Francis Berger
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A Christian's First Vocation is to Follow Jesus; Obedience to Externals is Secondary

9/9/2022

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I am in the process of drafting a series of posts that elaborate on why I believe the Altar-Civilization model of traditional/conventional Christianity is no longer viable. The posts will focus on a number of crucial themes, among them authority, obedience, the common good, conscience, the Divine Self, and freedom.  

The basic point within my overarching thesis rests on the following observation:

Traditionally- and conventionally-minded Christians are wittingly or unwittingly using the external aspects of Christianity -- tradition, doctrine, scripture, etc. – to rationalize or justify their spiritual passivity and inertia, or to hide, obfuscate, deny, justify, or rationalize the total or near total forsaking of internal spiritual responsibilities, chief among them, the first Christian vocation to follow Jesus. They also fall into the trap of misusing tradition and the teachings of church fathers to forsake personal discernment, override conscience, and derail the active alignment of the Divine Self with Creation and God’s creative purposes.

For the most part, I will utilize traditional sources to support my thesis – the idea being that the witting or unwitting abuse of tradition can be easily revealed by referring to tradition itself. In this particular post, I will cite the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Contrary to what many presume, the observation noted above does not boil down to the total and outright rejection of Christian externals. It is instead a rejection of the abuse of Christian externals like tradition, doctrines, scripture, etc. As such, it should be a matter of great concern to traditionally-minded Christians and unconventionally-minded Christians alike.

In this post, I will focus on the matter of obedience to authority – specifically the commands exemplified by passages like Romans 13.

Though the traditional path to salvation via churches, scriptures, doctrines has never been a guaranteed, failproof way of attaining salvation, Christians could more or less rely on the traditional path to guide them toward that goal, which helps explain why practices such as obedience to external authorities, as exemplified in Romans 13, are regarded as high virtues toward which all Christians should strive.

The problem within the message of Romans 13 lies within the assumption that political, civil, and religious authorities emanate from God and, thus, more or less aim to align themselves with Creation and God’s purposes to promote and defend rights, freedom, and the common good.

The command to obey external authority generally works for Christians if and when the governing authorities adhere to the precepts outlined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (bold added):

1897 "Human society can be neither well-ordered nor prosperous unless it has some people invested with legitimate authority to preserve its institutions and to devote themselves as far as is necessary to work and care for the good of all."
 
By "authority" one means the quality by virtue of which persons or institutions make laws and give orders to men and expect obedience from them.
 
1898 Every human community needs an authority to govern it. The foundation of such authority lies in human nature. It is necessary for the unity of the state. Its role is to ensure as far as possible the common good of the society.
 
1899 The authority required by the moral order derives from God: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment."
 
1900 The duty of obedience requires all to give due honor to authority and to treat those who are charged to exercise it with respect, and, insofar as it is deserved, with gratitude and good-will.
 
Pope St. Clement of Rome provides the Church's most ancient prayer for political authorities: "Grant to them, Lord, health, peace, concord, and stability, so that they may exercise without offense the sovereignty that you have given them. Master, heavenly King of the ages, you give glory, honor, and power over the things of earth to the sons of men. Direct, Lord, their counsel, following what is pleasing and acceptable in your sight, so that by exercising with devotion and in peace and gentleness the power that you have given to them, they may find favor with you."


“Insofar as it is deserved” is a key point within 1900, and it immediately raises the question of how Christians should act if the governing authority strays from or intentionally opposes the moral order derived from God. Well, this is where things get interesting (bold added):

1901 If authority belongs to the order established by God, "the choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the free decision of the citizens."
 
The diversity of political regimes is morally acceptable, provided they serve the legitimate good of the communities that adopt them. Regimes whose nature is contrary to the natural law, to the public order, and to the fundamental rights of persons cannot achieve the common good of the nations on which they have been imposed.
 
1902 Authority does not derive its moral legitimacy from itself. It must not behave in a despotic manner, but must act for the common good as a "moral force based on freedom and a sense of responsibility":
 
A human law has the character of law to the extent that it accords with right reason, and thus derives from the eternal law. Insofar as it falls short of right reason it is said to be an unjust law, and thus has not so much the nature of law as of a kind of violence.

