"Obedience" - Last Refuge for the Wicked

How True This Has Turned Out To Be...



The Christmas season has kept me from updating this blog but the time has come to say something on the subject of obedience. After the example of the Nazi war trials I find it hard to believe how people can still think that obeying orders excuses from any sin or obviates any need to over proof the orders given. Things have come to the point that you could almost call obedience ‘the last refuge of the wicked’ – to paraphrase Dr. Johnson. Obedience has always held paramount importance in religious life for its ascetical value, the emptying of self that it requires, but that ascetical importance has always to yield to the demands of truth and faith - and charity. However, for now, rather than attempt any theoretical discussion of the subject I would like to let St. Bernard speak for me.

"For when God said, Do not despise one of those little ones who believe in Me, He did not add also, Unless with permission; nor when He said, Take care not to give scandal to one of these little ones, did He limit it by adding, Without licence!…Wonderful precaution, marvellous prudence! They had already devised evil in their heart, but they were cautious not to carry it out in action except with permission. They conceived in sorrow, but they did not bring forth iniquity until the Pope had afforded his consent to that unrighteous birth…Is it likely that either an evil will cease to be or even be rendered less because the Pope has consented to it?...Such obedience is worse than any revolt; such moderation passes all bounds…But what is this to me? you say…The disciple is not above his master; and it was to be taught, not to teach, that I attached myself to him. As a hearer it became me to follow, not to go before, my preceptor. O, simple one, the Paulus of these times! If only he had shown himself another Anthony, so that you had no occasion to discuss the least word that fell from his lips, but only to obey it without hesitation! What exemplary obedience! The least word, an iota, which drops from the lips of his superiors finds him obedient! He does not examine what is enjoined, he is content because it is enjoined! And this is obedience without delay. If this is a right view of duty, then without cause do we read in the Church: Prove all things, hold fast that which is good. If this is a right view, let us blot out of the book of the Gospel Be ye wise as serpents, for the words following would suffice, and harmless as doves. I do not say that inferiors are to make themselves judges of the orders of those set over them, in which it may be taken for granted that nothing is ordered contrary to the Divine laws, but I assert that prudence also is necessary to notice if anything does so contradict, and freedom firmly to pronounce against these. But you reply, I have nothing to do with examining what he orders; it is his duty to do that before ordering. Tell me, I pray you, if a sword were put into your hand and he bade you turn it against his throat, would you obey? Or if he ordered you to fling yourself headlong into the fire or into the water, would you do it? If you did not even hinder him from such acts as these to the best of your ability, would you not be held guilty of the crime of homicide? Come, then, see that you have done nothing but co-operate in his crime under the pretext of obedience…Why then did you help him to make a scandal? For you did so in following and obeying him…What then? You that were so obedient a disciple, who could not bear that he, your father and master, should be separated from you for a single instant, for a foot breadth (as it is said), you have not hesitated to fall into the ditch behind him with your eyes wide open like another Balaam? Did you think that you were labouring for his happiness when you showed him an obedience more hurtful for him than any death? O odious perversity! The virtue of obedience which always wars on behalf of truth, is arrayed against truth. Happy the disobedience of brother Henry…The fruits of disobedience are sweeter and to be preferred [to this]…Whose disobedience of slackness and omission, if the choice were given me, I would even prefer, with his sense of penitence, than the punctilious obedience of such as these, with scandal… "
Posted by Father Clement at 12:14 PM