Category: Authority

CXCIX – What The World Doesn’t Want to Hear

This is the fruit of a conversation with Hambone about a variety of topics. The main thrust of it was along the lines of “what would be the most effective thing the Church could preach”. Hambone phrased it differently but for my purposes that is a useful paraphrase of our conversation.

If your parish is anything like mine, you hear a lot about peace and love. Peace and Love are great, and of course should be preached. A pulpit that didn’t profess peace and love would be a poor one indeed. Of course, that is the problem: Peace and love are perfectly unobjectionable concepts. At some point The WorldTM caught on to peace and love and made it it’s own. Catholics may wonder why their brand of peace and love isn’t getting traction. The WorldTM started preaching peace and love and the Church started preaching it back, and the world just laughed at us because ours has rules.

The Church can’t compete on peace and love. It’s like negotiating to get your new brand of soda put into a vending machine: sure, it might taste better or be cheaper but you see, they’ve already got soda and it’s selling just fine. In other words, you can’t sell a different kind of the same product and expect people to change behavior: You have to sell them a different product.

So what is that different product? I don’t know, but I can tell you what I think it is.

If there’s one thing that The WorldTM likes, it is individualism. This concept has even entered into Catholic circles, and it is dangerously acidic. The Catholic answer to that should be obedience to authority. The yoke is easy and the burden is light! Christ is our King, and we owe him a duty of obedience. In that same vein, we owe a duty of obedience to truth. Christ is our King, and we accept this because it is true.

We can tie it back to peace and love if we wanted: The only way to truly have peace is to accept the laws of our King obediently. There would be no conflict if everyone was perfectly law abiding–obedience is peace. We do this because it is true, and God is the perfection of Truth, God is Truth itself, and we love God, therefore we love Truth.

If we heard from our pulpits that we must accept the yoke, I think it would pop a lot of brains. It is counter-intuitive, certainly counter-cultural. Everyone has already heard peace and love. How many people believe that Obedience and Truth are perfectly unobjectionable? That’s what would make it an effective message.

AMDG

CLXXXIX – Accidents and Essences of Authority

Is Authority accidental or essential? Something that is essential is irreducible, something that is accidental is not important to the core thing in question. I am male, that is an essential property of Scoot because maleness cannot be separated from who I am. My weight is accidental, because it can change. There’s nothing about Scootness that requires a certain weight to be true. I am just as much Scoot as I am at both double my weight and half my weight. Said another way, weight can be taken away from Scoot and Scoot will still remain. Maleness cannot be taken away from Scoot and still leave behind Scoot.

If we were to argue that Authority is essential, it would mean that we cannot be conceived without that authority. A priest, in his ordination, is metaphysically changed such that he transcends being just a man and becomes a priest. This is why Priests can’t retire or “quit”–they have been consecrated to their Holy purpose, and that cannot be undone. When a man is united to his wife in the sacrament of marriage, he becomes a husband. It is metaphysically impossible to separate that man from husbandness. He is a husband. This is why, in the Catholic Church, for a couple to be separated it requires an annulment. This says that the marriage did not happen, because it was invalid or illicit, not that the marriage is reversed.

Likewise, then, for Fatherhood: When a man conceives a child, he cannot un-conceive that child, he is and will always be that child’s father. These are examples of essential things. There are, in each of these cases, certain elements of authority which come with the essential change which has happened; with the authority comes a context for that authority. A father may instruct and nurture his child, but may not, say, appoint admirals to the Turkish Navy. That is outside his context and so outside his authority.

But there are examples of Authority that make it seem accidental. The office of the American Presidency, for example. One man can be inaugurated into the office and another man removed from office–this makes it sound like an accident. But inauguration is a rite similar to ordination, it is a ceremony through which authority is transferred. While holding the office of the Presidency, a given man cannot be separated from his office. He holds all that is presidentness while he is validly in office until he validly leaves office.

Employment can seem accidental as well. While I am employed at my current employer, let me call it “ACME”, I have the authority that comes with my employment. But if ACME were to terminate me, I would no longer have that authority. My job and my self are separable. But at the same time, while I am employed, there is no concept of Scootness that does not include employment at ACME. The rite that changes me is called being hired.

Obviously, employment is a lower order of essence than maleness is, because it comes from law rather than nature.

This brings us, at last, the question I have been pondering and which inspired this post: If the Admiral of the Turkish Navy gives an order, and nobody listens to him, does he have authority?