1903 Authority is exercised legitimately only when it seeks the common good of the group concerned and if it employs morally licit means to attain it. If rulers were to enact unjust laws or take measures contrary to the moral order, such arrangements would not be binding in conscience. In such a case, "authority breaks down completely and results in shameful abuse."

1904 "It is preferable that each power be balanced by other powers and by other spheres of responsibility which keep it within proper bounds. This is the principle of the 'rule of law,' in which the law is sovereign and not the arbitrary will of men."


As we can see, Christians are not obligated to bend the knee to an unjust king. Quite the opposite.

Further on, the Catechism concentrates on the issue of parental authority and civil authority. Once again, the points outlined do not condone a blanket acceptance of the dictum in Romans 13 (bold added):

2232 Family ties are important but not absolute. Just as the child grows to maturity and human and spiritual autonomy, so his unique vocation which comes from God asserts itself more clearly and forcefully. Parents should respect this call and encourage their children to follow it. They must be convinced that the first vocation of the Christian is to follow Jesus: "He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

When it comes to following Jesus, even parents must be disobeyed!
 
2233 Becoming a disciple of Jesus means accepting the invitation to belong to God's family, to live in conformity with His way of life: "For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother." 
 
Parents should welcome and respect with joy and thanksgiving the Lord's call to one of their children to follow him in virginity for the sake of the Kingdom in the consecrated life or in priestly ministry.

 
THE AUTHORITIES IN CIVIL SOCIETY

2234 God's fourth commandment also enjoins us to honor all who for our good have received authority in society from God. It clarifies the duties of those who exercise authority as well as those who benefit from it.
 
Duties of civil authorities

2235 Those who exercise authority should do so as a service. "Whoever would be great among you must be your servant."  The exercise of authority is measured morally in terms of its divine origin, its reasonable nature and its specific object. No one can command or establish what is contrary to the dignity of persons and the natural law.
 
2236 The exercise of authority is meant to give outward expression to a just hierarchy of values in order to facilitate the exercise of freedom and responsibility by all. Those in authority should practice distributive justice wisely, taking account of the needs and contribution of each, with a view to harmony and peace. They should take care that the regulations and measures they adopt are not a source of temptation by setting personal interest against that of the community.
 
2237 Political authorities are obliged to respect the fundamental rights of the human person. They will dispense justice humanely by respecting the rights of everyone, especially of families and the disadvantaged.
 
The political rights attached to citizenship can and should be granted according to the requirements of the common good. They cannot be suspended by public authorities without legitimate and proportionate reasons. Political rights are meant to be exercised for the common good of the nation and the human community.


The Catechism then shifts to the duties of the citizen (bold added):

2238 Those subject to authority should regard those in authority as representatives of God, who has made them stewards of his gifts: "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution.... Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God." Their loyal collaboration includes the right, and at times the duty, to voice their just criticisms of that which seems harmful to the dignity of persons and to the good of the community.

Even here, the Catechism advises against inertia and passivity, and instead encourages the voicing of “just criticisms” of anything that works against human dignity and the common good – more generally, against God’s divine purposes. The Catechism then explicitly expounds upon this duty in later passages, to the point of condoning armed resistance if certain conditions are met:

2242 The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel. Refusing obedience to civil authorities, when their demands are contrary to those of an upright conscience, finds its justification in the distinction between serving God and serving the political community. "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." "We must obey God rather than men": 
 
When citizens are under the oppression of a public authority which oversteps its competence, they should still not refuse to give or to do what is objectively demanded of them by the common good; but it is legitimate for them to defend their own rights and those of their fellow citizens against the abuse of this authority within the limits of the natural law and the Law of the Gospel. 

2243 Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: 1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights; 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted; 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders; 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution.


The Catechism then proceeds to outline “The political community and the Church”. What the Catechism notes here is quite revelatory, especially within the context of current world circumstances:

2244 Every institution is inspired, at least implicitly, by a vision of man and his destiny, from which it derives the point of reference for its judgment, its hierarchy of values, its line of conduct. Most societies have formed their institutions in the recognition of a certain pre-eminence of man over things. Only the divinely revealed religion has clearly recognized man's origin and destiny in God, the Creator and Redeemer. The Church invites political authorities to measure their judgments and decisions against this inspired truth about God and man:
 
Societies not recognizing this vision or rejecting it in the name of their independence from God are brought to seek their criteria and goal in themselves or to borrow them from some ideology. Since they do not admit that one can defend an objective criterion of good and evil, they arrogate to themselves an explicit or implicit totalitarian power over man and his destiny, as history shows.

