Well, permit me to answer with the text of Vatican II. From the Decree on the Church, Lumen Gentium, because this one is addressed to lay people. You need to hear this.
With ready Christian obedience, laymen as well as all disciples of Christ should accept whatever their sacred pastors, as representatives of Christ, decree in their role as teachers and rulers in the church. Let laymen follow the example of Christ, who, by his obedience even at the cost of death, opened to all men the blessed way of the liberty of the children of God.
Well, do you see now how everything hangs together? And on this note I shall conclude. To enjoy true liberty is to live in Christ. To live his life is to share in his redemptive love. To share in his redemptive love is to be in the Church and love the Church. But to be in the Church and love the Church is to practice obedience, because Christ was obedient unto death. From the days of St. Paul, through the days of Irenaeus and Cyprian, to the days of Vatican Council II, in unbroken continuity, “Diligo ecclesiam” means filial obedience.
(Dr. Marshner teaches theology at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. He is the Chairman of the Department of Theology. This address was given at the Path to Rome Conference 2000 in Rome. It appears courtesy of Miles Jesu magazine. To learn more about the Catholic lay institute Miles Jesu, call 1-800-654-7945 or visit their website at www.MilesJesu.com.)
by Dr. William Marshner
There are many, alas, in the modern world, who do not know that there are many kinds of obedience. They think that all obedience is the same and that none of it is beautiful. They think that obedience as such belongs to the relation between masters and slaves. So they think that all obedience is slavish and that all who demand obedience are tyrants. In my own unhappy country, the United States of America, this confused belief has gone so far that many parents are no longer willing to demand obedience from their own children. To do so would make these parents “tyrants” in their own eyes! Indeed, many people in America no longer demand any obedience of themselves. Wives no longer vow to obey their husbands. Husbands no longer obey their own marriage contracts. Divorce is epidemic.
And, alas, the problem is not limited to the sphere of the family. In our universities it is widely taught that obedience is an aspect of “false consciousness.” Anyone who expresses a willingness to “submit” to a good larger than himself or herself – anyone who acknowledges an authority higher than himself or herself – is looked upon as a fool, as a “dupe,” as a victim. Whatever alleged authority this person believes in, whatever alleged greater good, is “deconstructed” by the members of the faculty. His professors show that the alleged higher good is in fact a tool by which sinister elites manipulate others and perpetuate their own power. Thus every higher good for which a man might make nobly some sort of self-sacrifice – be that good God, be it the nation, be it family honor, be it even conscience – is ridiculed. All sublime ideals are “unmasked” and, behind the mask, nothing is allowed to be seen but power relations.
We can hardly address the theme of obedience in the Church today before we clear away this dark ideology from before our eyes. And this is, happily, an easy thing to do, because the ideology of false consciousness and deconstruction is self-referentially impossible. Well – well there’s a mouthful! Let me explain that.
It’s a big word – self-referential impossibility. What on earth is that? Let me offer you, first of all, an easy example of it. Suppose I stood before you, speaking the same language as I now speak, but I was declaring to you that nobody can speak English. You would be astonished. You would say, “But my dear sir, you are doing it yourself.” Well, then, suppose I offered you ten long, learned arguments, all about history, grammar, syntax, philology, but all of them in English, all to prove conclusively that no one can speak English.
Do you see how absurd my position would be? I would be refuting myself every time I opened my mouth. This is self-referential impossibility. The claim that no one can speak English is falsified by the very statement of it in English. Yes!
I give you another example. Suppose I stood before you and insisted that no one should ever assent to a proposition. Do you understand that? No one should ever, ever assent to a proposition. You might object. You would say, “But my dear sir, you’re asking us to do just that.” But suppose i then gave you ten long, learned arguments, all to prove that no one should ever assent to a proposition.
Do you see how absurd my position would be? Every time I gave you a premise in one of those arguments, I’d be refuting myself! This again is self-referential impossibility. The claim that one should never assent to a proposition is refuted by the very statement of it!
Now I’m saying that the ideology of false-consciousness and deconstruction suffers from just the same problem. It is saying basically that there is nothing worthy of respect. Now to see how this is impossible, I want you to ask the following question: Is this ideology itself a manipulation? Are those people who believe in it themselves fools? Dupes? Well, if the answer is yes, we should obviously reject this ideology. It’s false, yes?
So suppose the answer is no. If this ideology is not a manipulation, and those who believe in it are not duped, then the claims of false-consciousness and deconstruction must be true. Professors de Man and Derrida and others are taking the trouble to state and defend and communicate their claims because they are true. And so their ideology communicates an ideal worth the trouble of defending – the truth – and so their own ideology carries an authority that demands assent and rational submission – the authority of truth. And so, if the ideology is true, there IS an ideal worthy of self-sacrifice, one that is not fake but worthy of obedience.
In short, if the deconstructionist ideology is true, it is false. And so, it is necessarily false. It is self-referentially impossible!
Well, with our minds freed from these shadows of suspicion, let us look at the source from which such dark ideology has come. Why do so many people today think that obedience is a slavish or servile thing? The reason, i suggest, is because they do not know where obedience comes from. They think that obedience grows out of fear. They are wrong! Obedience does not grow out of fear. It grows out of reverence. This is a point on which St. Thomas Aquinas insisted strongly in the second part of his great Summa Theologiae. “Obedience,” he says, “is caused by different kinds of reverence.” And he lists four kinds.
First, there is reverence for the precepts of morality. Reverence for the majesty of the law, the moral law. And this gives rise to obedience to moral norms, which, in turn, he says, generate every natural moral virtue. “In this way,” he says, “obedience is the mother of all the virtues” – ”mater omnium virtutum.”
Secondly, there is reverence for one’s superiors in any institution – one’s superiors in the church, in the state, in the army – and this kind of reverence, he says, gives rise to the obedience which we call observance – observance of laws and valid commands.
Thirdly, there is reverence for one’s parents. And this kind, he says, gives rise to the obedience that used to be called pietas, filial piety. Today we call it “respect” for one’s elders.
Fourthly, there is reverence for God. It gives rise to the obedience that is associated with the devout life. “Devotion to God,” said St. Thomas, “is the principal act of religion, and it demands obedience to God.”What is “reverence”? If it is so important, what is reverence? What is involved in reverence? Well, I should say, reverence involves something in the mind and something in the will.
In the mind, reverence is recognition of greatness – greatness of office, greatness of service, greatness of being. In the will, reverence is a desire to honor this greatness.
See, now, why obedience is rational, human, and beautiful? To recognize a greatness is distinctively human and rational. The desire to honor a greatness is both good and beautiful.
Now, by the same token, of course, a church that does not beget or nurture, and so does not stand as a parent, cannot expect to be obeyed. I hope that my memory is not playing tricks on me. I hope I am not doing an injustice here to the clergymen who preached in my youth and took me through the pages of Luther’s Small Catechism. But I can recall not a single occasion when, through their mouths, the Lutheran church demanded obedience. No! I was told, of course, to obey my parents. I was told to obey princes. I was told to obey God. But not the Lutheran church.
“Well,” you may say to me, “but that is all pre-conciliar theology. We have a different view these days, a different emphasis, thanks to Vatican II. The mystical quality of Christian life is the same, no doubt, with the mystical motherhood of the church – yes, yes, yes – but surely we no longer have to obey. Didn’t Vatican II give us freedom?”