The answer is that de jure, he does, because he has been validly and licitly appointed as Admiral of the Turkish Navy. De facto he does not, because no one will obey his authority. How can this be? His authority is essential to him as Admiral. He has official authority. But he has no personal authority–and this is not by any defect in him, as Admiral, but rather that no one has given him personal authority, which we established previously must be given.

But in my previous article, I argued that if a sailor ignores an order given by the Admiral he could not hope to remain a sailor for long. When all the sailors ignore the Admiral, however, the Admiral cannot hope to remain Admiral for long–that is the nature of a mutiny. So we can turn now to the other side of the question I began this article with: Is the authority to which we are subject accidental or essential?

My impulse is to say that it is also essential. I am an American Citizen: while I am subject to the laws of America, Scoot cannot be conceptualized independent of his citizenship. The rite that alters this metaphysically essential truth is immigration. If I wanted to become a citizen of Turkey, I would travel there and presumably there is a prescribed process by which I would change from calling myself an American to calling myself a Turk. Likewise, my father is as metaphysically essential to me, as son, as I am to him, as father. There is nothing about Scoot that can be imagined independently of being the son of my Father. This fact is essential by nature (and so cannot change), while my citizenship is essential by law (and so can change by law).

This I believe gets at why Patriotism is considered a virtue. Beyond just being an American, I can love America, and will its good. I don’t need to be patriotic any more than I need to be prudent or just; but it helps to do so.

So if we supposed I, Scoot, was a sailor in the Turkish Navy, and the Admiral gave me an order, what could I do? I have the option of making a free choice, because accepting authority is voluntary. But disobeying the legal authority is contrary to my being qua sailor in the Turkish Navy. If I disobey the legal authority, I act contrary to my legal essence. If I obey the legal authority, I act in accordance with my legal essence.

As a practical matter, we are not handed a list of authorities to whom we are legally subject. It can be the trial of a lifetime to determine to whom we owe fealty. That is why we have a duty to seek and follow Truth. If I am an amnesiac sailor and I don’t know to which Navy I am subject, it is imperative that I figure it out. If I begin by following the Turkish Admiral, but subsequently learn I am really an American and so subject to the American Navy, I must seek to restore myself to the American Navy and resume obeying the American Admiral. If, after that point, I continue to obey the imperatives of the Turkish admiral, I am acting against my legal essence, as I have described.

I have one final point to make. Because all authority is given, either by our office or by acclaim, that means all authority comes from somewhere else. This means authority is subject to the Prime Mover argument, where all authority comes from some other authority, and so on, until it rests at the Prime Mover, the font from which all authority flows: God. It makes sense, then, that we call Christ the King: He is the one authority to whom we are all subject, by both the law and our natures.

CLXXXVII – Afterthought on Conflicting Authority

Last time I wrote about Conflicting Authority I settled on the answer that one shouldn’t write about conflicting authority. But the thought hasn’t left my mind. The question is an intractable one: When two people differ, who is right?

I can illustrate by analogy. Let’s say the United States government declares wearing purple illegal. And lets say the government of Turkey declares wearing purple formally legal. An American and a Turk meet in a pub in London. One says, “Wearing purple is illegal,” while the other says “Wearing purple is legal.” Who is right?

I’ve established previously that Authority exists within context. In the subsequent article I argued that there is nothing disqualifying about either context, and this is why I argued that one shouldn’t dispute questions of authority.

JMSmith offered the additional distinction that there is personal authority and official authority. In his comment he described how a man who is appointed by whatever means to an office has the authority of that office; he had no authority before he got there and he takes no authority with him when he leaves–this is official authority. Personal authority is the example of, say, a meteorologist who has studied weather and has experience predicting weather suggesting it is going to rain, and the man at the bus-stop saying he thinks its going to rain–one has more personal authority on the subject than the other.

The most recent wrinkle that I thought about is the idea of the authorities to which we are subject. We are subject to official authorities–the American is subject to American law and thus subject to the illegality of wearing purple. We are not subject to personal authority, in the sense of the weatherman. I am subject to my Father because my father, the man, and the office of fatherhood, are inseparable. I am subject to the laws of America because the office of Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary are separate from the people who occupy those offices.

There is an additional question: I said I am subject to my father’s authority because my father the man is indistinguishable from the office of fatherhood. What if I reject my father’s authority? What if I leave home and refuse to accept his lawful rules?