2245 The Church, because of her commission and competence, is not to be confused in any way with the political community. She is both the sign and the safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person. "The Church respects and encourages the political freedom and responsibility of the citizen."

2246 It is a part of the Church's mission "to pass moral judgments even in matters related to politics, whenever the fundamental rights of man or the salvation of souls requires it. The means, the only means, she may use are those which are in accord with the Gospel and the welfare of all men according to the diversity of times and circumstances."

I refer to all of this because I believe – or to put it more exactly, it has become blatantly obvious – that the vision of man and his destiny espoused by all institutions is now totalitarian and satanic in nature. Moreover, they have, indisputably, arrogated to themselves an explicit or implicit totalitarian power over man and his destiny.

In addition, the Church leadership – and the leaderships of nearly all Christian churches – have refused to pass moral judgments against this totalitarian power, thereby neglecting their mission to “safeguard the transcendental character of the human person”. Regrettably, religious authorities have largely aligned themselves with the assault against “the fundamental rights of man and the salvation of souls.”

This puts Christians -- particularly Catholics -- into an extremely awkward position. Does this mean the priests have not been anointed by God? Does this the priests can no longer deliver the Sacraments or that Sacraments delivered by such priests are illegitimate? Does this mean Christians should leave their churches? 

I think the all of those questions can be answered in the negative as long as Christians remain focused on the first vocation to follow Jesus and not obey anything that opposes that.

And by the first vocation to follow Jesus, I am referring to believing on Jesus, following his image as a guide to determine good from evil, and accepting his gift of everlasting life. Tradition is secondary to that.

At the same time, Christians should not stumble over themselves to excuse or rationalize the behavior of their church leaders. Accepting that the priests and bishops are imperfect and fallible is one thing -- excusing them for willingly and glaringly aligning with totalitarian evil is another thing entirely.  

In light of these considerations, the kind of obedience exemplified by passages like Romans 13 is inadvisable. More to the point, that sort of obedience is dangerous and, potentially, spiritually fatal today, as Dr. Charlton noted in a comment to one of my previous posts (bold added):

The current situation is - it seems - unprecedented in world history. I mean a world and all major institutions aiming purposively and strategically against God and creation (including nature). In other words, the global rule of demonic evil. This ought to be obvious to any Christian, however the institutional churches are included in this strategic evil. Those who refuse to make personal discernment will therefore be led to obey those who are active agents of the demonic agenda. As we see all around us...

Christians who insist on the primacy of obedience to externals today open themselves up to the risk of obeying the active agents of the demonic agenda, as personified by the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

Understandably, this is a bitter pill for Christians to swallow, but it should by no means be despair-inducing.

On the contrary, it should inspire us to concentrate on the first vocation of every Christian to follow Jesus internally and to weigh the subsequent externals of our faith against the primacy of that vocation.

​This first vocation requires us to focus intensely on conscience, freedom, and the Divine Self, which I hope to address in future posts connected to this theme.

Note added: According to the Catechism and other sources, Christians are required to follow moral rulings issued by unjust rulers. However, they are in no way obligated to obey an unjust authority issuing immoral laws that oppose God's moral order and the dignity of man. On the contrary, Christians are duty-bound to disobey such tyrants, right up to engaging in armed resistance. 

The problem is most Christians are extremely confused about what constitutes opposition to God's moral order and man's dignity!

11 Comments
Todd
9/9/2022 14:54:08

Great post. Thank you for this.
Many of us have been successful at resisting the mandates, pecks, evils. That is good. We need a powerful vision of what we want to pursue, however.
And since traditional Christian institutions do not provide that, it would seem that Romantic Christianity is our best path.
Blessings. Hope things are OK over there!
Here they are OK.
We seem to be in a lull. But over there, I know you have the war to deal with.

