which requires us to give to God and neighbor what is due to them. We owe absolute obedience to God, so all other laws are subservient to and subject to God's laws. When there's a conflict between God's law and a lower law, guess what we have to do? "We must obey the higher [law] lest we sin."

There are limits on human authority. "Directives that violate divine law must be ignored, and in many circumstances we have an obligation to resist them actively." Gray gives China's forced abortion laws as an example.

We must obey legitimate authority. However, if those in authority act outside the boundaries of their authority, they need not be obeyed. For example, parents have authority over their children, but don't have the right to demand that an adult child follow a particular vocation. So when St. Clare fled from home to become a nun she did not act in disobedience.

My own mom left Cleveland against her mother's will (but with her father's support) to fly to California and marry my dad before he was deployed to Pearl Harbor in 1940. Even if her father had joined in opposing the marriage, she would not have been disobedient to ignore their wishes because parents have no authority to choose the marriage partners of their children. (I guess that means I can't arrange any marriages for my grandchildren. Darn!)

Gray points out that "to develop the virtue of obedience, we must develop an adequate knowledge of divine laws and those human laws that regulate our lives. We have to know the limits of authority. If we do not know the limits of authority, we can be easily manipulated or used by lawful authority." In other words, just because someone has authority over me doesn't mean I'm obliged to follow every directive. He cannot demand unlawful obedience. Those who "when faced with a direction...neither seek to know options and consequences nor deliberate their choices" show an attitude that "is not true obedience nor is it virtuous." In other words, blind obedience is the cop-out of a lazy individual who doesn't want to take the trouble to study and understand the nature of obedience, its requirements and its limits.

Gray goes on to say that "we have an obligation to know the divine laws and what our obligations to God are. Only with knowledge of divine laws and the legitimate boundaries of lawful authority can we obey." The person who claims authority must also be able to prove it because "we are not bound to obey someone who cannot provide proof of his authority and who does not stay within the bounds of his power."

Gray uses the example of options for Communion as an example of the abuse of legitimate authority, perhaps because it's been so common over the years. In the Latin rite, the communicant has the option of kneeling or standing for Communion and the priest may not infringe on that right. "If a priest demands that a kneeling communicant stand, the communicant does not have to obey....If the communicant follows the priest's demand, this is not obedience. Obedience takes place only when we give authority its rightful due. In this case, the priest went beyond his lawful authority and the communicant allowed him that privilege....If the communicant did not follow the directive, he would not be acting in disobedience...because the priest does not have the authority to demand the standing posture during the reception of Holy Communion. The priest would be acting outside his legitimate bounds, and the communicant would have no obligation to 'obey.'" The same type of abuse of authority comes into play when a priest or religious education teacher instructs communicants they must receive in the hand and may not receive on the tongue. I know of a parish in Maryland where this was routinely demanded by the pastor for First Communicants. This is a serious violation of his authority as well as a violation of Canon Law.

More and more today it's essential for Catholics to understand the nature of obedience and legitimate authority and to know their rights. Last May when Notre Dame police ordered pro-lifers off what is an open campus, similar to a small town, simply because they were carrying signs showing aborted children or pushing baby strollers with dolls covered in stage blood, were they disobedient for refusing to comply? I don't think so. Under the first amendment of our Constitution people cannot be discriminated against due to the content of their speech. Since Notre Dame allowed others to carry pro-Obama and pro-Fr. Jenkins signs on campus they could not legitimately discriminate against others just because they found the content of their signs objectionable. It will be interesting to see what happens in court as the cases are heard, but I do not think those who refused to comply with the order to leave campus were "disobedient" according to Gray's article. Sidewalk counselors, videographers attending gay pride parades, protesters, etc. are all subject to abuse by over-vigorous authorities violating their boundaries.

I'll close with one personal example. About ten years ago I set up a pro-life table at my polling place. I was the proper distance from the entrance so I wasn't violating any election rules. However, someone complained about the graphic pictures and the fetal models and an election official came out, ordered me to put everything away, and called the police. The responding officer told me if I didn't remove the "offensive" materials, I'd be arrested. I complied, but went home and called the American Center for Law and Justice who telephoned the polling place. The election officer backed down (actually apologized) and I put my materials out again. Had I refused to comply I would not have been disobedient. Rather I would have been challenging the boundaries of their authority which they clearly abused. More and more today, Catholics in the public square need to know and understand God's law, the nature of obedience and legitimate authority, and the limits and boundaries of that authority. Only then can they make intelligent choices and act in ways that are truly just and prudent and will help us, as Gray says, "freely choose to exercise the virtue of obedience and gain merit directed to our salvation."