There are several dimensions to this so lets try to break it down. Personal authority of the kind as the meteorologist can be accepted or rejected. This kind of authority I will call expertise. An expert speaks from a place of knowledge, but does not have the power to compel behavior. No one is subject to an expert. I am trying to think of a personal authority that is independent of some office that has subjects. Something like this concept can be found in reputation. A good reputation is reinforced by the testimony of your peers. Having a good reputation means you have some personal authority based on that. The element of requiring the appraisal of your peers means that this is a bottom-up concept. When popular acclaim holds you as an expert, you have the authority of an expert. Popular acclaim can also withhold or withdraw their approval. Without it, there can be no personal authority.

Said simpler: Personal authority is only valid to the extent that it is accepted by others. Said another way: Personal authority is given to us by our peers.

Official Authority of the kind as the Turkish Admiral cannot be accepted or rejected. Rather, it can be accepted or rejected, but we all know that a Turkish sailor is lawfully subject to the Turkish admiral, and if the sailor rejects the authority of the admiral he cannot expect to remain a sailor for very long. This is because the sailor is within the context over which the admiral has authority. When the sailor says “No way I’m not going to mop the floor”, or says “you can’t make me”–he is rejecting the personal authority of the admiral, which is given to him by the office. It is the official authority of the admiral which allows him to enforce his authority, and remove the sailor from the concerning context.

There are two points that I think are worth making here. First: All authority is given to us: Either by our peers or by our office. Second: I will steal words from Zippy: Accepting (official) authority is voluntary. It is also mandatory.

Lets dig a bit into that second point. Accepting official authority is voluntary. You and I have free will. We can choose to accept or reject anything we want. We can make any choice we want. The idea of choosing what is, say, good and just, is a moral choice. Moral choices are by definition voluntary and optional. They are also mandatory: We must choose to do what is good and just.

So accepting official authority is voluntary insofar as we have free will and are not obliged to accept authority, we can make the moral choice. Furthermore, we can choose whether or not to enter or remain in the context of any given authority. Accepting official authority is mandatory to the extent that we remain in that context and are bound by its mandates.

Do we have enough to settle the problem of conflicting authorities? When the American and the Turk meet in the pub, and the question of the legality of wearing purple arises, the resolution is that their present context determines the truth of the matter, and their home context determines the truth in their homes. In London, they are in the context of British authority, and may voluntarily choose to behave in accordance with British law, and must behave in accordance with British law.

The problem is not resolved though: I just said that to choose what is good and just is a moral choice, and that we may voluntarily make moral choices, and we must make moral choices. Everyone does behave in the way that they believe is good and just. If you do it, you think–at least, for a time–that whatever choices you’ve made are good. If you feel like you must repent then you acknowledge that you have made a morally ill choice. How do we differentiate between what different people consider morally good?

Let me know what you think. I’ve touched on a lot of areas with this post, there is more to come on this!

AMDG

CLXXIII – Conflicting Authority

I made a claim in a recent article that Authority exists within context. I think this helps to clarify a point I have been unable to move past: When two people disagree about an authority, who is right?

The solution I have come to is that this is the wrong question. To wit: An officer in the Army and an officer in the Navy of approximately equal rank both have authority in their respective contexts. The Army officer cannot go to the Navy and expect the same latitude he receives among his own men, though the Navy personnel can and should afford him the respect that comes with being an officer.

Now let’s imagine it’s a Turkish Naval officer and an American Army officer. Lets suppose as well that they are allied and so cooperating. The Turkish Naval officer would not have authority in the Army for the same reason as the American Naval officer. For all intents and purposes they are the same. Now lets suppose two soldiers meet in the mess hall and get to talking about their experiences. Lets suppose the Turkish sailor remarks to his American army counterpart that the Turkish navy is great and makes the most sense. If he could join any force in the world, he would join the Turkish Navy. The American soldiers pride has been struck, naturally, because he has enjoys his experience in the American Army, he retorts in kind: If he could join any force int he world, he would join the American army because it is the best.

Well there you go. Two people with different ideas of the preferred authority have no way of determining which authority is “best”. The Turkish Naval officer and the American Army officer both have authority that their counterparts subordinates will not acknowledge. So arguments from authority when there are rival authorities are especially weak. In the context of an apologia for the Catholic Church, if I argue that the Church has Authority, to someone who does not recognize the authority of the Catholic Church, then I should not be surprised that the argument goes nowhere.

What then would be an effective apologia for the Catholic Church qua authority? I approached this before in a roundabout way by discussing what an ideal authoritative structure might look like. But that remains subjective, as different people have different ideals. Essentially that argument can be reduced to “I believe this authority therefore you should also believe this authority.”