Reply
William Wildblood
9/9/2022 16:24:55

I second Todd, it's an excellent post. As we know from Shakespeare the devil can cite scripture for his purpose so to use the Romans 13 passage as conclusive proof of anything is useless unless it stands up to everything one can throw at it. And in this day and age it just doesn't. We cannot base our whole spiritual lives on scriptural passages taken in isolation, certainly not anymore. If that seems heretical I would point to John 14:30 where Jesus describes someone who is obviously Satan as the prince or ruler of this world. Does that mean we should obey him? Clearly not.

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buckyinky
9/9/2022 18:40:58

I simply don't see the need for anything "new" or non-conventional here. The fact that you are citing the CCC at length ... doesn't it go to show that the Church has already (and long, long ago) anticipated, understood, and made allowances for your valid questions of conscience, bad behavior amongst legitimate authorities, and outright tyranny?

That so few, particularly in our day, and even to the highest of leaders in the Church, take care to heed these perennial teachings of the Church, does not invalidate those teachings. Nor does it suggest that something non-conventional is needed. Maybe the solution is as simple as studying the Catechism, as "Natureboy" at the Orthosphere advises in his overly crass, but otherwise sound, comment.

https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2022/09/02/bend-the-knee-to-an-unjust-king/#comment-163754

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Francis Berger
9/10/2022 19:31:27

@ buckinky - I guess the bigger question is this -- Why don't Catholics study the Catechism? It does indeed contain much valid teaching. Some parts of it are downright beautiful.

Moreover, why are Catholics largely ignorant or muddled about its precepts? (I'm not singling out Catholics here - the same applies to all Christians and their respective foundational documents, doctrines, etc.) I mean, it doesn't take a spiritual genius to sit down and read the CCC. The work is readily available and its content is easy to understand. If you want to be a good Catholic, the CCC and the Bible are all you really need.

Natureboy is right in this sense. That obedience post was a no-brainer for any serious Christian, which helps explain the largely negative reaction. At the same time, many commenters defended the faulty premise and declared it to be truth! That reveals something.

I posit that Christianity now must be about more than simply accessing external, secondary sources and "submitting to them". It obviously is not enough anymore -- and even if it were, it doesn't seem like Christians are all that capable or interested in doing that.

I will aim to address your concerns about the need for something "new and unconventional" in Christianity in subsequent posts.

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Daniel F
9/10/2022 15:53:35

*mic drop*

This is going to be a bloody, bloody exercise and series of posts… It’s a dirty job, but someone – Francis in this case – has to do it.

To chime in with a few points on this topic:

-- It is increasingly clear that this is not entirely a debates between “Trads” and Romantic Christians, as the “Trad” side also includes many evangelical Christians and Sola Scriptura types as well who do not (or do not believe) that they must always follow church leaders. The actual Trads are deferring to authority because that is part of a Catholic outlook generally. The evangelical / Sola Scriptura side is deferring to authority because of their tendency towards a mechanistic and very isolated reading of Scripture: “Romans 13:1-2 says defer to worldly government, so that’s what we need to do.” Francis acknowledges this at various points in the post – “the leaderships of nearly all Christian churches” – but it is worth highlighting. Evangelicals have their own problematic tendencies; and a blinkered, nay almost autistic, literalistic interpretations of particular verses in scriptural, historical, cultural and sheer logical isolation is one of them. So it is two tendencies of mind that are “at war” here: on the one side, a tendency and preference towards discernment of truth and reason, and on the other, a partial and exclusionary focus on a single aspect of things (“authority”, “scripture”) to the exclusion of other factors. (And yeah, clearly my description of the two sides has a certain question-begging bias to it.)

-- In finding ammunition for his position in the CCC itself, Francis is also highlighting the accumulated wisdom in the Church, but this accumulated wisdom is not merely the _substance_ of the “Tradition” that the Trads think: It is a _tendency of mind_ itself which the CCC is exhibiting: The accumulated efforts of historical Christendom to apply reason and discernment in all things, and the bent of mind that believes this is the right way to approach all problems. There is a balance and beauty in the approach presented in the quoted passages of the CCC that is lacking both in the Trads and in the Evangelicals / Sola Scriptura people.

