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Obedience: we are treating the subject fearlessly even though today
there is a bad press for whoever declares himself in favour of
obedience and of respect for the values and virtues always considered
basic to civil and spiritual life. Being free from any responsibility
(which is always a cross) and from every concern for a position of power
(which is always a temptation) may perhaps guarantee to a person the
hope of not being misinterpreted if he attempts to express in current
terms considerations which might seem—but really only seem—so out of
date.
If the modern age is characterized by the substitution of the
principle of reason for the principle of authority, we know that in more
recent years a kind of charismatic impulse has been on the increase; in
every area of life, profane and religious, it takes the place of reason
itself as the motive of action and is imposed in a much more decisive
manner. Democracy is the daughter of reason and to it owes its
definitive validity, even if it was conceived among the presumptions of
the Enlightenment.
The recent totalitarian regimes were linked to a will for power which
in its wear and tear fashioned various ideologies as substitutes for the
objective principles of the natural law, contested as it was by
philosophical relativism and juridical positivism. The contestation is
the expression of primordial impulses, at times defined in profane and
lay circles, as charisms. In the name of these there are some today who
tend to break all barriers. Others, more reasonable, attempt to reassess
the relation between liberty and authority, between the communitarian
and the directional element (no longer are the terms subjects and
superiors used, nor indeed authority or hierarchy)
according to criteria considered responsive to the asserted maturity
of man, which true or presumed as it may be, constitutes a psychological
component which in the organization of social relations cannot be
disregarded. Certainly, any form not only of authoritarianism but also
of paternalism is now regarded as insupportable, insufferable, and
inconceivable especially if vested in ostentatious sufficiency, or worse
still, founded on an appeal to an unconditional representation of a
transcendent power which asserts its claims not in the ways of reason,
but in the name of a personal investiture, secular or sacral, to which
only an attachment of blind fideism could respond. This no one is
disposed to accept today so that even the traditional language on
the origin and the function of the divine vicegerence of authority is
refuted or is called in question.
Perhaps the way to meet the problem is to turn truly to the ways of
reason. Reason should not give rise to fear: it is a reflection of the
eternal Logos. If it is authentic reason, it is a participation of man
in the truth of God.
* * *
The ways of reason. We will interpret: the ways of conscience. Here
is another word which stirs fear. In reality, conscience is the root of
liberty, the highest good, recognized today as the fundamental right of
man and of the citizen. The problem is to discern not only whether the
conscience is right but also whether it is true, that is, whether it
judges and works in truth; and whether charism is enough to give truth
to the conscience, and thus to liberty and to action.
When charism comes from the divine Spirit as in the just man of whom
Saint Paul speaks, then it itself is truth, since for the just there is
no law (I Tim. 1, 9), because, as Saint Thomas explains, the same
interior perfection, the same impulse of the Holy Spirit, inclines him
to carry out by a connatural feeling without any external rule, the
works of the law (I-II. q. 96, a. 5; cfr. Rom. 2, 14-15). The
development of a truly democratic society should tend also toward this
liberty in justice.
But this is not the case with contestation, nor more generally with
disobedience. Moreover, in the Christian community, who is certain about
having the divine Spirit with himself? The Saints, who are full of the
Spirit, are never disobedient, do not break from the ranks, do not
subvert the most sacred principles. These if any one ever is, are the
pioneers and prophets of progress without professing to be charismatic,
without presuming that they have a divine investiture opposed to that—which
hypothetically can be functioning badly in practice—of constituted
authority. They bring about the true revolutions in ways of humility,
the supreme expression of rationality.
After all, for the individual conscience, obedience is like an
addition of light, a teacher as Saint Thomas says (II-II, q. 186, a. 5),
which enables it to overcome limitations, uncertainties, internal
contradictions which influence the deliberation of human acts and very
often result in disorder and incoherence, which means the failure, not
merely moral, of life. For social groups, authority represents the
unifying principle which organizes interpersonal and social relations in
reference to the common good. It is utopian to think of being able to
get along without it. Without the directive principle of authority
society would have neither political nor religious consistency, because
it would be deprived of its "form".
It is certain nevertheless that this principle is less valued and
applied today in the new psychological and sociological conditions.
Personalism, democracy are the components of a situation in which the
freedom-authority relationship presents, without doubt, certain problems
of measure, proportion and definition. But it can also find certain new
modes of functioning, perhaps better than those which prevailed
in the past, at least in areas where authoritarianism restricted the
subjects and isolated the principles, or where paternalism went hand in
hand with a proportionate infantilism.