When it comes to Faith, we are talking about matters of truth. But arguing that the Church is true, I have argued previously, returns us to a question about the Authority of the Church. There is a triad that is usually shared as “Beauty, Goodness, Truth” as things which point to God. So the apologia for the Church would be somewhat naturalistic, I would say. Goodness can be argued without addressing directly the claim that the Church has authority. What things are good? Does the Church promote those things? Beauty perhaps as well: What is beauty? What things are beautiful? Does the Church promote those things?

Ultimately people will be persuaded by different arguments unique to themselves, but I have been puzzling over how to talk about the authority of the Catholic church for a long time. I believe the answer I have just arrived at is “don’t”.

AMDG

CLXXII – Command Presence

I’ve been thinking about the mix of personal experience, expertise, and authority that make up what I will refer to in shorthand as “command presence”. Command Presence as I am thinking of it here can come in three flavors: Negative, positive, and neutral. A negative presence means, given no additional information, when you speak people will tend to disagree with, act contrarily to, or denigrate what you say. A positive presence means people will tend to agree with, act in conformity with, or approbate what you say. A neutral presence means people will neither agree nor disagree.

I’ve been thinking about this because I have found that I tend to desire a positive command presence. I don’t think I am alone in this but I am certainly only aware of my own inclinations. It’s natural for people to want a positive command presence. People like to be listened to and like others to defer to them. It fuels pride, to a certain extent. And why shouldn’t it? If I have spent the last twenty years working with widgets, when I speak about widgets I would hope people listen.

Hoping people listen is an expectation. When I, a career widget worker, speak about widgets, my expectation is to demonstrate a positive command presence. If a crowd of people responds as if I had a negative command presence, I would naturally be very frustrated. Even worse, if I speak about widgets and someone else also speaks about widgets, but speaks contrariwise to what I say, both of us will expect deference from the other and both of us will be frustrated by the unwillingness of the other to do so. What we’re talking about is personal authority and, to a certain extent, respect.

If we take the position that everyone wants deference, we could restate that by saying that everyone wants respect. Respect is a milder form of deference, but nonetheless it is an element of being human. Respect is not the same as a positive command presence. I can disagree with someone and still show them respect, and vice versa.

Personal authority only exists within command structures, and it is fallacious to think it extends beyond that. If a three-star General retires and goes to a restaurant with his wife, he will not expect that everyone present salute him. Authority exists within context. Authority is different from command presence in that it adds in the ability to make someone else do some thing.

Let me pause to avoid confusion with the terms to which I am adding my own definition:

  • Command Presence – an individuals expectation of how they should be perceived
  • Respect – polite deference
  • Authority – An individuals ability, within a specific context, to effectuate some end either individually or through subordinates.

If I confuse command presence with authority, as I’ve defined them here, I might say “I am an authority on the subject of widgets, which gives me the ability to make you believe me.” The reality is that I expect you to believe me, and if we were at the Widget HQ, you would probably have to do what I say.

A fact about me is that I am an anxious person. As I understand it, my disposition is better than others but not so good as those who do not describe themselves as anxious people. One aspect of how this manifests in my life is what I describe as social anxiety. As my family can attest, for most of my life the idea of crowds has induced an anxiety reaction in me, so from what I can tell this is an innate aspect of my personality. Part of the reason crowds concern me is that I tend to cultivate in myself a negative command presence, which is to say, the expectation that what I say or do will be disagreed with, contravened, or denigrated. With age and wisdom I have been able to learn to act against this preconceived perception. After I graduated I worked as an Auditor, and going up to strangers at their own work place and asking them for their own work product was an instructive experience for me.

It helped me overcome an element of that negative command presence. Auditors are not a beloved people. I learned in my time in that role first that as an Auditor, I had authority in that context to ask for something; second that most people are generally willing to give polite deference even to people they may be unhappy to see. Authority need not be exercised apologetically: As mentioned in the comments of an earlier article, leadership involves issuing commands as commands and without reservation or explanation. What this tells me is that a neutral command presence is the best kind of command presence. Entering a situation with no expectation as to how other people perceive you, while extending to them polite deference and expecting polite deference in return, is a recipe for social success.

Everyone has some idea of how they would like to be perceived. Humility is the practice of acting against the desire to be perceived positively, and confidence is the practice of acting against the expectation of being perceived negatively. The end result is this neutral state.

The advantage of a neutral command presence is this idea from the Orthosphere, of “Spit no fire, eat no dirt”. If you don’t say anything you’ll regret, you won’t have to apologize for it later. Said another way, if you don’t have expectations then you’re never disappointed.