-- There is another phenomenon that is relevant here, more prominent among Protestants, but also present among Catholics and Orthodox to an extent: to mistake one’s own congregation and local Christian community, or at least the subset of the particular style of Christianity that one is most intimately familiar with from one’s immediate community and one's content consumption, for “the Church” writ large. This expresses itself in the modern Evangelical movement, for one example, as a sort of “self-help” vibe which they mistake for the entirety of the Christian faith, and there are particular vocabularies that arise among these subsects that enable one to identify which “sect” one is dealing with. And when one discerns this, the anemia and paucity and sheer smallness of such expressions of the Christian faith in those particular sects from what should be an enormously rich patrimony becomes absolutely mindboggling. (I.e compare the writings of an Aquinas or even a Seraphim Rose with, say, the writings of a John Piper…) And in the case of the “Trads”, this may to some extent have expressed itself in an exaggerated and undue emphasis on obedience and unquestioning deference to authority EVEN WHEN THE DOGMAS AND TENETS OF THE VERY DENOMINATION THEY PURPORT TO FOLLOW DO NOT SUPPORT SUCH AN ATTITUDE! Francis’ exercise today, by using the CCC to explode the idea that there must be blind obedience to Church leaders among Catholics, is a very solid and poignant case in point exposing this misguided tendency.

Reply
Francis Berger
9/14/2022 08:16:42

@ Daniel F - Sorry for not responding sooner. Your comment has provided much food for thought, and I'm still in the process of digesting some of what you have outlined here.

Reply
WJT
9/11/2022 01:03:41

I’m quite impressed with the clarity and wisdom of the portions of the Catechism you cite here. I’ll have to read the whole thing.

Reply
Sue
9/11/2022 02:10:41

Thanks for laying this out so well. It really clarified the subject.
Sue

Reply
Blake
9/11/2022 08:42:27

Out of curiosity, I was looking to see what the Summa Theologiae had had to say on this subject. You might reasonably suspect it would tend to be more authoritarian - the cultural context certainly leads to some differences from the 1992 catechism - but I think it basically agrees fairly closely here.

In the most directly relevant article, II-II. q. 104, a.6, "Whether Christians are bound to obey the secular powers?", his response begins:

'I answer that, Faith in Christ is the origin and cause of justice, according to Rom. 3:22, "The justice of God by faith of Jesus Christ:" wherefore faith in Christ does not void the order of justice, but strengthens it." Now the order of justice requires that subjects obey their superiors, else the stability of human affairs would cease. Hence faith in Christ does not excuse the faithful from the obligation of obeying secular princes...'

and the article reasonably concludes with the brief paragraph:

'Man is bound to obey secular princes in so far as this is required by order of justice. Wherefore if the prince's authority is not just but usurped, or if he commands what is unjust, his subjects are not bound to obey him, except perhaps accidentally, in order to avoid scandal or danger.'

I found it interesting that, on the previous article, a.5 "Whether subjects are bound to obey their superiors in all things?", he specifically asserts that matters pertaining "ad naturam corporis" are an area where no superior has authority:

'...Secondly, a subject is not bound to obey his superior if the the latter command him to do something wherein he is not subject to him. For Seneca says (De Beneficiis iii): "It is wrong to suppose that slavery falls upon the whole man: for the better part of him is excepted." His body is subjected and assigned to his master but his soul is his own. Consequently in matters touching the internal movement of the will man is not bound to obey his fellow-man, but God alone. Nevertheless man is bound to obey his fellow-man in things that have to be done externally by means of the body: and yet, since by nature all men are equal, he is not bound to obey another man in matters touching the nature of the body, for instance in those relating to the support of his body or the begetting of his children. Wherefore servants are not bound to obey their masters, nor children their parents, in the question of contracting marriage or of remaining in the state of virginity or the like...'

Reply
Francis Berger
9/14/2022 08:20:04

@ Blake - Thanks for the insightful comment. As I mentioned to Daniel F above, much food for thought. I'm thinking through the implications of what you have outlined here. In future posts, I would like to explore some of the ideas that you have drawn attention to here.

Reply
lea
9/11/2022 11:32:03

Completely out of my depth regarding specific references and history, but i dont think it matters alot. Francis you are truly producing the sequel to the story that drew me in here; humanity needs to be spiritualized again, and right here steps are made towards that. May all of us hear the music come through us one of these days.

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