Authority

Over at Alicia's blog there is a lively debate going on over obedience to authority. Obviously I am firmly on the side of authority, but having been a teenager, I can understand the appeal of the rebel side.

The problem stems from the fact that the United States was born of revolt. The French have a similar problem. Until we change our mythology, or at least the slant of the mythology, we are doomed as a people to constant flux and a desire for perpetual novelty.

The solution to this problem lies in the Declaration of Independence. The document speaks of inalienable rights that had been violated by the British colonial government. Basically we need to read our founding mythology with the British recast as the Rebels. God is the ultimate authority and all rights come from Him and Him alone. When Parliament callously violated those rights, it was following in its tradition of Rebellion against the Law of God.

When the founding fathers finally saw the need to cast off Anglo high-handedness, they had already used all of the avenues of petition. Thus their war was one of restoring the Law, not violating it. Unfortunately some bad ideas wormed their way into the fabric of this new nation, and a most unfortunate mythology was created at the same time, and we have been paying the price ever since.

Natural Law is not based on a social contract, as we are taught in the government schools. Some of the framers of the Constitution understood this, but Endarkenment ideas became enshrined as ultimate Truths (hence the peculiar notion found amongst most college students (and professors) that Truth is negotiable, or even so individualized that it bears slight resemblance to what we as Catholics recognize and rightfully call the Truth).

As a result we have a perpetual revolution, and an unfocused legion of rebels without any cause beyond the joy of the revolt. Our so-called conservatives enshrine this in their laissez-faire policies. "Get the government off our backs" translates equally well into "get the government out of our bedrooms" as well as "get the government out of the marriage business." Our leftists want the government out of our medicine cabinets, as long as the government pays for what goes inside them (leftists are essentially teenagers who want Dad to pay for the car, the insurance, the gas, not to establish a curfew, and to pay for the abortion afterwards).

For democracy to work on any level (and in spite of my love of Franco, I believe very much in democracy at the local level), it must be built on an understanding of Natural Law and a healthy respect for due authority, which can be in the form of a parent, a teacher, a mayor, the President, a King, whatver structure is best suited for that particular people. The trick, of course, is to keep the lawful authority from rebellion against the higher law (in short, to also respect due authority).

The Constitution has some good ideas on that, although a runaway judiciary that confuses policy with law may be the Achilles heel of our system. I have given up on trying to figure out the system that is best for these United States. We may be approaching an age where the whole spaghetti is ungovernable. We may have to break it up into five or six countries. I really don't know.

I do know that nothing lasts forever, and that someday Pax Americana will end. I believe that the end is a lot closer than we suspect, and I fear what will come to replace it, as we have federalized too much of the power that should reside in more local levels (the Department of Education comes immediately to mind), leaving our local government structures completely unfit to govern effectively without the massive Washington-based structures they depend on like little chicks peeping for bits of regurgitated worm.

If we are to salvage representative democracy we need to build the notion that authority is good, even when it is imperfect, which it always is. I am reminded of a story about St. Francis. When asked what he would do if he knew that the priest saying mass kept a concubine, Holy Father Francis said, "I would go up to the altar and receive the Body and Blood of my savior from his annointed hands." The priest may be completely unworthy of his office, but the office remains the same. So it must be with our other authorities.

Certainly we must safeguard our rights, as that is our supreme right and duty, but we must do so by respecting due authority and respecting the basic humanity of our authorities and by resorting to and advocating extreme solutions only when the circumstance is extreme and dire and our cries to higher authorities are ignored.

I can think of times when I advocated various revolts in high school and cringe at the knowledge that I never attempted to address the issues through legitimate means (and our principal, a Knight of Columbus and a thoroughly decent man, was always available to students), but I was operating under a glorified image of the lone wolf, the righteous rebel with the sword of Justice (or at least the sword of sex, drugs, and rock and roll).

There is a tendency among Catholics to pick the examples of saints and examples from the Scripture that reaffirm our own worst traits. Those of us disposed to "taking on" hierarchies love the image of Christ with the money-changers or rebuking the Pharisees. Those of us who delight in sharp words take comfort in St. Jerome's personality. I think that a restorative is to develop a devotion to a saint who repulses us. For me this has been Ste. Therese de Lisieux. Quite frankly, she leaves me cold. Her example sets my instincts to run or at least to roll my eyes, yet she has been proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by our Holy Father, so I force myself to read her writings, to study her example, and to do so with charity and the desire to be corrected. I find myself often floored by her when I approach her with an open mind and heart.

I am not saying that I am completely converted nor that I no longer have an urge to giggle once in a while. I still am much more attracted to the examples of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Dominic and those great men of action who threw the book at the heretics and could roll up their sleeves and fight it out with the Albigensians, but I cannot say that my reading of Therese has been without benefit.

Since we cannot hope to transform our society without transforming ourselves first (or more correctly, without blocking the Holy Spirit in the work of transforming ourselves), I propose this sort of thing as the first step in rebuilding sound government in the West (Western Europe is just as much in the thralls of this idiocy as we are this side of the pond).