This most frequently comes up in discussions about religion. Naturally, religious conversations can get heated. No one acknowledges anyone else’s authority because the context is not academic; Everyone expects themselves to be deferred to and the others to defer, and no one does. If I enter these discussions with a new mindset, one of polite deference absent any expectation of deference for myself, not only will I spare myself some heartache but perhaps will have a more productive conversation, as the arms race of authority won’t begin right away. Or, if it does begins, I can be sure it won’t be me who has to eat dirt for it.

AMDG

CLXIV – What is Leadership

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this here, but I’m halfway through an MBA program. This is one of the concerns which occasionally draws my attention away. One of my courses is about Management, as you might expect, and how it pertains to leadership. In the lecture, there was a discussion about how exactly one would define leadership. They went through a number of ideas but one that stuck out to me was this: “If you want to know if you’re a leader, look behind you.” This struck me because something about it doesn’t feel right. I don’t know exactly what and I am not sure I have a better definition to offer right now.

I feel like this backwards looking idea is missing some je ne sais quoi expected in leadership. The idea is that if people are following you, you are a leader. But at the same time, many leaders started out with no one following them, yet persistence in the face of countervailing wisdom is what won out. If those leaders felt they were not leaders, and went looking for people to follow them, they would have tread no new ground because they would have pioneered a cause which people already agreed with.

I’m tempted to say Leadership is less backwards looking than it is forward looking. A leader navigates the un-navigated and leaves a path for others to follow, be it now or a hundred years from now.

It seems to me that leaders should also know that they are in charge. A military officer doesn’t need to look behind him to know his company is marching with him. A manager doesn’t look back to see which team they are responsible for. So this quote loses the mundane aspects of leadership and grasps for the inspiring aspects of leadership.

How does one convince people to follow? I don’t think it’s possible. I can’t go up to someone and say, “Follow me, I will lead you!” Maybe it would work for some, but it won’t work for the vast majority. No amount of argumentation can convince someone to follow if they are determined not to follow. The language of leadership is relationships, the currency is trust. Leaders build relationships with people, and over time build trust. I follow someone because I trust them. A person who has no trust is not a leader, but a liability. Followers must trust that a leader has their best interests in mind, and knows best how to navigate the un-navigated.

A person who trusts freely is called naive. A person who does not trust is called a cynic or skeptic. A leader must know how to lead both kinds of people, and everyone inbetween.

A leader who builds ingenuine relationships is a manipulator. They use the trust-capital of their relationships for some personal benefit, not for the benefit of both the leader and the led.

A knowledge leader is called an expert. They deal in both relationships and subject matter. A person who has no relationships is not a leader; a person who doesn’t know anything on a subject is not an expert in it. An expert must have attributes of both. How does an expert convince people to listen to him? Argumentation might work. There’s a subset of people who are willing to follow knowledge wherever it leads and who will pull on a thread just to see what is attached. There’s another subset of people who will not be convinced by simply hearing new information. The former group responds to information, the latter group responds to relationships.

AMDG

CXLVII – God, Family, Country

From a small point made in a recent article from Edward Feser (here).

Now, it is not merely human beings in the abstract to whom we owe love. The virtue of piety requires that we have a special love for certain others. Aquinas writes:

Man becomes a debtor to other men in various ways, according to their various excellence and the various benefits received from them. On both counts God holds first place, for He is supremely excellent, and is for us the first principle of being and government. On the second place, the principles of our being and government are our parents and our country, that have given us birth and nourishment. Consequently man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after God. Wherefore just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to piety, in the second place, to give worship to one’s parents and one’s country.

This idea of debt is striking. I am an accountant by trade and training, and so perhaps I view debt a little differently than others. For the one in debt, it creates a liability. The root of liability is to bind, to be liable means you are restrained by the terms of the contract to repay what is owed. For one owed the debt, it creates an asset. The root of Asset is the latin ad satis, or to satisfy; thus a persons assets are “enough to satisfy”. In accounting terms, you might describe this as an obligation to or from another.

Excursus: There is another interesting side note in the form of the Lords Prayer. When I was doing my Latin series (I’m sorry for letting that lapse), I realized that the Latin form of the Lord’s Prayer has the word for debt instead of where we say in English “trespasses”. In other words: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those in debt to us”. A debt is very unlike a trespass, and we have the King James Version to thank for this lexical nuance. Keep this in mind.