For both individual and social life it is a matter of solving the
problem of maturity in the light of prudence, the
key-virtue of action. It is formed in the spirit of and exercised in
practical conduct with the help of obedience. Here also Saint Thomas
offers the elements essential for a methodology and pedagogy of
prudence, which still prove, and today more than ever, their validity. (cfr.
II-II. q. 47, a. 8).
* * *
According to the Thomistic analysis prudence in its psychological
dynamism evolves through a triple moment or operation which is then
reflected in the life of social groups as a method of acting and of
governing men, who arc not automatons nor slaves, but persons endowed
with reason and liberty and recognized and respected as such.
The moment of counsel is the first: full investigation of the
means for attaining the end, full consultation for assisting in this
investigation, and facilitating its discovery. In the life of a group it
is the moment for dialogue among all and with all, the moment for the
free expression of thought and opinion on the part of all. It is the
procedure in the ordinary range of conferences and collaboration in the
development of human relations—political, intellectual, religious. etc—or
in the extraordinary periods of evolution and transformation of
institutions affecting the interests of the whole community (as has
happened in these years of aggiornamento and renewal of
religious institutes). The most profound essence of democracy,
considered as a spirit rather than a technique of government, is
incarnated in this moment of prudence applied to social life.
In the second moment, of judgement, there is realized rather
the aristocratic element in the application of the competence derived
from wisdom, knowledge, experience, etc. From the results of the
investigation, the opinions expressed, the propositions presented, a
choice is made with the intention of adopting the best means for the
purpose and the surest way to the personal and common good.
This choice will be made honestly according to objective criteria and
when the situation calls for it with scientific rigour (and this is the
function of moral theology as the study and consultation of ways of
acting and their value along with the various disciplines concerned with
the socio-economic and political life of the people). In the spiritual
life it is the moment of confrontation between means and end in the
light of the testimony and criteria of universal reason which in the
Christian is illumined and corroborated by faith. In social life it is
the moment for the various organs, or "councils" or
commissions, which are called on constitutionally to pronounce on the
validity of a law or on a decision to be taken, or also of any or all
others, individuals, groups, and associations who freely express their
opinions on debated questions according to their competence.
And therefore it is the moment of the technician, and of the expert.
Today many hope that in political society this competence of the elite
will be incarnated in a House as a representative group along
with that which expresses the political will of the majority of the
population. In the Church today also there exist and there are being
perfected in their structure and in their function, central and
peripheral organs which serve in this work of selection, with
pronouncements arrived at from profound study of questions, from
comparison with tradition, from examination of sociological and
socio-religious data, from experience and practice. In the framework of
a healthy democratic conception and of an order founded on the principle
of the common good as the justifying reason for society and authority,
the moment of judgment is that in which the few act concretely in
the service of the many.
The final moment is that of decision (imperium), in which the
will renders effective and workable the dictate of reason. This is the
case whether it is personal will in the ambit of the individual life or
the collective will, represented by the political power in the sphere of
social life, where there is transmitted in legislative action (lex
imperium) that which is directive and executive endowed with a power
binding on the will of those who live and work together for the common
good. At various times in the life of an association, or according to
various types of government, this decision would be binding in the case
of a single person, a group, an organism, or directly on a whole
community (in the case of an election, especially in the form of direct
democracy). In any case there will have been incarnated the principle of
authority harmonized with the principle of liberty, in an economy of
balances, compensations, and correctives wisely proportioned according
to the cultural maturity and the social development of the people.
* * *
An ancient teaching this, which does not seem to be at all out of
date. Moreover the proof of its validity is seen today in the recurring
crises in governments which accentuate one or the other of the moments
described, depending upon the ideological postulates and the abstract
schema under which the functions of the state are conceived or according
to the interests of the parties prevailing in the exercise of power.
When it is a crisis of political prudence, generally the
oscillation is between the two extremes of anarchy and despotism.
On the plane of ecclesial and religious life authority and obedience
can be harmonized in a prudential synthesis. This finds many forms of
realization according to the various levels of
psycho-sociological-spiritual development which characterize the
historical context within which the Church also is inserted and lives.
There are, for example, the new experiences of work and even of
collegial government being institutionalized on all levels of ecclesial
society. Witness the broad range of consultations carried on in these
years. Witness the vast new horizons open for the action of all members
of the Church in the apostolate. But in every case it must be
remembered, especially in the ecclesial and religious sphere,
that however various, variable, evolutive in time and in geocultural
space, the relation between authority and liberty could never be as
some would claim without binding power on the one hand, without
obedience on the other. Nor could there ever be lacking in truth
terms of the relationship, understood and experienced in the Christian
dimension, the experience of the Cross.
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