An image of social hierarchy begins to form when we consider to whom we are bound. Indeed we can consider Authority as a binding of subordinates. Obligation and Liability share a root: ob + ligare, to bind; or ligare + able, able to be bound. We are bound first to God as creator: We are in debt to him for our lives. Likewise to our family: Our parents created us, reared us, and prepared us for adult life. We are thus likewise in debt to them for our lives. We can demonstrate that God has authority over us as a consequence, and so do our parents. Then we are bound to our sovereign, in what some may refer to as accident of birth or life lottery. We were born in our nation, which our sovereign protects, defends, and leads, and therefore we are in debt to our sovereign in exchange for the preservation of our national integrity and concord.

Previously this might have been described to as responsibility. But the difference between a debt and a responsibility is in who is burdened. I owe God a debt, therefore I am burdened with paying it back through worship and reverence. If I am responsible for employees, I owe them a duty of care. The debtee of course has an incentive to care for the debtor until the obligation can be fulfilled, but that relationship is different than a burden of responsibility.

In my Latin exploration, I tried to understand this by treating debt as a stand in for sin. But that’s not exactly it. It describes a binding relationship between people. Like a contract.

…Or a covenant.

AMDG

CXLIII – More On Censorship

Background: On Censorship, On Rights.

The President has signed an executive order with the intent of revoking “Section 230” protections for social media companies. Section 230 says that organizations that give a platform to, but do not editorialize, users content, are exempt from publisher rules.

There are two ways this could go.

“Social Media Should Be A Free Speech Platform!”

Ok! Lets commit to it, then. Have your Free Speech! We know that Free Speech really means Government Sanctioned Speech, so instead of Jack Dorsey censoring your tweets, it’s the government. That’s all that means: I don’t want a private corporation censoring me, I want the government to censor me. And what will happen when someone whose name is not Trump enters the office? How long do you think to expect to maintain your free speech when they change the rules of what is considered protected speech?

“The Government Should Not Interfere With Private Corporations!”

Ok! Then Twitter is going to censor you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t like it? Find a new platform! Terms of Use for using a private organizations product means accepting whatever changes they make to that product, unless you vote with your feet. It’s inherently nonsensical to complain about twitter, on twitter. Twitter will let you complain as much as you like as long as you do it using their tool.

“But Scoot, There’s A Real Problem! Someone Should Do Something!”

Yes, someone should. But not Jack Dorsey, and not President Trump. If you do not like how a product you don’t pay for is being used, then don’t use that product. “But I want to use the product!” Ok! Then you get what you pay for.

CXXXIX – Rights or Sovereignty

Either man has rights, or the people is sovereign. The simultaneous assertion of two mutually exclusive theses is what people have called liberalism.

Don Colacho

This probably seems somewhat irrelevant now, in the aftermath of Coronavirus. As Bonald so clearly put it, we’re fighting a dead beast, and uncontroversially so. Nevertheless, the timeless wisdom of Don Colacho is not to be ignored, so lets explore this idea a little bit.

Left is Right and Right is Wrong

We’ve talked about Rights before so lets recap. In the United States, the public treat Rights as something we have and which the government cannot take away. “I have rights!” is the refrain. What they are saying is “I have the ability to speak freely!” or “I have the ability to own a gun!” and the government is disobliged–metaphysically incapable–from mitigating those rights in any way. This is also what people mean when they talk about things that aren’t explicitly enumerated rights: “Healthcare is a human right” or “We need to give so-and-so full rights”.

There are obvious exceptions to this claim. “I have the ability to speak freely!” except when what you say is “fire” and where you say it is a crowded theater. “I have the ability to own a gun!” except if it’s fully automatic. I am sure none would find those limits controversial. We agree that shouting “fire” in a crowded theater would be disastrous; that restricting ownership of automatic firearms is sensible. So when we are talking about rights we are really talking about operating within a fence the government has made for us. “I have rights!” translates to “I have the ability to speak freely!” which now means “I agree to abide by restrictions on my ability to speak as long as they appear sensible!” which doesn’t make a great rallying cry. We could push this just a little bit further to say that the government disagrees that shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is a good thing to do; therefore when I say “I agree to abide by restrictions on my ability to speak as long as they appear sensible,” what I really mean is “I agree to only say things the government approves.”

How rapidly “I have the right to free speech” becomes “I agree to government sanctioned speech”. The word “Rights” is charged with the value of natural law. A true right, in the sense that we intend it when we usually talk about rights, is something which God has given us and which is inseparable from our being. This is why the Declaration of Independence went with “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and why the constitution went with “Life, Liberty, and Property.” Our Government holds no claim over our lives, they are ours, given to us by God. We have Free Will, something inherent to us as people. Our Free will cannot be restricted except by our own complicity. These illustrate best what we think we are saying when we declare that we have rights.

A Royal Cup of Sovereign Tea

I’ve spent a little bit of time exploring the idea of sovereignty, though not quite as thoroughly as rights. We know enough to be able to frame it as a paradox. We can use the old parable of Themistocles, who said “My infant child rules my wife, my wife rules me, and I rule all of Greece. Therefore, my infant child rules all of Greece.”

Themistocles is the sovereign of all of Greece, but he answers to his wife, who in turn answers to his infant child. By “answers to“, I mean two things: He is surely mindful of the needs of his wife, seeking to please her and keep her happy. But he also obeys her prerogatives. So the Ruler of Greece is the person whose prerogatives are ultimately obeyed, and of whose needs others must be mindful; yet who owes no reciprocal obligation.

So here’s the paradox: The President of the United States would typically be considered sovereign, because he is our head of state. Yet he is mindful of the needs of the people. He obeys the prerogatives of the Legislature to the extent they are able to enforce them. The legislature are also mindful of the needs of the people, and more directly must obey the popular prerogatives. The people are not obliged to be mindful of the needs of the legislature or the executive, but they must obey their prerogatives too. So the people, the Executive, and the Legislature all impose prerogatives of each other, but only the Executive and Legislature need to mind anyone’s needs.

So who is sovereign?

The Crown’s Virus

American political theory asserts that the public have rights and that the people are sovereign. In the first section, I demonstrate that rights just means that the people are obliged to obey the prerogatives of the elected officials. In the second section, I demonstrate that the elected officials are obliged to obey the prerogatives of the people. The people cannot both have rights and be sovereign. This is especially clear in our Governments reaction to Coronavirus.

The First amendment includes the freedom of assembly, which as I’ve explained means we agree to assemble in a manner in which the government approves. The first response of the Government was to restrict our freedom of assembly. This is seen clearly in the infamous picture from North Carolina where the police are informing protesters that protesting is a non-essential activity. As a consequence, our government is less and less obliged to obey our prerogatives, nor to mind our needs.

That’s part of what makes this so unnerving. Society is, in part, held together by the comfortable lie that the people have both rights and sovereignty. The pretense has been done away with: We obey the government, it’s for our own good.

There’s a part of me that likes it this way. The pretense made it hard to discern what was good or bad about our government. If they begin to rule by decree, well, it becomes much plainer. It doesn’t matter if they have a mandate from the electorate or not, it only matters what they are doing at the time they are doing it. I can judge a man’s actions if I see them, but it’s more difficult if he says he was obeying a mandate from the electorate.

All illusion is gone now. I just wonder how long we’ll pretend things haven’t changed.

AMDG

CXXXVII – An Apologia for the Authority of the Catholic Church

What follows is a lightly edited version of a comment I made on my previous article (here), in response to commenter Sally Eggman. First: Hat-tip to Sally for going toe-to-toe with me on these theological issues. Second: I thought this comment was interesting as one possible apologia for the authority of the Church. I explicitly avoided this topic in the previous article, so wanted to share it as a post unto itself.

The Problem of Disagreement

How do we discern the difference between opposing Theological views? How do we discern which way is the way we ought to be Christians on earth? How do we resolve these theological disputes? This is not a new phenomenon. This is something which comes up time and time again throughout history. The problem lies in who we can trust to speak authoritatively on the subject. Lets take a step back, then, and think this through: What are the elements we would need for arbitrating theological disputes?

The Ladder of Arbitration

The First Rung
First, it seems to me, arbitration of theological or authoritative disputes ought to be do be done by people with a deep knowledge of Faith. At this stage we’re not saying who, or how, just that the persons involved ought to have a fundamental understanding of their faith, of scripture, of history, of philosophy, of the opposing views. Such people would be very wise indeed, and I think they would speak very authoritatively on matters of Faith. If the disputing parties were to agree to seek out some third party to evaluate our claims about earthly spiritual authority, this would rank highly among the criteria. I, personally, wouldn’t trust myself to speak authoritatively, especially if I was involved in the dispute; but even if someone else came to me seeking arbitration, I am not nearly knowledgeable enough about all of those areas that are important to arbitration. I think some authoritative third party arbitrator would be best.

The Second Rung
Second, We would want there to be some way of assuring ourselves that, despite their authoritative wisdom, they are speaking in a manner that is verifiable. We would want to be able to look at some sources and say, “Yes, I see where they got that from.” or “No, their conclusion doesn’t follow from this.” We would want to be able to take their word for it, sure, but we also want to be able to learn, so we might offer the same wisdom to others. We want to share this knowledge. In order to do that, our authoritative arbitrator would have to be verifiable. There would have to be some other thing we can use to Check our arbitrator.

The Third Rung
Third, To what other thing can we turn? Well, we already identified areas important for our arbitrator to be knowledgeable: We want them to be knowledgeable in the areas of faith, scripture, history, philosophy, and the opposing views. That is a lot of things, but not insurmountable: We can seek out some resources for faith and scripture. Likewise, History; Likewise Philosophy; likewise opposition. What are the characteristics we would look for then? It seems to me these resources ought to be documented. They ought to have a clear authorship so we can evaluate them by the same standards as we evaluate our arbitrator. They ought to have stood the test of time, as well. We know that many philosophical books are written, but only the best last through the ages. This is why we still have the writings of, for example, Plato or Aristotle. I’m not saying Plato or Aristotle are our authority, but only that the resources we look to, to validate our arbitrator, ought to be similarly timeless.

The reason it’s important that the resources we pursue stand the test of time is because other people will have spoken or commented on them, too. If someone else reads “Old Duffers Book of Wisdom” and has said something very similar to what our third party arbitrator has said, we can draw clear connections that our arbitrator, and this other person, who both read the “ODBW”, got the same things out of it. There, we can satisfy ourselves that our arbitrator is telling us rightly.

The Fourth Rung
As I said before, we can follow this chain as long as we like, investigating authors to our satisfaction. Why wouldn’t we? We want to be absolutely certain we are making the best possible decision about our Faith, because it holds such an important place in our lives. Lets suppose for a moment that we DO want to follow this chain. Well, “Old Duffers Book of Wisdom” was written by Old Duffer. What are HIS qualifications and credentials? What sources did HE use? We can look at any source of his we like. If we follow this chain infinitely, we will have assembled something quite extraordinary. The links we could draw between our Arbitrator, some other person, and “ODBW”, we can now connect to an abundance of other resources. After careful evaluation using the criteria we’ve talked about, we can assure ourselves that they are consistent across time and across subject matter. We can assure ourselves that they have been thoroughly discussed and disputed (for evidence of other disputes would surely arise, and records of their resolution would exist for us to look at). This chain is only limited by the number of resources available to us, so lets say after a pursuit of an undetermined amount of time, we have found all the resources and records which are consistent with each other, across time, and with our arbitrator. We can be satisfied that everything in this Corpus of works is consistent on this matter, and whatever dispute could probably be resolved, and both parties depart satisfied at having made the right decision.

The Fifth Rung
This process is burdensome and time consuming, so lets suppose the disputing parties, who have seen all of this data, want to avoid going through this process again should another dispute arise. We naturally wouldn’t want to do this every time. So we could establish some system for maintaining this corpus of work. What would that system look like?

One trait that I think would be beneficial is that it would be centralized. Libraries are certainly centralized, and they just store knowledge: We are looking for knowledge that fits this pattern of self-consistency on particular topics. So it would be even MORE important to be centralized, because we wouldn’t want to just deposit books we find: we want to evaluate them, and have some way of evaluating against the entire corpus at once. Perhaps we find a new work or a new writer or a new philosopher or a new document, and we want to know if they are speaking with the same authority as our arbitrator from before? Well this centralized system could screen for self-consistency across this body of work.

The Sixth Rung
Who would we trust with this centralized knowledge-base? They should have similar credentials as our arbitrator, they should be informed in Faith and all these other subjects. This job is important enough (being, as it is, about Faith, which is extremely important) that I think caretakers of this centralized knowledge-base ought to be uniquely qualified for this job, specifically. And, while we’re on the subject, we’re going to need a way to replace them, as life is finite but this corpus is timeless. So how do we choose who to trust with this heavy responsibility?

Well, I think the best person to know how to do this particular job would be someone who has done the job. But that is tautological: That causal chain can’t go on forever. So a class of people who are specially qualified to care for this corpus and evaluate works, who qualify others and appoint them to the same job, through all time. This chain would have to terminate on someone extremely qualified, and extremely knowledgeable about the faith. Why not the Fount of all knowledge Himself, Jesus Christ, through the laying of hands? This job is the priesthood, this Corpus is the Church.

The Church is the only institution active today, with authority granted from Christ himself through the laying of hands, the keeping of the keys, and in saying “You (Peter) are the rock on which I will build my Church”. Peter was the first and foremost caretaker of this corpus throughout time.

This ignores many of the other important functions of the Church, but I think the logic remains sound!

AMDG